The assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani last month has deepened the pessimism surrounding Afghanistan’s already stagnating peace process and prospects for future stability. Speculation abounds over who murdered him — the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan; the insurgent Haqqani network, at the direction of its patrons in Pakistan’s intelligence services; or a faction of the insurgency working without official sanction. Rabbani’s assassination follows a number of attacks attributed to Pakistan-sponsored insurgent groups. These incidents have provoked fierce hostility toward Islamabad from both Kabul and Washington, and have raised fears that Afghanistan is lurching toward civil war.
The above excerpt was originally published in The Washington Post.
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