The one big mistake that Pakistan did was to save these thankless Taliban from US rage. Pakistan should let US bomb them to annihilate them once and for all
The big mistake was to keep sustaining them anyway thanks to Hamid Gul's myopic obsession with it.
Off topic and linking back to why I put the articles on army reform:
The bigger mistake and cultural garbage is the establishment's inability to say "we were wrong".
Which is why both ideas of throwing out the establishment are juvenile fantasies as are those that support their excesses -
Pakistan is not an Islamic society.
Because EVERY - EVERY time Allah sent a message - it was sent as a question and introspection to the existing malaise in the system.
Every opposition to the goodness Allah sent was by existing systems.
Nooh (علیه السلام) - the leaders then said "We have never heard of this among our forefathers of old."
Ibrahim (علیه السلام) - His father did not say the idols answered or fed them. They said, "We found our fathers worshipping them."
Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم) - the Quraysh said "We found our fathers upon a religion, and we are guided by their footsteps."
The establishment is not only GHQ. It is the wider system of inherited certainty: the belief that a policy cannot be wrong if respected generals, diplomats, religious figures, landlords, civil servants, television anchors, and family elders have repeated it long enough.
That is not taught in Kakul or Quetta - it is "tribal" knowledge and "selection" which is basically a case of "Garbage in , Garbage out" where Garbage is Pakistani (culture and social norms across all). It is a NATIONAL culture where
admitting a foundational error can be treated as disloyalty rather than professionalism. Heck, even the so called reformist party in PTI and its die hard cultists do the same.
Which is exactly why change has to come from within the military and establishment as much as from outside it.
Not through a childish fantasy of purging everyone
Not through a political upheaval that just rinse and repeat produces another faction.
Pakistan's establishment - in this case its Army and intelligence are not failures due to today's Afghan or Balochistan situation - but because they still defend
yesterday's doctrine when it comes to statecraft.
ALL that is needed to fix Pakistan is - and I mean this with no simple terms.
What the Afghan did or does do does not matter - their problem is their own.
What India did or does do - not my actions.
What the United States does - not my actions.
We were wrong; now we will change.