following the war against the soviet union in the 180s, pakistan used used the mujahided subsequently the taliban to settle o old scores, but pakistan's military continues to fear a direct confrontation with the pashtun tribes on its western border. this fear makes pakistan's relationship with the taliban convoluted and volatile and, perhaps, unreso far bl. -- unresolvable. making token attacks on those taliban that do not seven its interesting, although even in this pack stab's -- pakistan's commitment is not what it seems. while mostly reserving its high-tech weapons given to it by the united states for a potential war with india, pakistan's military sets the poorly-trained and poorly-equipped pashtun frontier corps against the punjabi taliban setting up their own pashtun-controlled punjabi taliban among the disillusioned youth, a new and dangerous dynamic has taken hold. washington's third major issue regarding afpak is washington itself. the politic of both afghanistan and pakistan over the last 60 years have been so entwined in washington's vast web of special interests that the