Our news correspondents are playing down our relationship with Pakistan, and even though our senior officials count them as our "allies", I'm not so sure the recent $1 Billion dollars is going to go to good use.
Are we aiding and abetting the enemy? (again??)

I see problems with Pakistan......we are romancing, coddling and supplying a friend of the Taliban, in the hopes we can bargain our way into this oil deal.
For a look at the way it WAS just four short years ago, read this.......and tell me how much you think our "alliance" has changed:

This comes from the Electronic Telegraph in June of 1997. (Thanks Greg)

Taliban swallow pride and ask Pakistan to help
By Roger Howard

FOR neighbouring countries watching as the Afghan war reaches a critical juncture, the temptation to intervene directly is a powerful one. And one organisation with a closer interest than most is Pakistan's military intelligence, ISI.

The chief ISI representative in Afghanistan, Brig Ashkraf Afridi, is currently believed to be in Kabul, arranging for vast quantities of arms and logistical supplies to be moved from military depots in Peshawar and Rawalpindi into Taliban hands. There is also the prospect of Pakistani military personnel, disguised as Afghans and speaking Pushto - the language of the Kandahar-based Islamic fundamentalist movement - joining front-line positions if the risk of serious military reversal increases.

For the Pakistanis, the stakes of the Afghan war are high. The Taliban movement presents the best chance of imposing peace over the country, allowing vital trade routes to open directly to the lucrative markets of the former Soviet Union.

The construction of oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Quetta in west Pakistan offers prospects of foreign investment, employment and attractive transit fees. The current Pakistani government may deny that it has links with the Taliban but, as always in Pakistan, what the civilians do or think will not have prevented the top brass from playing an active role in Afghan affairs.

The military is still widely regarded as the real force running Pakistani politics, and the ISI - semi-autonomous within the army - has always enjoyed considerable freedom to pursue its own policies.

Afridi, a Pathan in his early fifties, has been a key player in this ongoing Great Game for some time. He has his own personal grudge against the Taliban's chief enemies who ousted him from Kabul last year. That rancour dates from the sacking of the Pakistani mission there in September 1995 in protest at its assumed links with the Taliban. Several senior members of the mission, including Afridi, were seriously assaulted.

At about the same time, the ISI's interest in the Afghan fundamentalists grew sharply, when the fall of Herat proved that the Taliban had the potential to rule the country. The chief obstacle to co-operation between them has been the fierce independence of the Afghans, who have been wary of accepting support which may have political strings attached.

The Taliban is said to have accepted help, at first, from former ISI members. But following bloody stalemate and several military reversals in early 1996, the Afghan fundamentalists accepted the ISI's offers of direct military back-up.

Last July a small team of Pakistani military advisers are believed to have arrived at the main Taliban camp south-west of Kabul and to have kept out of sight of the few journalists who visited the area.

According to a former minister of Pakistan's ex-premier, Benazir Bhutto, the assault on Kabul took place at night so as to conceal the large number of Pakistanis who had volunteered their services and the "considerable" number of professional military advisers who directed the capture of key positions.

It has also recently emerged that as Kabul fell - at dawn on September 27 - senior ISI officers were on the scene, assuming responsibility for the remaining members of the ousted government and escorting them, as agreed with Taliban leaders, to Peshawar.

One respected Pakistani journalist claims to have witnessed negotiations between Afridi and a member of the Taliban ruling council for the transfer of Pakistani money to its front-line commanders. After last week's military defeats, the Taliban leaders will be eager for more help from their friends in the ISI. And they are unlikely to be disappointed.

Roger Howard is a regional correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly.