Pakistan and China find they have little leverage with the Taliban

When america beat a sudden, ignominious retreat from Afghanistan and the Taliban surged to power, there was much cheering in next-door Pakistan. In China, America’s withdrawal was considered a great propaganda coup.Naturally, many like to see one in the eye for the overweening Americans. But the Pakistanis, in particular, had much more than that at stake in the Taliban’s triumph. The Islamist movement was part-created by Pakistan’s powerful military spies in the 1990s and had ever since been harboured by them.