Securing Afghanistan Means Relying On Difficult U.S. Partner -- Pakistan's Army

“The question is not what [Pakistan] can or can’t do, the question is what happens if you exclude Pakistan from the conversation," said Shamila Chaudhary, who served as Obama's National Security Council director for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010 and 2011, and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. "Pakistan is very good at playing a spoiler role in any of these kinds of conversations, and when they’re excluded from the conversation or excluded from having the information after the fact, that’s very frustrating for them because so much of this impacts their national security posture.”