At least 50 people have been killed in a deadly suicide attack in a stadium where hundreds of people had gathered to watch a volleyball match in the Yahya Khel district of Paktika province in Afghanistan. Those dead included members from the local police. At least 60 people have been injured who are said to be in critical condition. The bomber came into the stadium and mingled with the spectators before detonating his vest laden with explosives. The Haqqani network holds sway over Paktika, one of the most volatile provinces of Afghanistan. At least four major suicide attacks have occurred only this year in the province, all of them claimed by the Taliban. So far, no one has taken responsibility from this attack, but the pattern suggests it to be the work of the Taliban. The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency since the beginning of this year to weaken what they consider a US-installed government and to take the reins of power back into their own hands once the US leaves the country. In spite of its presence spanning 13 years, the US and its western allies have been unable to end terrorism and bring peace to Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have come back with a vengeance aiming to deplete whatever gains Afghanistan has achieved in economic and social development. The Afghan security forces’ inability to diminish the influence of the Taliban has been considered a prelude to another civil war in Afghanistan once the US withdraws from the country. The US strategy to exit Afghanistan rather than transiting it to peace had been criticised both at home and abroad as a recipe for complete disaster. To the Afghans, the US’s haste to leave their country was an excuse to get out of the crisis they had spanned rather than stay the course and overcome it. This context and the Iraq war going awry have provided enough impetus to the US to extend its mission in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament has given approval to extending the combat role of the US forces in Afghanistan under a new mission named Resolute Support, which will focus on supporting the Afghan security forces while engaging in counterterrorism operations. The question is will a 12,500 US combat force achieve what had largely eluded a larger deployment of 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for 13 years? The US intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 to force regime change turned out to be a flawed strategy that strengthened both the Taliban and the corrupt warlords, both despised by the Afghan people. The est was trying to do something it could not do, and need not do. Its basic assumptions were wrong. Afghanistan did not pose an existential threat to international security; the problem was that it was a failed state. But the policymakers, isolated from Afghan reality, lacked the wisdom to acknowledge that the more ambitious Afghanistan mission was impossible and unnecessary. The obsession with ‘counterinsurgency’ and ‘nation-building’ doctrines and with the idea that there were professionals who knew how to do these things, plunged matters further into the bog. In reality, such ‘doctrines’ were wrong assumptions, often based on selective evidence, misleading historical and geographical facts and flawed logic. The concepts on which such doctrines rested — such as the rule of law or civil society — had only the most indirect application to the way justice was administered and accepted in the villages where 80 percent of Afghans lived. Away from these flawed perceptions, doctrines and policies, the new role for the US might be to help engage the dissident Afghan forces into purposeful talks to make way for a political settlement while targeting those who had decided to thwart the peace process. The blast at the volleyball stadium is a reminder that things have not been handled well and that an effort laced with diplomacy and statecraft is required to pull Afghanistan out of the present crisis. With Pakistan now ostensibly determined to fight terrorism along with the Afghans and having pledged to distance itself from the Haqqani network, a new hope can be kindled for a peaceful Afghanistan. *