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Known to American intelligence as the Taliban emissary to Al Qaeda, Mr. Haqqani showed up in Kabul last week as their new chief of security, brazenly armed with an American-made M4 rifle, with a protection squad dressed in American combat gear.

“Governing a war-ravaged country will be the real test and imposing challenge especially as the Taliban have been a warring force, not one adept at governing,” Maleeha Lohdi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in a column in The Dawn newspaper this week.

During the war the Americans tolerated Pakistan’s duplicitous game because they saw little choice, preferring to fight a chaotic war in Afghanistan to warring with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Moreover, Pakistan’s ports and airfields provided the main entry points and supply lines for American military equipment needed in Afghanistan.

Pakistan did that, even as its spy agency provided planning assistance, training expertise and sometimes on the ground advice to the Taliban all through the war, American officials said.

Though Pakistan was supposed to be an American ally, it always worked toward its own interests, as nations do. Those interests did not include a large American military presence on its border, an autonomous Afghanistan with a democratic government it could not control, or a strong and centralized military.

Rather, Pakistan’s goal in Afghanistan was to create a sphere of influence to block its archnemesis, India. The Pakistanis insist that India uses separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army, operating from havens in Afghanistan, to stir dissent in Pakistan.