Dear,
The 'new friends' I meant were the Jihadi groups that Pakistan suddenly used for 'strategic depth' with active encouragement of CIA.
The US did not "quit" the region. They had a keen eye on it without directly intervening. They had their interests in keen sight and were always paranoid about Iran exploiting the vacuum, so they helped create and arm various Jihadi groups via ISI to keep that in check including sectarian terrorists like LeJ-SSP (and it worked!).
They were the ones who secretly encouraged use of Jihadis in Kashmir to bring a more neutral India to be friendly terms with them with Pakistan as bait (it worked!)
They were more than happy to negotiate with Taliban in 1997 for a UNOCAL pipeline by inviting Taliban officials to Texas (when Dubya was Governor no less!) for negotiations of a deal which would have been key to formally recognise the Taliban in power but it failed. It was only after this failure of the deal that US started using legit anger over Taliban/Jihadi human rights abuses (forbidding women from any education employment and movement, massacre of Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif, Bamiyan Buddhas destruction that also pissed off China etc) for their own advantage.
USA have ALWAYS had an eye on the region. Now they just want to take direct control of it (and are failing, and taking us in the quicksand with them because of our own out-of-control Jihadi madness).
