ISI’s Support for the Taliban is Clearer Than the Sun in the Sky

The release of 91,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan by WikiLeaks turned out to be your classic media bang-fizzle. The first-day bang was caused by the spectacular breach of security and the promise of devastating revelations, especially about Pakistan‘s clandestine support for the Taliban.

The second-day fizzle was caused by the absence of much that was new in the documents.

By the third day, it was pretty much over.

“We need to kill a lot of Taliban,” Kilcullen said, a statement that stands well outside the humanitarian spirit of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. But then, Kilcullen admitted, the Afghan government is too unstable for COIN to work very well — a major concession from a charter member of the Petraeus camp and a signal, perhaps, of a change in U.S. tactics. As for the Taliban, he said, there was no question that they were being supported by ISI. Kilcullen recommended that the committee members read a recent paper by Matt Waldman of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy called “The Sun in the Sky.”

The paper is astonishing. From February to May 2010, the author conducted separate interviews with nine active Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan and 10 former Taliban officials.

The commanders are unanimous in their belief that the ISI is running the show.

It is a field-level view of the hierarchy and probably an exaggeration, but even at half-strength, the commanders’ accounts of direct ISI involvement are entirely convincing. Some of them received training and protection in Pakistani camps run by the ISI. “[The ISI has] specific groups under their control, for burning schools and such like,” one commander says. “The ISI [also] has people working for it within the Taliban movement. It is clearer than the sun in the sky.”

The commanders insist the ISI is opposed to any negotiations between the Taliban and Karzai’s government; several cite as proof the February arrest by Pakistani operatives of Taliban second-in-command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was involved in informal peace talks with the Afghans.

Why on earth are elements of the Pakistani military supporting the Taliban?

In a word, India.

India is, first and last, the strategic obsession of the Pakistani military. The U.S. has come and gone from the region in the past; the perceived Indian threat is eternal.

With the defeat of the Taliban by U.S. forces in 2001, there was fear that the new government in Kabul would be sympathetic to India and provide a strategic base for anti-Pakistan intelligence operations.

And so, despite professions of alliance with the U.S. by Pakistan’s Musharraf, a decision was made to keep the Taliban alive. A spigot of untargeted military aid from the Bush Administration helped fund the effort. A commander of the vicious Haqqani Taliban network tells Waldman that their funding comes from “the Americans — from them to the Pakistani military, and then to us.” Waldman reports that the commander receives from the Pakistanis “a reward for killing foreign soldiers, usually $4,000 to $5,000 for each soldier killed.”

This is devastating and outrageous, but slightly outdated — and decidedly incomplete. In the months since Waldman completed his research, the relationship between Pakistan and the Karzai government has warmed considerably. Karzai removed his intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, whom the Pakistanis considered an Indian agent. There is talk of a reconciliation deal in which the Haqqani network will stand down militarily. Most important, the Pakistanis’ sense of the perceived threat has changed dramatically over the past 18 months. After a series of spectacular terrorist attacks, the army launched a major campaign against the indigenous Pakistani Taliban. More Pakistani army personnel have been killed in this fight than U.S. forces in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Are you confused yet?

Let me make things more complicated: Afghanistan is really a sideshow here.

Pakistan is the primary U.S. national-security concern in the region. It has a nuclear stockpile, and lives under the threat of an Islamist coup by some of the very elements in its military who created and support the Taliban. The one thing the U.S. can do to reduce that threat is to convince the Pakistanis that we will be a reliable friend for the long haul — providing aid, mediating the tensions with India; that we will help stabilize Afghanistan; that we will support the primacy of Pakistan’s civilian government. Over time, this could reduce the extremist influence in the military and Pakistan’s use of Islamist guerrillas against its neighbors. If it does not — well, the alternative is unthinkable.

Published by alaiwah

ALAIWAH'S PHILOSOPHY About 12 years ago, while studying Arabic in Cairo, I became friends with some Egyptian students. As we got to know each other better we also became concerned about each other’s way of life. They wanted to save my soul from eternally burning in hell by converting me to Islam. I wanted to save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife by converting them to the secular worldview I grew up with. In one of our discussions they asked me if I was sure that there is no proof for God’s existence. The question took me by surprise. Where I had been intellectually socialized it was taken for granted that there was none. I tried to remember Kant’s critique of the ontological proof for God. “Fine,” Muhammad said, “but what about this table, does its existence depend on a cause?” “Of course,” I answered. “And its cause depends on a further cause?” Muhammad was referring to the metaphysical proof for God’s existence, first formulated by the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Avicenna argues, things that depend on a cause for their existence must have something that exists through itself as their first cause. And this necessary existent is God. I had a counter-argument to that to which they in turn had a rejoinder. The discussion ended inconclusively. I did not convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I learned an important lesson from our discussions: that I hadn’t properly thought through some of the most basic convictions underlying my way of life and worldview — from God’s existence to the human good. The challenge of my Egyptian friends forced me to think hard about these issues and defend views that had never been questioned in the milieu where I came from. These discussions gave me first-hand insight into how deeply divided we are on fundamental moral, religious and philosophical questions. While many find these disagreements disheartening, I will argue that they can be a good thing — if we manage to make them fruitful for a culture debate. Can we be sure that our beliefs about the world match how the world actually is and that our subjective preferences match what is objectively in our best interest? If the truth is important to us these are pressing questions. We might value the truth for different reasons: because we want to live a life that is good and doesn’t just appear so; because we take knowing the truth to be an important component of the good life; because we consider living by the truth a moral obligation independent of any consequences; or because we want to come closer to God who is the Truth. Of course we wouldn’t hold our beliefs and values if we weren’t convinced that they are true. But that’s no evidence that they are. Weren’t my Egyptian friends just as convinced of their views as I was of mine? More generally: don’t we find a bewildering diversity of beliefs and values, all held with great conviction, across different times and cultures? If considerations such as these lead you to concede that your present convictions could be false, then you are a fallibilist. And if you are a fallibilist you can see why valuing the truth and valuing a culture of debate are related: because you will want to critically examine your beliefs and values, for which a culture of debate offers an excellent setting.

One thought on “ISI’s Support for the Taliban is Clearer Than the Sun in the Sky

  1. “The second-day fizzle was caused by the absence of much that was new in the documents.”

    The people making those claims must have advanced speed reading skills ?

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