Understanding the Resurgency of the Taliban and what it means

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!
THE YOUNG BRITISH SOLDIER by Rudyard Kipling

ISI Headquarters

It is often times said that “nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests,” and the on again off again friendship that continues to exist between Pakistan and the United States is a fine illustration of that reality. In almost its 60+ years of nationhood, the South-Asian nation of Pakistan has played for America, a role that’s so-called natural allies have yet to play. It was Pakistan that gave America U2 reconnaissance flights the ideal bases to take-off and spy on Soviet military installations deep in Russian territory, and on may 1^st 1960 when the American pilot Francis Gray Powers’ U2 was shot down in Soviet territory after taking from Peshawar, Pakistan, it was Pakistan that has to live with Soviet threats and intimidations of “being bombed with nuclear bombs,” as the Soviet leadership often threatened Pakistan. And if that wasn’t enough, it was the Pakistanis that took on the might of the Soviet military head-on in Afghanistan, creating a strong effective insurgency against the communist forces, providing not only logistical and intelligence support to the mujahedeen but also an effective clandestine secret commando force that was so successful in raiding Soviet strategic assets in Afghanistan prompting the Russians to call them the “Black spiders.” In addition, it was Pakistan that broke the ice between the Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States, creating a devastating blow to Communist resurgence in the Europe and elsewhere. Keep in mind that Pakistan’s arch-rival India has always sided with India, a fact we will come back later on this blog. Yet after the long but effective defeat and subsequent breakdown of the Russian Empire, Pakistan was slapped with American sanctions and isolation the minute the Russian war ended. Leaving Pakistan to take care of millions of Afghani refugees and a highly destabilized neighborhood especially made worse by Pakistan’s conflict with India on the opposite side of the border in Kashmir.

Not only was Pakistan sanctioned and isolated, it was even denied access to weapons that had paid for such as American F-16s! And to make matters worse, they were even denied the refund for many years, only to be paid in soya beans (Yes Soya Beans!) years later!

Following the tragic events of September 11^th 2001, we are told to believe that it took only one phone call from President Bush to his counterpart Musharraf to convince him to switch alliances with the Taliban, Pakistan’s only ally in a region that has the crazy mullahs in Iran and the India. To understand, the underlying reasons behind Pakistan’s 180 degree turn, it is important to understand and appreciate the complex geo-political work at play in the region.

The Taliban are in essence an ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan) creation designed for one purpose only- the deterrence of the possibility of Pakistan dealing with two-hostile forces from both sides of the border, a strategy that is central to the Pakistani military doctrine. The ISI supplied, trained, provided battlefield intelligence and provided specially trained commando force to fight alongside the Taliban against the Iranian, Indian, and Russian backed Northern Alliance. They captured Kabul and 90% of the Afghani territory by the end of 1996. This strategy also provided Pakistan a geographically narrow country a strategic depth and a maneuvering space in a antagonistic region.

The Indians have always planned on using Afghanistan as launching-pad for destabilizing Pakistan. They see the creation of a unified Pushtoon region connecting the Afghani and Pakistan Pushtoon tribesmen into forming their own country as the ultimate disintegration of the Pakistani State. To complicate the situation, subsequent Afghani governments have always turned deaf ear to legitimate Pakistani concerns.

9/11 happened, Pakistan became a front-line State and America’s biggest ally in the war against terrorism, and once again military and economic not to mention political aid were flowing steadily to Pakistan once again as it did in the 1980s when the country was fighting American wars in Afghanistan. We are told that Pakistan dumped the Taliban, and joined the fight against them. Dozens of important Al Qaida leaders were arrested and handed over to the United States. President Musharraf was personally targeted twice by Islamic militants twice, and numerous suicide bombings were carried out against Pakistan by the Islamic terrorists. Yet, there is something wrong with this story-line.

In the northern Afghani city of Kunduz on a November night in 2001, as American and NATO warplanes were bombing the retreating Taliban and Al Qaida fighters, Pakistan dispatched planes to the city to transport out Pakistani intelligence agents and army personnel fighting alongside the Taliban. The planes were given permission by the Americans and few days later the tens of thousands of Taliban fighters trapped in the city were reduced to few hundred low-level fighters and almost no high level commander or operative. They all vanished in thin air. Deeply aggravated, the encircling Northern Alliance fighters broke the secret Pakistani flights to Western news agencies and the respected Seymour M. Hersh wrote a richly detailed article for the New Yorker Magazine (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/28/020128fa_FACT). To this day, Pakistan and America deny those flights.

It is no secret that the fall of the Taliban, combined to with the ascendency of power of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan divested Pakistan off a strategic depth and an ally in a volatile neighborhood. It is often said in Pakistan, the ascendency to power by the Northern Alliance succeed where the Soviet invasion of the 1980s failed-namely the creation of pressure points around Pakistan in order to make the country susceptible to turmoil and sectarian unrest.

India was quick to open its embassy in Kabul and numerous consulates in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan most notably Southern Afghanistan most significantly the city of Kandahar. It often alleged that the true objective of those consulates was to act as a platform where India’s external spy organization RAW ( Research and Analysis Wing) would provide weapons, intelligence and training to the separatist outfit of Baluchistan Liberation Army which strives to curve out an independent territory for the Baluchi people. In 2005, the BLA grew more fearsome and became increasingly effective force. It targeted army installations, assassinated government workers, and sabotaged gas-pipelines passing throughout the province to the rest of Pakistan and even bombing police training camps in the province. On August 26, 2006, the leader of the BLA Nawab Buqti was located to a small cave in the province and killed by the ISI together with most of his leadership and militia. The last remaining leader of the Baluchi nationalists’ movement was killed in Afghanistan few months ago under mysterious circumstances. I will explore more of this theme on my next, blog. But what is important to keep in my mind is that ever since the fall of the Taliban, India and Pakistan and other players have been engaged in a aggressive espionage and sabotage endeavors mostly targeted against Pakistan to stabilize the country. Again, I will explore more on this theme on my next blog.

It is frequently said that Pakistan is playing a double game in the war against terror and indeed it does! There are have been several accusations of ISI aiding the Taliban mount a resistance against America and their NATO allies and some high level Taliban commanders captured have reveled that Taliban leadership is based in Pakistan with full protection provided to them by the ISI and even driving ISI plated cars! To understand the dynamics influencing the ISI and the Pakistani government, it is important to appreciate the following facts:

1) The ISI knows that America and NATO will not and can not afford to stay Afghanistan perpetually, thus it is important for Pakistan to ensure that it doesn’t deal with hostile force once the West leaves the country.

2) As long as the war in Afghanistan continues, Pakistan will be regarded as an ally of the West an as such will have its steady flow of high-tech weaponry and much needed economic aid

3) Indian efforts to destabilize Pakistan using Afghanistan is not acceptable to Pakistan, and every method to disrupt Indian designs

The recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto can be seen as an effort to destabilize Pakistan, and former heads of the ISI have said that they have first hand information of American involvement. The never-ending calls for over-sight of Pakistan’s arsenal of Nuclear Weapons and the continued fixation of the Pakistani Nukes in the Western Media, is in sum, the true motive of destabilizing Pakistan. Accusing Pakistan of not doing enough to safeguard its nuclear arsenal on one hand and perpetuating unrest in the country on the other seems to be the weapon of choice. This combined with the constant ignoring of Indian presence of Afghanistan by America and NATO seems to have convinced the ISI to go on the offense. Recently, Pakistan’s Permenent Representative to the UN wrote this letter to the NY Times:

To the Editor of The New York Times,

Selig S. Harrison’s Feb. 1 Op-Ed article, “Drawn and Quartered,” will confirm the belief of many Pakistanis that there is an international conspiracy to destabilize and disintegrate Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear state.

The orchestrated campaign against President Pervez Musharraf, the denigration of the Pakistani Army, calls for the capture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, the string of suicide bombings and terrorism in Baluchistan are all seen as aimed at this malevolent design.

Pakistan is a strong state held together solidly by the patriotism of its people and the strength of its civilian and military institutions. With a dynamic (7 percent) annual growth rate, significant foreign investment, the best performing stock exchange in Asia and the progressive reduction of poverty, all Pakistanis, including Pashtuns, Sindhis and Baluchis, are much better placed to achieve their aspirations within Pakistan, as they decided in 1947 through an irrevocable act of self-determination.

The machinations of external powers and their hired guns will not succeed.

Munir Akram
Permanent Representative, Pakistan Mission to the U.N.
New York, Feb. 1, 2008