Report: Pakistani Intelligence (Still) Supporting Taliban

By Steve Hynd

The shocking thing is that this shocks some people:

Pakistan's main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented on the group's leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to combat the militants, said a research report released Sunday.

The findings could heighten tension between the two countries and raise further questions about U.S. success in Afghanistan since Pakistani cooperation is seen as key to defeating the Taliban, which seized power in Kabul in the 1990s with Islamabad's support.

U.S. officials have suggested in the past that current or former members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, have maintained links to the Taliban despite the government's decision to denounce the group in 2001 under U.S. pressure.

But the report issued Sunday by the London School of Economics offered one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government.

Shocking! But only if you hadn't read about a Spanish report in October 2008, the WaPo's report on what US officials knew in April of this year, just about everything Afghan and Indian intelligence have ever said about the Taliban, NATO reports back in 2006 and, in fact, every bit of evidence since well before Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if it didn't play ball with Bush's adventure in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan's apparent involvement in a double-game of this scale could have major geopolitical implications and could even provoke U.S. countermeasures," said the report, which was based on interviews with Taliban commanders, former Taliban officials, Western diplomats and many others.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult, if not impossible, for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," said the report, written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

America has painted itself into a corner. Unless it is willing to admit that its Afghanistan attempts are failed, failing and will fail then it needs Pakistan at any price to keep the occupation there going. And the domestic political costs of admitting failure are likely too great. Obama and Democrats have used Afghanistan as a shield against Republican accusations of being "soft on terror" and many within the White House and the Democratic establishment don't want to remove that shield - no matter how much sense it may make strategically and financially - in the run-up to 2012. Republican support for Pakistan's military has been loud and long and goes back even further. They'd be just as embarassed by an about-face.

So don't hold your breath for U.S. countermeasures. Pakistan has nukes so invasion is out, it's always going to be the main channel for supplies to ISAF forces in Afghanistan so sanctions are out. So as it always has in the past, America will look the other way. At most, Congress will slap some more restrictions on aid, which will promptly be ignored just like all the others.

Ironically, if Iran had just pretended to be America's friend all these years, it could have had nukes, Hezboullah and a Kerry-Lugar Bill too.

Comments

[Aman Sharma]

A hard hitting piece, indicating the US' anger, anguish and helplessness towards Pakistan.

Two comments made in the blog post are worth noting :

"The shocking thing is that this shocks some people"
and
"Ironically, if Iran had just pretended to be America's friend all these years, it could have had nukes, Hezboullah and a Kerry-Lugar Bill too."

I would also recall and quote another comment by the author in one of his previous blogs dated April 11, 2010 :

"Pakistan is not now and never will be a natural ally of the United States. It is already a satellite state of China's"

Wonder how the best brains in the White House and the Pentagon cannot see what all of us can!

Terrible perfidy by Pakistan coupled with selective amnesia of the powers that be in the US is a sure recipe for an Afghanistan disaster waiting to happen.

Twitter id : @amancool5

[democratically]

An apt observation, Steve: "Ironically, if Iran had just pretended to be America's friend all these years, it could have had nukes, Hezboullah and a Kerry-Lugar Bill too."

It is now becoming amply clear that the US is not here for Osama but to make a base against the rising powers of the region in the face of New Great Game. But it would be foolish to think that Russia and India would give a free hand to CIA and ISI in Afghanistan in the long term. Northern Alliance as well as non-Pashtun Afghans wouldnt allow that to happen.

Anyway, now its upto NATO and the CIA, how they would like to play their cards. It would also not be out of place to mention here that Western allies are rather more acceptable in countries other than Pakistan in the region.

[SRW1]

And now that the Pentagon has located raw materials estimated at $1 trillion, Afghanistan is doubly screwed. Even if some grand bargain could be struck, of which I am skeptical, extraction-based economies as the foundation of nation-building have such a marvelous record in warlordistan.