Terror in Kabul
At about 8.30 a.m. on the morning of July 5, 2008, a Toyota Camry laden with explosives rammed into two cars outside the fortified gates of the Indian Embassy and exploded just as Embassy staff was entering the building. 58 persons, including the Military Attache and a diplomat of the Indian Embassy, and many of the visa seekers who had lined up outside the Embassy gates, died. Three days later, a bomb was found on a bus that was taking Indian construction workers to their worksite on the Ziranj-Dilaram road being constructed with Indian assistance. Quiet obviously these two terrorist acts were specifically aimed at India.
At about 8.30 a.m. on the morning of July 5, 2008, a Toyota Camry laden with explosives rammed into two cars outside the fortified gates of the Indian Embassy and exploded just as Embassy staff was entering the building. 58 persons, including the Military Attache and a diplomat of the Indian Embassy, and many of the visa seekers who had lined up outside the Embassy gates, died. Three days later, a bomb was found on a bus that was taking Indian construction workers to their worksite on the Ziranj-Dilaram road being constructed with Indian assistance. Quiet obviously these two terrorist acts were specifically aimed at India.
By the end of August that year it was quite evident that the all powerful Pakistani intelligence agency, the Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had a role to play in these attacks. There was enough evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Kabul bombing. The Afghan secret service, the Riyasat-e-Amniyat-e-Milli, had warned India on June 23 of an imminent attack. Its report said terrorists linked to al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani from his base in North Waziristan under Pakistani shelter, had planned a suicide assault on the mission. The Indian Intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing also had similar information three days and later corroborated by US intelligence reports.
Towards the end of July, The New York Times had reported that the CIA had provided wireless intercepts of communications between Pakistan’s ISI and the Kabul bombers. More than that, the US intelligence began to suspect that foreknowledge about this attack went as high as Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.
More than a year later, a large bomb exploded outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on October 8, 2009, killing 17 people and wounding 76. The Taliban claimed responsibility for this terrorist act. Obviously the Taliban, whose cause had been championed by Pakistan since their creation by the ISI and, even after being toppled as Afghanistan's rulers in 2001, were acting on behalf of their masters.
Fears about India
Most of Pakistan’s anxiety to dominate over Afghanistan is India-related in trying to seek what it called strategic depth against the much larger India, ensure a friendly Afghan government in Kabul that accepted the Durand Line dividing not only the Pushtun living on both sides of the border but also the two nations. It has always been important for Pakistan that Afghans accept the Durand Line to prevent any irredentist claims by Afghanistan or demands for ethnic independence by Pushtun nationalists. Pakistan had a virtually unimpeded role in Afghanistan once the US-led Afghan jihad started against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979 and especially in the 1990s when it championed the Taliban. Till September 2001 it assumed that its position in Afghanistan was unchallengeable. But today Pakistan is concerned that the aid policy of India which contributes US $ 1.3 billion to the Afghan infrastructure would make India more popular than before. This would make it more difficult for its surrogates, the Taliban, to assume control when eventually the US/NATO leave Afghanistan.
What happened in Kabul in 2008 and 2009 was part of a three pronged policy of the Pakistan government mainly implemented by the ISI. It was to terrorise and intimidate the Indian workers and Embassy in Afghanistan through these sponsored attacks by the Taliban and the Haqqani networks. The second plank has been to constantly level charges of Indian interference in Pakistan through its consulates in Afghanistan so that the Indian presence in Afghanistan could be reduced through US/Western pressure. Third, give sanctuary to the Taliban in Balochistan and other parts of Pakistan, including as it seems even in Karachi as Quetta had become vulnerable to possible drone attacks.
The ISI develops its claws
The ISI’s role in the Afghan jihad and beyond, leading to the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s has been covered by Steve Coll in his famous book Ghost Wars – The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 11, 2001. This monumental work recounts how the Taliban first rose and, with the help of the ISI, attained power in Afghanistan and the emergence of Osama Bin Laden. It is more than the history of the CIA. It is a history of collaboration between the two intelligence agencies where the ISI supplied weapons, funds, logistics and refuge to the mujahedeen operating in Afghanistan from Pakistan. The money came primarily from Saudi Arabia, the weapons and logistics from the US and other allies and the volunteers came from all over the Islamic world. Close association with the mujahedeen leaders like the ISI favourite Gulbuddin Hekmetyar of Hizb-e-Islami was the favourite of the Pakistani intelligence establishment and was groomed by them to succeed in Kabul after the Soviets left. There were other fall back options like the second favourite, Jalaluddin Haqqani of the Hizb-e-Islami (Yunus Khalis faction) and who today heads Haqqani networks with his son Sirajuddin leading the charge and operating from North Waziristan in Pakistan.
The aftermath of the departure of the Soviets did not lead to the results that Pakistan expected. They could not reach Kabul with their favourite, Hekmetyar beaten back first by President Najibullah’s regime that lasted longer than expected and then by the lightening takeover of Kabul by the Tajik leader and former ally, Ahmed Shah Masood in 1992. Pakistan’s dream was fast becoming a nightmare as it was unable to control the warring groups and chaos reigned.
It was then the Taliban – obscurantist and xenophobic - was born, manned almost entirely by the mujahedeen and young Afghans from the madrassas of NWFP and Balochistan in the autumn of 1994. The Taliban from the religious schools of Akhora Khattak in Peshawar, NWFP and the Binori chain of madrassas headquartered in Karachi were seen by the ISI as an alternative of the failed experiment with Hekmetyar.
Ahmed Rashid’s book Descent Into Chaos in an authoritative and detailed account of Pakistan’s support to the Taliban with refuge, funds and arms more or less on the same pattern as had been given to the Afghan mujahedeen is the previous decade. The CIA had lost control of the Afghan jehad by allowing the ISI to determine which mujahedeen faction would receive how much money and how many weapons. American money for hunting Al Qaeda was diverted by the ISI to finance Taliban activities in Afghanistan. Therein lie the failures of the West to control Pakistan, by allowing it to nurture forces like the Taliban and subsequently even the Al Qaeda.
By 1996 the Taliban of Mullah Omar were in control in Kabul, just a few months after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan following a four-year absence in the Sudan. Before going to the Sudan, Osama was in Pakistan, a useful hangover from the mujahedeen days. However, as the Pakistani author, Amir Mir points out in his book The Talibanisation of Pakistan-from 9/11 to 26/11,(2009) ‘The proximity between the ISI and the Taliban and the intimacy between the Taliban and Al Qaeda necessarily raises the question of the nature of relations between the ISI and Al Qaeda. It is generally believed that the link between the ISI and Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden goes back to almost 25 years ago.’ It is believed that Osama’s initial meeting with Mullah Omar was set up by the ISI and eventually brought him to Kandahar. When Al Qaeda was formed along the Afghan-Pakistan border its first camps in Afghanistan were set up in Haqqani’s territory whom both the ISI and CIA had seen as an important fighter in the Afghan jihad. It was Haqqani who was encouraged to raise funds for Al Qaeda from Saudi Arabia and rich Arabs.
In an intricate web of arrangements the Taliban continued to remain dependent even after September 11, 2001 on an infrastructure of religious parties like the Jamaat ul Ulema Islami (Fazlur Rehman) and other sectarian groups like the ultra-Sunni Sipaha Sahaba that were important clients of the ISI. The fact that Pakistan had close links with the Taliban before the September 11 attacks is well documented. The report of the US National Commission on the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks stated that “Pakistan, not Iraq, was a patron of terrorism and had closer ties with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban’s ability to provide the Al Qaeda chief a haven in the face of international pressure and the United Nations sanctions was significantly facilitated by Pakistani support. Pakistan broke off with the Taliban only after 9/11 even though it knew the Afghan militia was hiding Osama bin Laden.”
The Pakistani agenda widens
In the 1990s, Pakistan however had another triple agenda of encouraging Al Qaeda to expand its activities for a global jehad while focusing its own attention on the Indian subcontinent and strengthening the Taliban in Afghanistan. The ISI co-operated and aided Al Qaeda in establishing training camps inside Afghanistan which would help in spreading the Al Qaeda message and also indoctrinate foreign fighters in these camps who could in turn reinforce the faith in the Pakistani Punjabi but Kashmir specific Lashkar-e-Tayyaba fighters.
Lt General Hamid Gul at that time the head of the ISI was, and still is, a fervent Islamic fundamentalist and anti-West – a feeling that was shared by some of his successors like Lt Gen Javed Nasir and Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed who was the DG on September 11, 2001. After decades of close association with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and India-specific terrorist outfits like the Lashkar e Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkat-u- Mujahedeen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-i- Islami, it was impossible for the ISI to remain unaffected by the feelings and sentiments of its fundamentalist surrogates.
It may have been politically inexpedient to admit this publicly but US intelligence agencies had done their homework about Pakistani activities. The Defence Intelligence Assessment of 1999 made the stark assessment that bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network had been able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by the Taliban in keeping with Pakistani instructions. Osama’s Zawaha camp on the Afghan Pakistan border which was targeted by US cruise missiles in 1998 had been built with ISI funds by Pakistani contractors and protected by the local tribal leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. The “real host of that facility was the Pakistani ISI,” the report said.
By 2000, there were half a dozen ISI officers deputed to the Taliban headquarters in Kandahar. By the middle of 2001, Pakistan was providing to Afghanistan more than a hundred high frequency phone lines and major cities were accessible through the Pakistani network. Around that time about thirty trucks were crossing the Pakistan border carrying armaments for the Taliban in violation of UN sanctions. Senior Pakistani military and intelligence officers were involved in planning Taliban offensives.
The ISI was less than co-operative with the CIA on issues relating to the Al Qaeda or Osama. When in May 2001, Director CIA visited Pakistan and asked his Pakistani counterpart Lt General Mahmood Ahmed to share intelligence on Osama, the Pakistani refused. A few months before 9/11, the ISI had intelligence that two prominent nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood Chaudhri Abdul Majeed had met Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri Mahmood Ahmed did not feel it necessary to share this information with the US. On a visit to Washington in the week beginning September 4, 2001 Mahmood stalled all American requests to co-operate on Taliban and Al Qaeda. One day after the Twin Towers fell, Richard Armitage the Deputy Secretary of State had delivered the famous threat to Mahmood and the Pak Ambassador when he said “Help us and breathe in the 21st century along with the international community or be prepared to live in the Stone Age.” Gen Mahmood Ahmed was sent to the Taliban to suggest to them to surrender, but he did no such thing. Instead he is said to have advised them about how to resist the Americans and promised them full support. Gen. Musharraf who had got an equally stern message “Are you with us or against us” from Washington and before October 7, 2001, Mahmood Ahmed was relieved of ISI command.
CIA’s and Gen Musharraf’s limited options
Despite the stern warnings, the CIA had very little choice. When the September 11 2001 catastrophe struck the US, accompanying the rage in Washington was the knowledge that the US had no intelligence inputs on whatsoever on the AL Qaeda and Taliban activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The uncomfortable truth was that the US intelligence agencies had little or no human source intelligence, its other intelligence collection capabilities had shrunk during the Clinton Presidency and there was very little military to military contact between the two countries. The truth was that it needed Pakistan and the ISI and the Pakistanis, who had been active in Afghanistan for a decade , knew this as well. That is how the relationship was sought to be re-established but has till date remained an uncomfortable one with a huge trust deficit. The suicide attack on the CIA camp in Afghanistan (Camp Chapman Khost, December 30, 2009) where seven CIA operatives were killed showed that even eight years after the launch of the war on terror in Afghanistan, showed that the American intelligence footprint was still faint and perhaps even amateurish.
Although Gen. Musharraf accepted the US diktat almost immediately after it was delivered to him, its implementation would prove to be difficult. It was easy to clean the higher echelons of the ISI where senior officers worked on tenures that lasted a few years. The difficulty was at the middle and lower levels where ISI operatives handling the jihad or the Taliban had been working for ten years or even longer. They were closely associates not only with the Pukhtun leadership but had begun to identify themselves with the cause as well. A kind of a Stockholm Syndrome had set in even among those who were not religiously inclined. The Pakistan Army, years after General Zia ul-Haq was killed in 1988, still maintains the same jihadi slogan that was given to it by Zia – Jihad Fi Sabillah which translated means ‘Jihad in the name of Allah.’
By the time a change of heart was demanded from Musharraf and his military government, the ISI had been able to build enough identification of interest between the young of Pakistan and the Taliban so that when the American pressure came on the Pakistan government there was a desire among the young to defend the Taliban and their ideology rather that the outsider. The other dilemma was that the terrorist infrastructure that targeted the Indians and Kashmir like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish–e- Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen in their various reincarnations had to be protected at all costs. The break with these groups in Afghanistan was going to be troublesome and slow. The US had to apply considerable and constant pressure for the Pakistanis to yield on the Al Qaeda front in the next few years. By 2003 most of the Al Qaeda including many big names, had been handed over/arrested/killed (about 600). There are even reports from Asian News International quoting Karachi based Pakistani political sources that Osama, Zarqawi and Mullah Omar have been given shelter in Karachi by the Pakistan government. But the Taliban and the India-specific outfits were not to be touched. Imtiaz Gul in his book The Al Qaeda Connection –Taliban and Terror in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas and Amir Mir in his book Talibanisation of Pakistan- from 9//1 to 26/11 give detailed and chilling accounts of the Pakistan ISI-Taliban –Al Qaeda nexus. They describe how the Pakistan government played an elaborate game of charade with the US following the US ultimatum and continued to play this almost till the other day.
This frustration with Pakistani tactics has led the US to follow the Iraqi example of drawing in private military company for armed support and intelligence activities. According to Jeremy Scahill of the Nation, (November 23, 2009), his investigations had found that “At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan”.
It is possible that the three US Special Forces officers killed in NWFP in November 2009 were from one such private military company. It is also possible that the raid conducted by the Pakistani intelligence and US forces that led to the arrest of Abdul Ghani Baradar (Karachi mid February 2010) may have had an component from a private military company.
Pakistan obfuscates and prevaricates
Pakistan was a reluctant participant in President Bush’s global war on terror. Circumstances had forced general Musharraf to accept this course of action much against the wishes of many of military commanders. Thus, while they began to co-operate in the operations against Al Qaeda the same co-operation was not available against the Taliban. Operations against India-specific terrorist outfits were not even on the table nor did the West push this agenda.
A complex and a dangerous agreement was worked out between the Taliban and the Pak Army. The Taliban were allowed to push their agenda in Afghanistan and could even remain active in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the NWFP so long as the Pakistan Army was acknowledged as supreme. But the FATA Taliban, angered by the assault on their territories by US Predator drones and by Pak Army co-operation with the US broke ranks and attacked to occupy the Swat Valley. This was out of bounds and so was the Taliban foray into Buner barely 100 km from the capital, Islamabad. The Pak Army had to counterattack but the intention never was to destroy the Taliban; it was only to discipline the force, reassert its own supremacy and keep it intact for the future. Action was to be taken against the Taliban or will be taken against any force that threatens the Pak Army’s own security and not because this is part of NATO/US agenda. David Rhode the NY Times journalist who spent more than 7 months in Taliban captivity wrote in 2009 that in North Waziristan in FATA the Pak Army had allowed the Taliban to run their own “state”.
There were other instances of Pakistan duplicity. During a fierce battle in Afghanistan in 2007 the Americans learn from their own and Afghan intelligence inputs that Pak military flew repeated helicopter missions to resupply the Taliban forces. In the first five years till 2006 while 600 Al Qaeda were picked up not a single Taliban was arrested. There were two ISI training camps near Quetta in Balochistan for the Taliban and there is documentation to show that 2,000 rocket propelled grenades and 400,000 rounds of ammunition were supplied for one Taliban campaign. By 2008 caustic comments were being made by a frustrated and angry US administration. For instance, Bruce Riedel at one stage in 2008 angrily referred to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s attempts to fleece US for billions of dollars while it allowed Al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan. “We had a partner who was double dealing us,” he said.
There have been endless visits from Washington of very senior administration and Pentagon officials to apply pressure on the Pakistan government to live up to its word. This constant stream has included virtually all of President Obama’s inner group of senior advisers and military practitioners for the last year in particular – the Defence Secretary Robert Gates, NSA Dennis Blair, DNI James Jones, CIA Chief Panneta, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen and Commander CENTCOM David Patraeus as well as Richard Holbrooke. In an interview in March 2009, Holbrooke when asked if the ISI was assisting Al Qaeda and Taliban-linked extremists was extremely skeptical because he felt that not only was there hardly any co-operation between the two intelligence services We cannot succeed if the two intelligence agencies (the CIA and ISI), they seemed to be inimical to each other, there was no trust and the Americans were concerned that that the other side was colluding with the Taliban.
There have been some signs of a better co-operation following the recent arrest of the Afghan Taliban leader and Mullah Omar’s deputy, Abdul Ghani Baradar, as a result of joint intelligence operations between the CIA and ISI. However, the Pakistani authorities are reluctant to hand Baradar over for further interrogations for fear that he would reveal far too much. A recent announcement that the US/NATO forces will now target the Haqqani networks in North Waziristan either means that the Pak Army is fully on board with this and has realized the danger it faces from these factions is real and imminent or that the US has decided to go it alone, despite Pakistani prevarication. Time will tell whether this is a game changer or simply a period of greater uncertainty.
One of the main reasons why the Soviets had to vacate Afghanistan in the manner they did was because they did not take the battle to the source of the trouble, which was in Pakistan. It was so then, and it is so today. If the world needs to prevent another attack like that on September 11 or the Madrid train bombings, the London train-bus terror or Mumbai 26/11 then the US led forces in Afghanistan-Pakistan have to succeed. What could prevent this from happening is continued Pakistani assistance to these groups.
With the implementation of the surge of U. S. forces in action in the Helmand province in the battle of Marja, others in the region are waiting to see how this plays out. There has also been talk of concerted action against the Haqqani forces in North Waziristan following the arrest of the Taliban deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. At the same time the general belief in the region is that the US/NATO forces will begin to leave by mid-2011. Should this become a general assessment the policy of the Taliban, presumably at the advice of the Pakistanis could be to lie low. One can be fairly sure that where the US with its powerful war machine could not succeed in Afghanistan a smaller force is hardly likely to succeed. The US frustration is partly the result of inadequacy of force levels, Pakistani duplicity and the traditional Afghan resistance to foreigner. After thirty years of involvement, it is natural that if the US/NATO were to leave the region without stabilising Afghanistan not merely as a pro-western nation but as an Afghan nation, then the instability will spread rapidly.
The fallout on Pakistan will be the quickest and is inevitable. The one thing the Pushtun on both sides of the Durand Line will ask is that they did not fight together against foreign forces for three decades to become minorities in both countries. That is a question both Pakistan and Afghanistan will have to answer.
Source : Appeared in Italian journal "Limes " , 30th March ,2010 Former Head of R&AW
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