Pakistani Unconventional Warfare Against Afghanistan: A Case Study of the Taliban as an Unconventional Warfare Proxy Force
Douglas A. Livermore
As the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan transitions full responsibility for operations to local forces and prepares to withdrawal the bulk of its forces by the end of 2014, it is important to look to the future of the conflict. The Taliban is far from defeated, and they will definitely remain a formidable foe to the Afghan government in 2015 and beyond. The world will witness a protracted and extremely violent struggle for dominance between the legitimate Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and the fundamentalist Taliban insurgency vying to reinstitute the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which was overthrown by the US-led effort in late 2001. On one side, the Afghan government will do everything in its power to remain firmly entrenched as the central national authority governing from Kabul, the capital city. Opposing them, the Taliban will continue to strike out from safe havens in Western and Southern Pakistan, attempting to undermine the Afghan government and reemerge as the dominant power in Afghanistan. The Taliban seeks to reclaim the central national authority currently held by the Afghan government and once again exercise near-complete political and spiritual control over the entire population of Afghanistan.
What is not entirely clear to casual outside observers is the “hidden hand” that directs and ultimately benefits from the Taliban’s efforts to destabilize Afghanistan. Pakistan, and specifically its Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has been engaged in an incredibly long-term unconventional warfare campaign that provides an illuminating view into how such a strategy can be used to indirectly achieve a state’s national objectives. By employing the Taliban as a proxy force, Pakistan has achieved key regional objectives without the bulk of its conventional forces becoming decisively engaged in Afghanistan. While the ISI originally launched an Unconventional Warfare (UW) campaign to destabilize Afghanistan at the direction and with the full backing of then-President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq after he took power in a bloody coup in 1979, it is unclear if that support continues today under the democratically elected President Asif Ali Zadari. Regardless, evidence that the ISI continues to support and direct the Taliban is voluminous, indicating a continuation of the UW campaign, with or without the direct permission of Pakistan’s elected leaders. When viewed with a critical eye, the Pakistani UW campaign against Afghanistan, with the Taliban acting as an indigenous proxy force, exhibits all of the characteristics and phases codified in the UW model used by the United States Government (USG). By analyzing the campaign through this lens, one can better understand the situation on the ground today as well as predict future Pakistani and Taliban strategies designed to undermine and potentially overthrow the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Perhaps the most important question that should be asked is this: Why would Pakistan want to conduct UW against Afghanistan?
“Pashtunistan.” This word has struck fear into the hearts of Pakistani leaders for generations. Meaning “Land of the Pashtuns”, it is a concept deeply rooted in the psyche of the Pashtun tribes which straddle the Afghan-Pakistani border and poses a potential existential threat to modern-day Pakistan. The modern border, known as the “Durand Line”, is poorly defined and regularly contested. In 1893, the British, represented by Mortimer Durand, forced the Afghan Emir Abdur Rahman Khan to accept a dictated boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan (then “British India”). This border was intentionally designed by the British to divide the Pashtuns, thereby keeping Afghanistan weak and a perfect “buffer zone” between the encroaching Russian Empire and British India (on which the Russians had designs).[1] Afghan rulers since Abdur Rahman have almost universally rejected the “Durand Line” and the current government of President Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtun, refuses to recognize this border as legitimate.[2] There are regular skirmishes between Afghan and Pakistani troops all along their shared border as each side jockeys for every slight advantage. The most recent major flare-up occurred in September of 2011, when Pakistan launched more than 340 artillery rockets into Afghanistan, damaging several towns and forcing the evacuation of thousands of terrified Afghans. [3]
Generally speaking, there is little common understanding among the population of Afghanistan who exactly qualifies as an “Afghan”. In antiquity, the ethnic term “Afghan” was accepted as synonymous with only the Pashtuns.[4] Against this historic framework, and with few exceptions, loyalty in Afghanistan rarely extends beyond the tribal or ethnic level, as Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other non-Pashtun ethnic groups in Afghanistan cautiously eye the Pashtun majority. Given their druthers, the Pashtun majority of Afghanistan would undoubtedly seek reunification with the Pashtun tribes in Western Pakistan under the banner of a “Greater Afghanistan”. Doing so would strip nearly half of Pakistan’s land area as well as its vital Indian Ocean ports of Jiwani, Gwadar, and Pasni. These ports give Pakistan access to the mouth of the Arabian/Persian Gulf and provide further strategic strength. Obviously, the loss of Pashtun lands is unacceptable to Islamabad, which is why the Pakistanis have consistently sought to undermine Afghan unity and maintain a weakened Afghanistan in order to secure their northwest border.Despite its concern about Afghanistan, it is India, not Afghanistan, which Pakistan sees as the greatest regional threat. India and Pakistan have officially fought wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999, in addition to numerous undeclared skirmishes along their shared borders, particularly near the contested Kashmir province.[5] Because of this constant threat, Pakistan maintains the vast majority of its conventional forces along the Kashmir and Indian borders, poised to blunt Indian aggression or to potentially take advantage of any real or perceived vulnerabilities in India’s defenses. Aside from the direct threat posed by the emergence of “Pashtunistan”, the Karzai administration has also greatly improved relations with India, much to the discomfort of Pakistan. Immediately after the fall of the Taliban and the installation of Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan, India, which previously supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and Pakistan, opened consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif.[6] Both Iran and India have become heavily invested in both the Afghan private and government sectors, thereby raising for the Pakistanis the specter of regional envelopment by hostile powers.[7] As a result, Pakistan chose to employ the Taliban and other insurgent groups as proxies against Afghanistan as an “economy of force” effort. Without having to commit the bulk of its conventional force to dealing with Afghanistan, which would have left the Kashmiri and shared borders with India weakened, the Pakistanis instead “outsourced” the bulk of its efforts vis-à-vis Afghanistan to the Taliban. The Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch reported in 2000:
“Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting [in Afghanistan], Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and ... directly providing combat support.”[8]
In the course of this case study, it will become evident that the ISI has conducted and continues to wage unconventional warfare (UW)—defined by USG as “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area.”[9] —against Afghanistan in order to achieve its own national objectives. This UW campaign, employing the Taliban and other insurgent entities, has alternately been designed to “coerce, disrupt, and overthrow” first the government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan and now the GIRoA. Beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the ISI has manipulated and used various insurgent factions in Afghanistan to ensure instability and pursue Pakistan’s own regional ambitions. These efforts came to a head in the post-Soviet era, when the ISI expedited the formation of the Taliban and provided equipment, training, and direction aimed to overthrow the fledgling “Islamic State of Afghanistan” created after the ouster of the Soviet puppet government of Mohammed Najibullah. The Taliban, with considerable Pakistani support, successfully conquered most of Afghanistan by 1996, claiming Kabul and driving the remaining elements of the transitional government, then called “The Northern Alliance” into the far northeastern corner of the country. Al-Qaeda (“The Base”), a terrorist group that also traced its origins to the anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement and which received safe haven under Taliban protection in Afghanistan, conducted a series of coordinated attack on the US in September of 2001. This action nearly undid all of Pakistan’s efforts when the US-led assault quickly overthrew the Taliban and forced the majority of its leadership to take refuge in their original safe havens in Pakistan. For the last eleven years, the Taliban and its associated insurgent groups have waged guerrilla warfare from these Pakistani safe havens, supported by the ISI.
Careful analysis of the Pakistani UW campaign, using the Taliban as an indigenous proxy force, readily reveals the organizational elements and phasing outlined in USG UW doctrine. The definitive work on this subject is Training Circular 18-01 “Special Forces Unconventional Warfare”, published by Headquarters, Department of the Army. This document outlines seven distinct phases within the USG model for UW, though it goes to great lengths to point out that not all phases are necessary or must proceed in a linear fashion to ensure success in UW. Given specific conditions, successful UW can be waged without conducting all phases. The USG doctrinal phases of UW consist of:
- Psychological Preparation –The aggressor state conducts assessments of and employs information operations (formerly psychological/propaganda operations) designed to influence the population of a target country. These steps are necessary to determine the suitability for and set the initial conditions to initiate an insurgency.
- Initial Contact – Intelligence agents or special operations forces from the aggressor state meet with key leaders of the insurgency to begin cooperation and arrange for follow-on support from the aggressor state to the insurgents.
- Infiltration – Agents of the aggressor state and/or indigenous insurgent forces enter, either covertly or clandestinely, into the operational area in order to begin efforts to undermine, coerce, or overthrow the established authority (either a government or occupying power).
- Organization – Agents from the aggressor state assess the composition and capabilities of the insurgency and then advise the insurgent leadership on changes designed to maximize effectiveness of the insurgency. Organizational design is intended to achieve optimal balance between leadership (underground), support personnel (auxiliary), and fighters (guerrillas).
- Buildup – Agents train and advise insurgents while generally avoiding contact with forces from the targeted authority (government or occupying power). This phase is designed to develop insurgent forces and increase the capabilities of the insurgency before undertaking full-scale combat operations. Some limited guerrilla operations can be conducted against lightly-defended targets (“confidence targets”) to build the morale of the guerrilla force and validate training previously given by the agents to the guerrillas.
- Combat Utilization – Insurgent forces conduct guerrilla warfare under the advisement of aggressor state agents. The goal is to gradually increase the frequency and intensity of guerrilla attacks in order to achieve operational objectives while preventing a massive retaliation from the targeted authorities (government or occupying power). These guerrilla operations are designed to achieve insurgent objectives but can also be coordinated with objectives of the aggressor state. Guerrilla operations can facilitate the introduction of conventional forces from the aggressor state or continue without assistance to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow the government or occupying power.
- Transition/Demobilization – Upon the achievement of the aggressor state’s national objectives, the indigenous insurgent forces can either be transformed into the new legitimate authority (in the event of an overthrow of the previous regime) or demobilized (as might be the case if the objective was simply to coerce or disrupt a targeted regime or occupying power). Members of the insurgency can transition into legitimate government, military, or law enforcement entities thereby ensuring the continuation of control within the targeted country.
The Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, normally referred to as simply the ISI, is an entirely separate entity of the Pakistani government, independent from the Pakistani military and any meaningful civilian oversight. However, the ISI does draw the bulk of its force from the military, estimated by some experts to be around 10,000 personnel.[10] Within the ISI, there exists a “Covert Action Division” (CAD), very much akin in design and purpose to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “Special Activities Division” (SAD). The CAD/ISI conducts paramilitary and other covert special operations in support of Pakistani national interests, responsibilities into which UW fits perfectly. Within both the CAD/ISI and SAD/CIA reside the expertise and authorities to execute UW campaigns using indigenous forces to pursue objectives of national importance. Previously, the CAD/ISI received training from and cooperated with the SAD/CIA, most visibly during their joint UW campaign, Operation CYCLONE, against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[11] SAD/CIA and CAD/ISI worked together to train, equip, and direct Afghan resistance forces, known colloquially as the “mujahedeen” (“those who pursue jihad [holy war]”), to undermine and ultimately overthrow the communist, pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) and expel the Soviet invaders. The CIA and ISI celebrated the latter outcome when the last Soviet forces withdrew across the so-called “Friendship Bridge” in Balkh Province, Afghanistan in February of 1989.[12] After the Soviets withdrew, the UW campaign against Afghanistan became a purely Pakistani/mujahedeen affair, as the CIA withdrew the vast majority of its support. The fall of the DRA, took a bit longer, finally succumbing to the mujahedeen in 1992. Despite past cooperation with the CIA, the years since 1989 have seen a rapid emergence of radical Islamist sympathies within the ISI, suggesting that, if ISI support of the Taliban is unsanctioned at the Pakistani parliamentary level, it is clearly tolerated within the ranks of the secretive ISI given the ethnic and ideological ties shared between its members and the Taliban.[13] Since the fall of Pakistan’s strongman dictator-turned-president, Pervez Musharraf, the civilian government’s efforts to exert increased control and oversight of the ISI, such as the abortive July 2008 attempt to legislatively place the ISI under the supervision of the interior ministry, have proved futile.[14]
Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979, the Pakistanis found themselves in a unique position to influence events in Afghanistan in a manner that would ensure continued instability. By providing safe haven for and a conduit for US/CIA aid to the Afghan resistance, the Pakistanis, specifically the ISI, were placed perfectly to control the “endgame” in Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation, the ISI carefully managed the relationships between the major mujahedeen groups and funneled CIA aid in order to ensure Afghan disunity in perpetuity. While the Soviet’s occupied Afghanistan, the ISI held a legitimate fear that more drastic efforts, such as direct military intervention, would incite a massive Soviet retaliation against Pakistan.[15] At the same time, the ISI was engaged in Phase 1 (Psychological Preparation) of UW, an intense effort to shape Afghan perceptions and set the conditions for the post-Soviet insurgency planned to install an Afghan government amenable to Pakistani interests. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and with the CIA no longer providing or directing the disposition of aid, the ISI shifted the preponderance of military support to the hardline Islamist mujahedeen, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, in an effort to keep Afghanistan in an extended state of civil war and ensure the emergence of a mujahedeen faction leader loyal to Pakistan. Hekmatyar, as the head of Hezb-e-Islami, was a Pashtun warlord, fully committed to the pursuit of personal power. So ambitious was Hekmatyar, that he was often accused of spending "more time fighting other Mujahideen than killing Soviets".[16] For his part, Haqqani spent part of the war against the Soviets as a member of Hezb-e-Islami before breaking away to form his own network. During this period, the CIA used Haqqani’s network as an “independent asset” in Afghanistan and US congressman Charlie Wilson, made famous for his own instrumental advocacy of US support to the mujahedeen, referred to Haqqani as “goodness personified”.[17] Conversely, the chief of staff for the Pakistani army reportedly called Haqqani and his network, “a strategic asset”.[18] While Haqqani was always considered a hardline Islamic radical, he fortuitously switched his allegiance to the Taliban just before their eventual victory in 1996. Despite the rise of the Taliban in 1992, Hezb-e-Islami and the Haqqani Network have remained largely independent from the larger group, though they often cooperate on specific goals and the ISI has maintained very active relations with each group for the purposes of waging its UW campaign in Afghanistan.
As the civil war ground on, living conditions for the average Afghan continued to deteriorate as the warlords squabbled bloodily amongst each other. Basic necessities became increasingly scarce as inflation soared. Those who could not flee to Pakistan fell deeper and deeper into squalor. Particularly in the south, amongst the civilian populace around Kandahar, there was a groundswell of demand for stability and an end to the seemingly ceaseless violence. Most importantly, the Pakistani Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (“Assembly of Islamic Clergy”), a religiously conservative political group that advocated for imposition of Sharia law in Pakistan, established schools in the Afghan refugee camps that dotted southern and western Pakistan. These schools, or madrassas, were largely funded by the ISI beginning in the early 1980s, using both Pakistani funds and those provided from private donors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle Eastern states friendly to the cause of radical Islam. In these schools, radical clerics preached the virtues of jihad and the establishment of a Sharia-based Caliphate. The first seeds were sown from which the core of the Taliban would eventually spring. UW Phase 1 (Psychological Preparation) was intensified through the radicalization of Afghan refugee youth in the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam madrassas, and the Afghan general population’s desperation caused by the Pakistani-sustained civil war, ensuring that Afghanistan would be ripe for the taking in Pakistan’s larger UW campaign. By 1991, an initial cadre of Taliban, led by a charismatic radical cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, moved out of southern Pakistan to set up operations around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Omar was a veteran of the mujahedeen campaign against the Soviets, having received considerable training directly from the ISI on multiple occasions during the 1980s.[19] Not even the emergence of a weak transitional government in Kabul, called the Islamic State of Afghanistan, in April of 1992 was enough to dissuade the ISI from its intentions to set loose the Taliban in Afghanistan. The psychological conditions were set for the birth of an insurgency that would, however briefly, achieve Pakistan’s regional goals.
While the Taliban continued to percolate in southern Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ISI amplified its effort to overthrow the newly-formed Islamic State under interim-President Burhanuddin Rabbani through use of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s hardline Islamist militia, Hezb-e-Islami (“Islamic Party”), by providing massive amounts of military aid and other assistance.[20] Amin Saikal, an expert on Afghan affairs, wrote of these efforts:
“Islamabad [Pakistan] could not possibly expect the new Islamic government leaders [the Afghan transitional government]... to subordinate their own nationalist objectives in order to help Pakistan realize its regional ambitions. Had it not been for the ISI's logistic support and supply of a large number of rockets, Hekmatyar's forces would not have been able to target and destroy half of Kabul.”[21]
Hekmatyar was the clear favorite of the Pakistanis to fulfill its purposes as a puppet leader for the Afghans, but his forces proved unable to capture Kabul and were repeatedly defeated by the other warlords now serving the Islamic State, notably Ahmad Shah Massoud. Known as the “Lion of Panjshir” for his defeat of nine separate Soviet assaults into the Panjshir Valley, Massoud was a legendary figure who served as the Minister of Defense for the Islamic State before and during the Taliban/Pakistani invasion.[22] Specifically, Massoud expertly led a counterattack that broke and routed Hekmatyar’s forces besieging Kabul. Massoud, gracious in victory and desiring to end the civil war that ravaged Afghanistan, asked Hekmatyar to accept the post of minister of the interior for the Islamic State, place aside personal ambitions of total power, and bring his Hezb-e-Islami militia into the fold. Blinded by ambition, Hekmatyar vehemently refused and began rebuilding his forces in preparation for another attempt at overthrowing the Islamic State.
Meanwhile to the dismay of Pakistan, the new Afghan government was receiving military and economic backing from both Iran and India, two of Pakistan’s greatest regional rivals.[23] Every day that the government of the Islamic State remained in power was another day with which it could solidify its hold on power. With frustration mounting, the ISI decided in 1992 to change course and withdrew much of its support of Hekmatyar redirecting it to the Taliban[24] Fearing that a unified and powerful Afghanistan would eventually seek resolution of the Pashtunistan “question” through force of arms, the ISI provided funding and training to create the first Taliban formations in late 1992 to serve as a proxy force for the destabilization and conquest of Afghanistan. Consistent with Phase 2 (Initial Contact) of the doctrinal UW model, the ISI approached Mullah Omar sometime in 1991 or early 1992 to offer its services for the achievement of the Taliban’s goals in Afghanistan. Making initial contact with the Taliban was easy for the CAD/ISI, since thousands of adherents remained in Pakistan around Quetta where they continued to receive radical Islamist instruction at the ISI-funded Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam madrassas. Mullah Omar maintained his rear headquarters in Quetta from which he regularly traveled back and forth to Kandahar and where he allegedly met with the ISI several times.[25] As the Taliban was essentially a CAD/ISI creation, it did not take long to coordinate agreements between the ISI and the Taliban to achieve the Pakistani objective of toppling the troublesome Afghan transitional government through a UW campaign using the Taliban as a proxy force. The ISI offered the Taliban the training and equipment it desperately needed to achieve its goal of establishing an Islamist Caliphate in Afghanistan, and all that the ISI asked in return were friendly relations and support of Pakistani regional objectives once the Taliban was in power. UW Phase 2 (Initial Contact) was essentially a foregone conclusion given the extremely close relationship that the ISI had with the Taliban throughout its formative years.
Given the lawless nature of southern Afghanistan between 1992 and 1994, Taliban and CAD/ISI forces were able to freely move between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because of this, Phase 3 (Infiltration) of the UW model was similarly easy for the ISI to accomplish. The porous border has historically been incredibly difficult to control, as numerous unmapped paths crisscross the mountainous regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. During the mujahedeen conflict against the Soviets, the ISI had used these trails to push tens of thousands of fighters across the very same routes that it would now use to infiltrate Taliban proxy forces as well as their CAD/ISI advisors. Previously, hardened DRA and Soviet troops had been unable to stem the flow of fighters coming out of Pakistan, even with full control of Kandahar and all of the major routes throughout the country. Now, in 1992, with Kandahar Province in the throes of a local power struggle between competing warlords, the resulting anarchy allowed the Taliban to come and go as they pleased. Though starting with very small numbers, the ISI would eventually direct the infiltration of massive formations of Taliban fighters directly into Kandahar Province after which they spread throughout Afghanistan.
As the ISI had been intimately involved in the initial stages of the Taliban’s formation within the madrassas, the Taliban was easily reorganized from a simple student religious group to a functional military formation, ready to conduct guerrilla operations to undermine and ultimately supplant the Rabbanni government of the Islamic State. Phase 4 (Organization) of the doctrinal UW model, as it was executed by the Pakistani ISI, went through several revisions over the course of the UW campaign. Often, the religious leader, or mullah, of each madrassa would serve as the military commander for the students under his care, a system that lent itself well to paramilitary organization necessary for training/equipping and guerrilla operations. The ISI simply adopted and adapted this organizational structure, providing as much training as possible to overcome the lack of military experience from which many of the mullahs suffered. Of course, in some cases, such as that of Omar, these mullahs were also experienced veterans of the previous insurgency against the Soviets. As part of this phase, the ISI established routes by which it would be able to sustain the Taliban after infiltration during the UW campaign against the Islamic State government. Of particular utility were the opium smuggling routes operated by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islam faction, over which Hekmatyar had transported hundreds of thousands of tons of opium by 1992.[26] The ISI made use of these historic smuggling routes through the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the same ones used during the Soviet occupation to provide military aid to the mujahedeen. These paths offered ready-made resupply routes over which the Pakistanis would push massive amounts of critical supplies into Afghanistan in order to sustain the Taliban insurgency.
Starting in 1992, the ISI began an intensive training regimen for the Taliban in Pakistani camps designed to build up and prepare them for battle against the Afghan transitional government, a clear indication of the ISI engagement in UW Phase 5 (Build-Up). Using recruits from the massive Afghan refugee populations amassed in Pakistan as a result of the Soviet invasion and subsequent Afghan civil war, the ISI established recruitment and training camps while continuing to cultivate leadership elements of the Taliban around the town of Quetta, which today remains the spiritual root of the Taliban. The masses of young, idealistic students in the madrassas, their heads previously filled by radical clerics with utopian visions of jihad, received practical training in the employment of deadly weapons, small unit tactics, and other necessary skills to create an effective guerrilla. In camps scattered throughout southern and western Pakistan, specifically in Quetta and the Federally Administered Tribal Area, Pakistani Army and CAD/ISI forces trained and equipped Taliban units for deployment to Kandahar. The Taliban conducted its first “confidence target” operation in the spring of 1994, in the village of Sangesar, located near Kandahar. Taliban fighters, led by Mullah Omar in a daring raid, captured a local governor whom villagers accused of kidnapping and raping two young girls. Without trial, the Mullah Omar ordered the governor hung from the barrel of a tank. [27] Mullah Omar initially had only about 50 Taliban adherents in the Kandahar area, but reinforcements would soon arrive. Each raid or ambush on Afghan government troops or other militias built up the Taliban’s confidence in and the ISIs validation of the training completed, while also attracting additional recruits to the cause. With Phase 5 (Build-Up) complete, the ISI was ready to release the Taliban wholesale into Afghanistan for the purposes of achieving Pakistan’s national objectives during Phase 6 (Combat Employment).
When Mullah Omar ordered the Taliban to undertake large-scale offensive operations against the government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in the spring of 1994, it did not take long to swell his ranks with recent Taliban graduates from the Pakistani training camps. The ISI rapidly pushed large numbers of Taliban across the border and into Kandahar to reinforce Omar, thereby indicating a distinct shift into Phase 6 (Combat Employment) of the UW campaign construct. By the summer, Mullah Omar could count at least 15,000 fighters within his ranks, making him a serious contender to the Afghan transitional government, which was still struggling to form functional ministries and fend off Hekmatyar’s offenses that were again threatening Kabul.[28] Taliban formations advanced northward toward Kandahar City from their intermediate staging bases in Maiwand District, Kandahar Province. Many victories brought additional fighters and heavy weapons into the Taliban fold as the majority of local warlords, with their much smaller militias, chose to join the Taliban rather than futilely resist them.[29] One province after another fell to the Taliban, with many of their inhabitants welcoming them as liberators and hoping for the stability promised by the Taliban’s Sharia law as an alternative to the horrific chaos of the last fifteen years. The psychological preparation that the Pakistanis had established as part of their Afghan conflict-extending measures clearly smoothed the way for their Taliban proxies to conquer large swaths of the countryside. However, there were major setbacks, and the Taliban suffered a number of significant defeats in late 1994 and early 1995. The Taliban attempt to capture Herat in southwestern Afghanistan was thwarted by government forces and the Taliban suffered extremely heavy casualties. By late September of 1995, the Taliban had advanced to the outskirts of Kabul, besieging the city and showering rockets onto military and civilian targets, alike. Once again, Massoud sallied forth leading the armed forces of the transitional government and achieved a miraculous victory over the Taliban, routing them. Ahmed Rashid, a noted Afghanistan scholar, wrote about the impact of these Taliban defeats:
"The Taliban had now been decisively pushed back on two fronts by the government and their political and military leadership was in disarray. Their image as potential peacemakers was badly dented, for in the eyes of many Afghans they had become nothing more than just another warlord party."[30]
Fearing a possible failure of the mission, the ISI pulled the Taliban forces back and undertook a massive effort to reinforce and reequip them. Reinforcements came in the form of a massive new “batch” of Taliban recruits from Pakistan, nearly 25,000, as well as several units from the Pakistani Army intended to steel the resolve of the Taliban.[31] Much of the funding for the new equipment and training came from Saudi Arabia, and the commitment of Pakistani military units signaled the importance which the ISI placed on Taliban success. In 1996, the Taliban went back on the offensive. The US Defense Intelligence Agency reported in 1996 that:
"These Frontier Corps elements [of the Pakistani Army] are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat. Elements of Pakistan's regular army force are not used because the army is predominantly Punjabi, who have different features as compared to the Pashtun and other Afghan tribes."[32]
The Taliban, now aided directly by Pakistani CAD/ISI and military forces, captured Herat in a surprise attack in September 1995. The siege of Kabul was renewed that same month, though Massoud continued to hold out and was even able to continue the consolidation of power under the transitional government. In addition to Taliban rockets, the Pakistanis added indiscriminate artillery bombardment and even used its ground attack aircraft to pound Kabul and its outskirts. Massoud’s effort to negotiate an inclusive government with Taliban participation was rejected outright. Regardless, Massoud held out for a year before finally withdrawing his forces from the city, still in good order, to prevent more needless death and destruction.[33] The Taliban entered Kabul on 26 September 1996, having successfully overthrown Rabbani and seized power. The capture of Kabul marked the end of Phase 6 (Combat Employment) as the ISI UW campaign entered into the last and possibly most critical phase, Phase 7 (Transition). The remnants of the transitional forces, led by Massoud, conducted a fighting withdrawal to the north after rebranding themselves the “United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan”. This group was factional, at best, with ethnic groups operating under their own commanders but owing some grudging allegiance to Massoud. Massoud’s forces, more commonly known to the West as the “Northern Alliance”, managed to hold onto a small number of Northern provinces despite the best efforts of the Taliban and Pakistanis to crush them. India and Iran provided massive amounts of aid to the Northern Alliance in order to resist the Taliban and their Pakistani masters, estimated at approximately $70 million (and at least five Mi-17 helicopters) between 1996 and 2001.[34] Conservative estimates place the total number of Pakistani military troops who served in Afghanistan between 1994 and 1999, fighting alongside the Taliban at between 80,000 and 100,000.[35] Human Rights Watch reported, "Pakistani aircraft assisted with troop rotations of Taliban forces during combat operations in late 2000 and... senior members of Pakistan's intelligence agency and army were involved in planning military operations.”[36] Clearly, Afghanistan, as a whole, served as an extended proxy battlefield between the major regional powers, much to the detriment of the average Afghan civilian and regional stability.
The Taliban and Pakistanis moved swiftly to consolidate the transition of power during Phase 7 (Transition) at the successful conclusion of the UW campaign. Pakistan, followed only by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, quickly recognized the Taliban movement, their own creation and UW proxy force, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.[37] Ultimately, the Taliban would extend its influence deep into the lives of nearly every Afghan, banning smoking, dancing, music, alcohol, and a whole litany of other “vices”. Women and girls were banned from working or attending school, and required to wear the traditional “burqa” full-body dress.[38] To enforce these rules, the Taliban established “religious police” who employed draconian measures to punish perceived offenses. Sharia law replaced the existing justice system and Afghanistan witnessed a complete reversal of the democratic processes started under President Rabbanni.
Once in power, the Taliban executed a number of moves intended to solidify their power and support Pakistan’s regional interests. For instance, in 1998, an Iranian consulate in a Northern Alliance area was seized by the Taliban and the Iranian diplomats murdered. Though the Taliban claimed the murders were the work of “rogue elements”.[39] Iran alleges to this day that it collected radio intercepts during the attack proving that Mullah Omar personally approved the execution of its diplomats.[40] Regardless, the attack weakened Iran’s influence and ability to aid the Northern Alliance, benefitting both the Taliban and Pakistan’s efforts in Afghanistan. Despite such “gains”, the Taliban’s success in Afghanistan was ultimately undone because of its relationship with a small but deadly terrorist faction, al-Qaeda. The founder of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin-Laden, had been a low-level financier and facilitator for a small group of Arab mujahedeen during the 1980s. During that time he formed important and lasting relationships, in particular with the head of the Pakistani ISI, Hamid Gul.[41] After the Soviet withdrawal, bin-Laden had returned to Saudi Arabia, only to be infuriated by the US presence in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War against Iraq. Al-Qaeda evolved slowly, but its headquarters moved repeatedly during the 1990s, being expelled from Sudan before finally finding a home in Afghanistan under the Taliban.[42] Assassins from al-Qaeda, posing as a media crew, detonated explosives hidden in a camera during an interview and killed Massoud at his Northern Alliance headquarters just two days before al-Qaeda’s brazen series of coordinated attacks on the US on 11 September 2011.[43] In response, the US demanded that the Taliban surrender bin-Laden and the leadership of al-Qaeda. The Taliban refused, instead offering to hand al-Qaeda over to a “neutral” third party, such as Pakistan, for trial and eventual punishment. Unsatisfied, the US led an invasion, itself a UW campaign, spearheaded by special operations forces and paramilitary operatives from the CIA who, together with the Northern Alliance, succeeded in toppling the Taliban by November.
Pakistan claims that it severed all ties of support with the Taliban after the September 2001 attacks, though that has not prevented the Taliban from reoccupying the safe havens in Western Pakistan from which it originally sprang in 1992. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces fleeing Afghanistan in November of 2001 allegedly received assistance from ISI, and some were even evacuated on Pakistani Air Force cargo aircraft out of Kunduz to refuge in Pakistan.[44] In 2006, the chief of staff for UK forces in southern Afghanistan, Colonel Chris Vernon, stated, "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It's the major headquarters."[45] This headquarters, known as the “Quetta Shura”, is located in southern Pakistan while sizeable formations of Taliban train and launch operations into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan. Islamabad granted Waziristan virtual autonomy and has exercised very limited control in the FATA since 2006, allowing the Taliban near-immunity to impose Sharia law and regroup for their continuing operations to undermine the legitimate government of Afghanistan.[46]
The Taliban, allegedly acting on intelligence and with support provided by the ISI, have repeatedly attacked Indian targets in Afghanistan.[47] The Indian Embassy in Kabul was attacked by suicide bombers in July 2008, killing 58 and wounding 141, and again in October 2009, this time killing 40 and injuring more than 100. In both cases, the Afghans, Indians, and US either insinuated or outright accused the ISI of being behind the attacks, though the Taliban claimed responsibility. The US president, George W. Bush, presented evidence of ISI involvement in the 2008 attack to the Pakistani Prime Minister and threatened “serious action”.[48] The Indian national security advisor was much more direct, stating, "We have no doubt that the ISI is behind this [referring to the 2008 suicide bombing]."[49] Rather than refrain from attacking diplomatic targets, the ISI allegedly employed the Taliban to attack the US embassy in Kabul in September of 2011, killing at least seven people and wounding another 19.[50] In response, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullins, stated before the US Senate Armed Services Committee that:
"The fact remains that the Quetta Shura [Taliban] and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity. [They are] Extremist organizations serving as proxies of the government of Pakistan [that] are attacking Afghan troops and civilians as well as US soldiers. For example, we believe the Haqqani Network, which has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, is responsible for the September 13th attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul."[51]
Most recently, the Taliban launched a massive assault on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on 3 August 2013. The attack resulted in several deaths and injuries, though the majority occurred at nearby mosque damaged by a suicide truck bomb.[52] Attacks of this nature are well within the modus operandi of the ISI, as demonstrated by the alleged involvement of the ISI in directing and supporting members of the Pakistani hardline Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Righteous”) during the bloody coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, in November of 2008. Lashkar-e-Taiba conducts operations from bases in the Pakistani-Kashmir region and has sought since 1990 to achieve the “liberation” of Muslims in Indian-Kashmir by way of violence. While Pakistan officially declared Lashkar-e-Taiba a terrorist organization, a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2011 found significant evidence that the ISI employs the group to conduct terrorist attacks in Kashmir and India as part of a larger UW campaign to weaken India’s hold on the contested area.[53] In the 2008 Mumbai attack, Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists conducted numerous small-arms and bomb attacks against a number of popular Mumbai hotels and shopping centers, killed 166 people and injured at least 308. One of the terrorists was captured alive by Indian security forces and later admitted to receiving direction and support from the ISI.[54] Repeatedly, the ISI employs proxy forces to conduct long-term, low-cost UW against Pakistan’s regional rivals because this strategy presents an irresistible “win-win” outcome. At worst, the Pakistanis can support an indefinite UW campaign that keeps its neighbors destabilized, which in the case of Afghanistan renders it unable to pursue its intentions with regard to Pashtunistan or closer Indian relations. At best, with ISI support the Taliban might regain control in Kabul and be repositioned as a puppet government malleable to Pakistani interests. This outcome would provide Pakistan considerable “strategic depth” on its Western flank, allowing them to focus all of their attention on India without fear of “Pashtunistan”.
The Taliban conquest of Afghanistan provides a fascinating and complete doctrinal example of modern unconventional warfare. The Pakistanis employed a predominantly indigenous force, the Taliban, to overthrow the legitimate transitional government and install a pro-Pakistani regime. Armed with Pakistani weapons, trained by Pakistani advisers, sympathetic to Pakistani interests, and eventually with Pakistani soldiers fighting directly alongside them, the Taliban conquered Afghanistan.[55] Today, with more than thirty years of investment in the destabilization of Afghanistan, it is improbable that Pakistan will abandon these efforts and risk the emergence of a strong, independent Afghan government pursuing reunification with the Pashtun tribes of Western Pakistan. Pakistan’s efforts to undermine Afghanistan and prevent any pursuit of a “Greater Pashtunistan” state by means of a UW campaign is consistent with their world view, in which they are beset on all sides by neighbors laying claim to significant chunks of Pakistan’s sovereign territory. Once Pakistani interests are understood, their continued support to the Taliban becomes understandable, if not acceptable to the international pursuit of regional stability.
End Notes
[1] The Oriental Review. "When Will the Great Game End?" November 15, 2010.
[2] The Atlantic Magazine. "The Durand Line: Afghanistan's Controversial, Colonial-Era Border." October 25, 2012.
[3] Express Tribune. "Afghanistan claims Pakistan Army shelling Afghan border areas ." September 26, 2011.
[4] Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban. De Capo Press, 2009.
[5] Talbot, Ian. The Armed Forces of Pakistan. Macmillan Publishers, 1999.
[6] Hindustan Times. "Why Indians were targeted?" July 8, 2008.
[7] Bajoria, Jayshree. "India-Afghanistan Relations." Council on Foreign Relations, July 22, 2009.
[8] Pakistan's support of the Taliban . Human Rights Watch, 2000.
[9] Training Circular 18-01 “Special Forces Unconventional Warfare”. Headquarters, Department of the Army, January 2011.
[10] Pike, John. "Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence." Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, July 25, 2002.
[11] Raman, B. Intelligence: Past, Present & Future. New Delhi: Lancer Publishers & Distributors, 2002.
[12] Grau, Lester. "Breaking Contact Without Leaving Chaos: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan." Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 20 (Foreign Military Studies Office Publications), November 2, 2007.
[13] Kaplan, Eben, and Jayshree Bajoria. "The ISI and Terrorism: Behind the Accusations." Journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, May 4, 2012.
[14] Khan, M. Ilyas. Spy agency confusion in Pakistan. British Broadcasting Corporation, July 28, 2008.
[15] Bearden, Milt, and James Risen. The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB. Random House Publishing, 2003.
[16] Bergen, Peter L. Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden. Free Press, 2001.
[17] Carlstrom, Gregg. Who Are the Taliban. Al-Jazeera News Service, June 9, 2010.
[18] Philp, Catherine. "Pervez Musharraf was playing 'double game' with US." The Times (London), February 17, 2009.
[19] Price, Colin. "Pakistan: A Plethora of Problems ." Global Security Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1. Northfield, VT: School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy, Norwich University, Winter 2012.
[20] Nojumi, Neamatollah. The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War, and the Future of the Region. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
[21] Saikal, Amin. Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2002.
[22] Tomsen, Peter. "Wars of Afghanistan." Public Affairs. 2011.
[23] Saikal, Amin. Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival.
[24] The September 11th Sourcebooks Volume VII: The Taliban File. George Washington University, 2003.
[25] Matinuddin, Kamal. The Taliban Phenomenon, Afghanistan 1994–1997. Oxford University Press, 1999.
[26] Chossudovsky, Michel. "Pakistan and the Global War on Terrorism." January 8, 2008. http://globalresearch.ca/.
[27] Matinuddin, Kamal. The Taliban Phenomenon, Afghanistan 1994–1997.
[28] Felbab-Brow, Vanda. Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs. Brookings Institution Press, 2010.
[29] Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. I.B.Tauris, 2002.
[30] ‘’
[31] ‘’
[32] "Pakistan Involvement in Afghanistan." Defense Intelligence Agency, November 7, 1996.
[33] Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin Press HC, 2004
[34] Mcleod, Duncan. India and Pakistan. n.d. Books.google.com (accessed September 2, 2012).
[35] Maley, William. "The Afghanistan Wars." Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
[36] "Crisis of Impunity." Human Rights Watch. July 2001. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3bd540b60.html.
[37] Guelke, Adrian. Terrorism and Global Disorder. International Library of War Studies, 2006.
[38] Dupree Hatch, Nancy. "Afghan Women under the Taliban." In Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban. , by William Maley. Hurst and Company, 2001.
[39] Gutman, Roy. How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan. Institute of Peace Press, 2008.
[40] Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
[41] Hussain, Zahid. Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam. Columbia University Press, 2007.
[42] Kronstadt, K. Allen, and Kenneth Katzman. Islamist Militancy in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Region and U.S. Policy. U.S. Congressional Research Service, November 2008.
[43] The New York Times. "Taliban Foe Hurt and Aide Killed by Bomb." September 9, 2001.
[44] Hersh, Seymour M. "The Getaway." The New Yorker, January 28, 2008.
[45] The Guardian (UK). "Pakistan sheltering Taliban, says British officer." May 18, 2006.
[46] Crews, Robert D., and Amin Tarzi. The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan. Harvard University Press, 2008.
[47] New York Times. "Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say." August 1, 2008.
[48] The Times (London). "Rogue Pakistan spies aid Taliban in Afghanistan." July 8, 2008.
[49] The Gulf News. "India blames Pakistan for Kabul embassy attack." July 13, 2013.
[50] The New York Times. "U.S. Embassy and NATO Headquarters Attacked in Kabul." September 13, 2011.
[51] Joscelyn, Thomas. "Admiral Mullen: Pakistani ISI sponsoring Haqqani attacks." The Long War Journal, September 22, 2011.
[52] The British Broadcasting Corporation News. "Afghan attack targets Indian mission." August 3, 2013.
[53] Cordesman, Anthony H., Arleigh A. Burke, and Varun Vira. Pakistan: Violence vs. Stability. Washington, DC: Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 25, 2011.
[54] The Globe and Mail. "Accused in India massacre claims ties to Pakistani secret service." April 11, 2011.
[55] "Documents Detail Years of Pakistani Support for Taliban, Extremists." George Washington University, 2007.
About the Author(s)
Comments
<blockquote>The military documents had been given to Nosair by Ali Mohammed, an Egyptian born Islamic fundamentalist who had come to live in the United Statesin 1985. He had been in the United States earlier that decade, having graduated as a captain from a Special Forces Officers School at <strong>Fort Bragg</strong> in 1981 in a program for visiting military officials from foreign countries. He joined the U.S. military in 1986 and received a security clearance for level "secret." He was assigned as a sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He also served unofficially as an assistant instructor at the JFK Special Operations Warfare School at Fort Bragg where he participated in teaching a class on the Middle East and Islamic fundamentalist perceptions of the United States.
Ali Mohammed became active in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and soon connected with Islamic militants in New Jersey who had been training and supporting the jihad.</blockquote>
Steve Emerson, Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International, Sept. 1998
- from The Investigative Project on Terrorism site.
Counter-unconventional warfare today would have to take into account the fact that a lot of people "know" us very well?
I'm taking Rant's suggestion and going to go read Evelyn Waugh. Enough already. I don't know why I have to keep rehashing this stuff that you all know. Kabul station must have been furious at Islamabad station for so many reasons, for not focusing on counter-unconventional training on the Afghan side. And the constant pushing to go after safe havens in a big way? Fool-hardy.
There is a NYT article from 2008 all about that. Bureaucracy does its thing.
<blockquote>Consider the battle last fall over legislation that would allow for the resumption of United States military aid to Pakistan. Since 1990, military assistance had been suspended because of Pakistan's nuclear program. On top of that, economic sanctions were imposed on Pakistan after it tested nuclear bombs in 1998.
Last year, the Senate's defense appropriations bill had a provision that would allow the president to waive the sanctions against Pakistan; the House bill did not have a similar provision. When the bill went to conference committee, Mr. Wilson went to work.
''I worked day and night,'' Mr. Wilson said. ''I moved to the Hill,'' he added, passing time on a park bench, waiting to catch members.
The odds were against him. The Indian-American population is politically active, and growing, seeking to build a lobby on the model of the American lobby for Israel, lawmakers and diplomats say. And in Congress, as a reflection of that activism and of generous campaign contributions, there is an India caucus, with more than 100 members. Given its size, it is listened to at the State Department, diplomats there say.
The co-chairman of the India Caucus, Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat who has received significant campaign contributions from Indian-Americans outside his district, has publicly urged President Clinton not to go to Pakistan.
By contrast, the Pakistani caucus, never had more than a dozen or so members, and is largely dormant now.
And Mr. Wilson was up against a few negatives on the Pakistan side of the ledger: Pakistan had recently tested its nuclear weapons; Pakistani-backed guerrillas had crossed into the Kargil region of the disputed territory of Kashmir last year, bringing international condemnation and the threat of outright war with India; then, in the midst of the Congressional deliberations, came the military coup -- or ''political sea change,'' as Mr. Wilson carefully depicts it.
<strong>In arguing his client's cause during the congressional fight, Mr. Wilson hurled some tough charges. India had been ''virtually a Soviet satellite,'' during the cold war, Mr. Wilson said he told representatives, a depiction he repeated with emphasis for use in the current row. Another aspersion was that ''Indians hate Americans,'' he said, a charge most Indians would probably dispute.</strong>
But Mr. Wilson had something else going for him. While a member of Congress, he had served for 20 years on the defense subcommittee of the House appropriations committee. The members of this subcommittee were on the conference committee.
''I was extremely lucky,'' Mr. Wilson said. ''They were all friends.''
Mr. Wilson, and his client, won that day.
Now, the challenge for Mr. Wilson is to keep Pakistan off the State Department's list of terrorist nations, and to persuade Mr. Clinton that he must stop in Pakistan, however briefly, during the India trip. Once again, his colleague for 20 years in the House, Mr. Solarz, is on the other side, as is Verner, Liipfert.</blockquote>
"Nuclear Rivals Marshal Armies of Lobbyists in Washington," Raymond Bonner, Feb. 13, 2000
For once, I'd love to see an article that talks about a triad including China, not the same ole same ole' subcontinental "rivalry."
Dr. C. Christine Fair in a RAND publication mentioned that the Indian lobby sprang into action to prevent India--and thus Kashmir--from being in Richard Holbrooke's "portfolio." While that's true, the Indians have dug their heels in on this for ages, long before the Indian-American lobby was any kind of force, before the 1965 immigration act that led to increased immigration from South Asia. Admiral Nimitz didn't even make it to India as an envoy. And the people that did come to the US were a different demographic than Canada and the UK, meaning that there were key differences in how the community developed and looked at the world.
All of this was manipulated during the Cold War and now is being manipulated because of globalization and China politics.
And I suppose some wags would say that NATO, sometimes the Pentagon, sometimes the UK, and various arms sellers and intelligence agents serve as a pretty effective Pakistan lobby in DC.
There's a lobby for everything and everyone, but the most insidious aspect of it are the non-immigrant American domestic constituencies. They fly under the radar.
I sometimes think it would have been better to read the papers and magazines targeting South Asian populations in the West rather than some of the books and papers suggested.
I feel bad for some of you, you just didn't have the information you needed in a format that could help you.
This comment also belongs on the Tora Bora thread. I'll add it later. It goes along with the various types of pressure put on the US to hold back:
<blockquote>But Robert Grenier, the Islamabad station chief, fought against the plan. He warned that any move to arm a militia backed by India and Russia could immediately destroy relations with Pakistan just as they were thawing out after years of mistrust.
These internal fights got a wider audience three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when CIA officers went to the Pentagon for a <strong>teleconference between Washington, Islamabad, and United States Central Command, in Tampa.</strong></blockquote>
The Way of the Knife, Mark Mazetti
And Mazetti stuck with the drone story? Not that it isn't important, very much so, but there can be more than one story. Or am I being crazy again?
Not playing the blame game (okay, maybe I am), this stuff is hard. I'm interested in patterns, that's all. And one pattern is more than clientitis, isn't it? Or maybe that is all it is.
There must have been the mother of all fights between Kabul and Islamabad station chiefs, or whatever. How did the desire to hold onto the lion's share of resources affect the slow build up of any anti-unconventional warfare capabilities on the Kabul side? We're yacking about Algeria and pop-COIN and all along, this was it....
Some of those pop-COIN guys were all State Department cliche about South Asia, too, weren't they? Not all, but some. What a waste.
What have you done? I will never leave this thread alone.
<blockquote>Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."</blockquote> - The Man Who Knew Too Much, the Guardian, Saturday 13, Oct. 27 007 (about Richard Barlow).
This is about the US and its behavior, I am not singling out the Pakistanis. This is about <em>US.</em> That's why I am so difficult on this subject. I am sure we can do the same thing with many current issues, Syria, Ukraine, and look to see why information is continually being manipulated toward the American public.
PS: This too:
<blockquote>Then Solarz called on Barlow to speak. "I told the truth. I said it was clear Pervez was an agent for Pakistan's nuclear programme. Everyone started shouting. General Einsel screamed, 'Barlow doesn't know what he's talking about.' Solarz asked if there had been any other cases involving the Pakistan government and Einsel said, 'No'." Barlow recalls thinking, " 'Oh no, here we go again.' They asked me and I said, 'Yes, there have been scores of other cases.' "</blockquote>
PPS: From a 1994 Baltimore Sun article. Recently seen more than one article on this topic:
<blockquote>Retired Army Maj. Gen. David Einsel, deputy assistant secretary of defense for atomic energy from 1980 to 1985, confirmed the "Green Light" teams' assignment. Man-portable nuclear warheads "were not the weapon of choice, and it had to be a very worthwhile mission or you weren't going to set it off in the first place," General Einsel added.
George Grimes, spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, said he could not discuss the capabilities of forces assigned to the command. The Special Forces member trained in nuclear detonation asked not to be identified because, he said, he had signed confidentiality agreements while in the Army program.</blockquote>
<blockquote>What if I had known then that some of the mujahedeen leaders I interviewed would help Osama bin-Laden escape from the caves of Tora Bora and hide in Pakistan, would become powerful figures in the Taliban, would direct suicide bombings of U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians and be labeled “global terrorists” by the U.S. State Department and become targeted for assassination by hellfire missiles from U.S. drone aircraft?
Would I have become quite as enamored of them? Would any of us in the U.S. media have written so many stories that, in retrospect, glorified the most radical of the mujahedeen leaders and, as a result, probably aided their efforts to obtain ever larger amounts of covert U.S. funding for their jihad? Those were the days of what we would later come to know as “Charlie Wilson’s war,” and I sometimes wonder if the flamboyant U.S. Congressman would have been able to squeeze as much covert funding out of the CIA and the Defense Department as he did if the media had been a little less star-struck by the colorful mujahedeen leaders and their military commanders and fighters, and had explored the possibility of unintended consequences a little more.
It’s a rhetorical question, of course. The consequences of the U.S. government doing nothing might have prolonged the agony of Afghanistan under a brutal Soviet occupation that in the end left more than a million civilians dead. When President Jimmy Carter called the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan "the most serious threat to peace since the Second World War" how could we not, in good conscience, have supported the rebel forces on the basis of vague suspicions that fundamentalist mujahedeen leaders who talked about “infidels” and “jihads” might one day nearly 20 years down the road become America’s most frightening enemy in the wake of the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001.
But, still, as I re-read some of these stories today they look very much like cheerleading for the mujahedeen, and I wonder if all of us in the American media couldn’t have been a bit more selective with our praise. Some of them, after all, were stridently anti-western even then. The answer to that question, I think, lies at least partly in our lack of access to reliable and objective information about how the war was being conducted. We sought information where we could find it, even if there was a danger that the mujahedeen leaders could be spinning us.</blockquote>
The Press and Unintended Consequences in Afghanistan," Nieman Watchdog, William Claiborne,
Sept. 23, 2010
The way in which the press often manipulated reporting about India or Pakistan (Punjab, Kashmir, proxy wars, etc) has a similar strange vibe at times, especially depending on where the US relationship is. There is always a tendency for South Asian experts to block-and-tackle for our old clients. Until recently.
Were there ever very many of you at all? How were you handled, being Americans? I mean, did you have guides so that what you saw was similarly manipulated? I suppose I'm nosing around in areas where I'm not going to get answers.
CIA whistleblowers from the period seem to say that everything got politicized when it when to higher ups and so even if there were hard feelings, who knows what happened? Money is funny, too.
I don't know. What about Richard Barlow?
Rant,
You probably already know this but it's interesting to read up on the crew of Afghan and Pakistan experts, to read up on their history, what they did during this period and the sorts of stories written back then. More than one book you all were told to read as important to understanding the "AfPak" region came out that milieu. The author, I mean.
As for the BBC, that doesn't surprise me. During the Malaya "COIN' discussion around here, the uses of propaganda by both sides and by the British toward the local population--and the British toward its own population or other nations the UK wished to influence--was pretty much ignored. Not so in the academic historic literature, but here for sure.
If you are from a group on the "other side" of a well-reported issue in the West such as Kashmir or the Punjab insurgency, you would recognize a certain deja vu in reading what I am writing here about Afghan reporting during the 80's.
Information is always manipulated. And, in the case of AfPak, old habits of protecting clients seem to die hard. I bet some people aren't even entirely aware of why the institutions hold the habits they do....
Whoa. Very interesting.
But it just confirms (although I trust nothing and I trust nobody - don't take it personally :) ) my general impression that the atmosphere was not conducive to truth-telling.
I must have read that article differently than you because I thought it was referring to the less than rigorous attitude toward reporting rather than blaming all of it on stringers or freelancers:
<blockquote>The network bought the reports, apparently in good faith, from a freelance cameraman. CBS News declined to comment on the allegations, which appeared Wednesday in the New York Post.
The Post said the footage in question, aired on the ``CBS Evening News``
and narrated by anchorman Dan Rather, was the work of freelance cameraman Mike Hoover, who allegedly persuaded Afghan rebels to blow up power line pylons simply so he could film them doing it. The Post story said the pylons were already useless because the rebels had immobilized them 12 days earlier to cut power to the capital city of Kabul.
The Post said Hoover also filmed ``battle scenes`` in the safety of a Mujahadeen rebel training camp in Pakistan, passing them off to CBS as acutual combat footage in the rebel fight against Soviet troops. Another time, he allegedly inserted footage of a Pakistani jet into what became a CBS special on the war, saying it was a Soviet fighter-bomber attacking a rebel village.
The newspaper attributed its report to a former Mujahadeen rebel known only as Etabari, who said he had served as Hoover`s interpreter, and from Habib Kawyani, an Afghan-British journalist who said he served as second cameraman to Hoover in coverage of the war.</blockquote>
CBS Reportedly aired faked footage of Afghan Battle Scenes
Sept. 28, 1989 (Chicago Tribune)
And
<blockquote>Instead by late fall, Walsh had resigned in fury and frustration from the Journal. The story she had been working on - the expose of shamefully deceptive coverage of the Afghan War by CBS - had been killed by the Journal. "I was sold out," Walsh told Erwin Knoll, editor of The Progressive, in an interview.</blockquote>
20 years of Censored News (edited by Carl Jensen, Project Censored News, U.S.)
Madhu,
Thanks for finding this:
One visitor, Mary Williams Walsh of The Wall Street Journal, had her entry to the club ''suspended'' after reporting sardonically on the rebel boosterism she found.
‘Boosterism’
I love it.
I suggest you reread Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop but imagine it to be non-fiction. Rather the story’s foreign correspondent William Boot being posted to the fictitious country of Ismealia, imagine the hapless Boot being our man in 1980s Peshawar and you will have a solid understanding of how ‘boosted’ the reporting was. The big difference in what Waugh was trying to convey and what the Peshawar media wallahs were up to was nobody died believing the Daily Beast reports but plenty died believing the crap that came from the Pakistan based Western media.
The American Club mentioned above as a hub of ‘boosterism’ was a USG subsidized members and guests only establishment. It required a line of credit that had to be approved by the State Dept so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the shop-talk was very Beltway and jingoistic. The nearby unofficial Bamboo Bar on the other hand was cash only and attracted a more ‘broad-minded' patron but the ‘boosterism’ (sorry can’t stop using it) was just as callous, vulgar and philistine – perhaps more desperate as free-lance Stringers and Kathmandu Journalists could get in and rub shoulders with the spooks, Special Branch, the NGO workers , diplomatic types, Staff reporters and other war junkies.
I find the it laughable that Stringers and KJs were responsible for inflicting ‘boosterism’ upon the unsuspecting major News networks. The reality was their threadbare budgets and lack of access to a major news desk (remember it was before digitized comms was commonplace) meant their influence was next to nothing. I recall one ITV Staffer pointing out his daily accommodation allowance was more than his Stringer earned in a month.
From my observations the worst news outlet guilty of ‘boosterism ‘ was the BBC – especially the World Service. The coverage by the other major Networks i.e. ABC, NBC, CBS, ITV, AAP, Reuters etc. labored under a heavy- footed form of ‘boosterism’ that gave their coverage a somewhat third-hand gossip quality ( which much of it was ) and as such did very little damage. The BBC on the other hand was masterful in the manner they disguised blatant ‘boosterism’ as the epitome of journalistic integrity. These days the Brits call it ‘sexed up’ reporting but I prefer my new favorite word ‘boosterism’ .
Furthermore the World Service’s transmitters reached all of AF and as such their English, Pashto and Dari service had an insidious grip on the Afghan population. For some godforsaken reason they never doubted it, even when their own eyes completely contradicted what was crackling out of their short-wave radios. I imagine a large part of this self-delusion was born out of the hope the disaster that they had witnessed wasn’t a true reflection of the general situation and just an isolated unfortunate blip. The bombastic broadcasts by Radio Moscow and the kindly headmistress approach by the VOA essentially fell on deaf ears and were by comparison quite harmless.
The news coverage was all a shell game and I have often dwelt on the fate of millions of civilians who lost everything, naively believing the purported massive, well-armed, well-trained and determined army of Mujahedeen (as opposed to the poorly equipped, barely trained, money driven and disgracefully led reality) would come to their rescue if they denounced the Saurists and Soviets and pledged their family/village/tribe to the Resistance. I dare suggest the Soviets were often encouraged by the BBC’s master-class in ‘boosterism’. Any civilian ‘counter-revolutionaries’ accused of merely listening to it or foolish enough to become emboldened by the call to arms would be attacked without mercy. Those who managed to survive were forced to flee into the wretched refugee camps in PK and Iran.
I had a journalist friend in Peshawar who had been captured in the Battle of Berlin, fought at Dien Bien Phu with the Legion and stayed on as a correspondent thru the ‘American War’ and the Pol Pot nightmare. He was utterly speechless - and I mean he momentarily couldn’t speak – after listening to a largely fictional account of a battle on the BBC WS. He had barely recovered when he suffered a further blow a few days later when the same story regaled the cover of Time. He had thought he had seen and heard it all in his long career but the sheer audacity of what was coming off the Bureau Wires in Pakistan was to him beyond belief.
You touched upon the question of Muj atrocities and I assume you mean against civilians. I personally never saw nor heard of any such thing but it is reasonable to assume they occurred. There was a small number of green on green fire-fights but despite the numerous blood-curdling threats and accusations by most of the seven Group leaders it all amounted to very little blood-letting. Into this equation we must include the very real occurrence of KHAD and KGB operatives masquerading as Muj. General Dostrum had an effective militia force that roamed throughout much of the east of the country disguised as Muj. However I generally found what was reported by journalists on this subject was 3rd hand gossip and prone to embellishment at every retelling.
It is worth remembering that the Soviet strategy was to empty the countryside of civilians and as such the contact with the Muj and civilians in most areas where fighting occurred was minimal. However in every area I operated in where village-life existed the notion the Muj would attack them is a suggestion I find extremely doubtful. It would akin to suggesting the atrocity carried out by SGT Bales was a regular feature of ISAF operations.
The Muj did not use IEDs nor suiciders as their inherent nature to kill indiscriminately was something they found abhorrent. The fact that the IED is the Taliban’s favorite weapon and is responsible for 90% of civilian deaths defines a profound difference (IMO) between the nature and purpose of Muj and the Talibs.
From a strictly legal point of view indiscriminate use of unmarked minefields by the Red Army meant the possibility of gaining evidence to substantiate a war crimes allegation would have been highly unreliable. The Soviets deployed millions of mines. To give you some idea of the threat a single Mi 8/17 helicopter can dispense 13,000 PFM-1 ‘Butterfly’ mines in a matter of minutes and the Soviets have thousands of these ubiquitous workhorse helicopters. With hundreds of men, women and children having their hands, arms, feet and legs blown off every day I can’t see how anyone could claim to have irrefutable evidence of Muj atrocities against civilians.
You list numerous reports of CIA cooperation with the Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood. I must admit I found this to be a completely contrary to my experience. My encounters with both types of the Arab dissident was punctuated by either rabid raving to the point of hysteria or icy stares of seething hatred. If this was a ruse for the benefit of an audience it was an tremendous performance by a host of fine actors from a dozen different countries. By-in-large the Mujahids considered the Arabs deranged.
Depending on which variety of fruit-cake you were dealing with you got a familiar outburst of vitriolic anti-House of Saud-run-by-Jews from the Wahhabis and an anti-Israel-run-by America-Jews rant from the MB. As you know these opinions predate the Soviet invasion by decades and I dare say the intensity of their apparent rage would rule out any willing co-operation with US personnel.
As for the CIA’s attitude I understood it to be deeply suspicious at best. I’m surprised by the suggestion that the spooks encouraged the import of Arabs. Despite reports in the Western media to the contrary, the Arabs were of little use to the Muj as fighters – it was their money they wanted. Obviously if they are ordered the CIA could work with anyone but there was a dramatic shift by the spooks after the Marine barracks was destroyed in Beirut in Sept 1983. The openly triumphant crowing by all the Arab dissident groups and those associated with them, was a game-changer for many US personnel. After Lebanon the CIA’s loathing for the Arabs was very plain to see and like I said above the Arabs were not the military asset so many folks insist on saying they were.
The great tragedy was the spooks did not act on the mutually held contempt and left the Arabs to their ravings.
As we now know that was a huge mistake
.
Boosted,
RC
From Fair.org
Forgotten Coverage of Afghan 'Freedom Fighters'
The villains of today's news were heroes in the '80s
By David N. Gibbs
<blockquote>British researcher Fred Halliday noted (London Guardian, 4/3/86): "The policies of the guerrillas are, despite some whitewashing by their friends abroad, those of Islamic fundamentalism." As early as 1980 (Nation, 1/26/80), Halliday wrote that some of the Mujahiddin "make Khomeini look like a graduate student at MIT."
The Mujahiddin increasingly turned to drug trafficking as a means to finance their guerrilla operations, turning Afghanistan into a major world source of opium. Long a producer of opium poppies for local and regional consumption, Afghanistan began shipping large quantities to Pakistan for the production of heroin, which was then shipped throughout the world. As the Mujahiddin were the principal traffickers, the CIA sought to block investigations into this "Afghan connection" (Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin).
The Mujahiddin used violence not only against their Communist adversaries, but also against other Mujahiddin fighters who opposed their leadership. One friendly account of the Mujahiddin (Gérard Chaliand, Report from Afghanistan) mentioned in passing: "The method’s of [Hekmatyar’s party] are severe indeed; torture and execution are commonly used to deal with those who oppose the party line."
"Not very nice people"
In short, there is nothing terribly new about the Taliban’s brutality, their ideological intolerance, their involvement in drug trafficking or their repressive attitudes toward women; all of these features were clearly present during the period of the Jihad against Communism. The Mujahiddin were allies of convenience for the United States, which was bent on winning the Cold War.
In an effort to augment the Mujahiddin forces, the U.S. encouraged the influx into Afghanistan of thousands of idealistic Muslims, eager to participate in the struggle, from countries throughout the Middle East. One of the first of these expatriate Arabs was Osama bin Laden, who was "recruited by the CIA" in 1979, according to Le Monde (9/15/01). Bin Laden operated along the Pakistani border, where he used his vast family connections to raise money for the Mujahiddin; in doing so, he "worked in close association with U.S. agents," according to Jane’s Intelligence Review (10/1/98).
Despite CIA denials of any direct Agency support for Bin Laden’s activities, a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests the contrary. During the 1980s, Bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan closely paralleled those of the CIA. Bin Laden held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the bank the CIA used to finance its own covert actions (London Daily Telegraph, 9/27/01). Bin Laden worked especially closely with Hekmatyar--the CIA’s favored Mujahiddin commander (The Economist, 9/15/01). In 1989, the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden, according to a former bin Laden aide (AP, 10/16/01).</blockquote>
But everyone here knows this. The point is that during the Cold War, any client of the US was portrayed in a sometimes manipulated way and this manipulation continued after the Cold War. What I mean is that American institutions retained a certain worried and protective attitude toward certain clients. The State Department is notorious for this in "South Asia". This very much affected our Afghan campaign for it affected the sorts of scholarship you were told to read, the sorts of attitudes displayed by officials, the residua of this worried attitude of protection in American papers probably without the editors or reporters quite understanding where their particular habitual attitudes came from.
And some of it has been manipulation in order to present favored allies in a less than honest light. The US national security apparatus will not give up its clients. Perhaps there are realpolitik reasons for it, but then they shouldn't have sent you into this when they had mixed impulses.
And I find one other thing quite interesting, the American right and left and its various factions are quite blind to this. Generally, you can find libertarian, non-interventionist leftists, paleoconservatives, and so on, up on this sort of thing. But it is a blind spot across the board in the US. Drones you can find stories on, but this? Nope. I've never seen anything like it.
A certain type of person made a career out of playing up their glorious efforts in Afghanistan during the Cold War. The stories contained a big chunk of fiction, yet, these people were presented as experts and testified before many a group.
<blockquote>SIMILAR FORCES HELPED shape American reporting on the war. From 1980 until late 1986, few American journalists were allowed to visit Kabul or any other Government-held area, which meant that coverage of the war was left primarily to reporters working from the rebel side. Those venturing into the war zones carried back powerful accounts of the rebels' struggle, and of the destructiveness of the forces they faced. But it was inevitable that over the years, what Americans learned of the conflict came increasingly to reflect the rebel viewpoint; whatever balance access to the other side would have offered was lost.
In addition, much of the Afghan reporting available to Americans came from resident freelancers, many of them relatively inexperienced. <strong>The result was that strong bonds often developed between those covering the conflict and the rebels. Many of the reporters became identified with a particular rebel group, usually the one that arranged their journeys ''inside.'' Too often, abuses by these groups went unreported, or at least underplayed.</strong>
In Peshawar's American Club, reporters skeptical of an approach that celebrated the rebels' virtues encountered ostracism. <strong>One visitor, Mary Williams Walsh of The Wall Street Journal, had her entry to the club ''suspended'' after reporting sardonically on the rebel boosterism she found.</strong> Later, after The New York Post ran a series of stories alleging that the CBS Evening News had used faked film footage in some of its reporting on rebel attacks, Ms. Walsh, who had done much of the initial reporting on that story, became a focus for renewed hostility. When in the fall of 1989 word of her departure from the Journal reached the American Club, some of the freelancers involved called for drinks all round.</blockquote> - John Burns in the NYT, Feb. 4, 1990
Freelancers, eh?
Curiosity is a fine thing.
Sorry, Rant, can't agree with all of this. The desire to control the nation is more complicated than just the Pashtun situation although that is a part of it.
And where are you getting this stuff about 6000 years and all that? What's your reference? Plenty of change has happened in 6000 years and Punjab as it's conceived of today just can't be looked at in that time frame.
RantCorp:
Wouldn't that be in its essence guaranteeing the continuation of a Punjabi empire by succumbing to nuclear blackmail?
I got to thinking after I wrote the above that in addition to succumbing to Punjabi nuclear blackmail, we would also be in effect underwriting their continued provocative attitude toward India. What I mean by that is this. If the Pak Army/ISI, the guarantor of the Punjabi empire, were to give up its smoldering hostility to India thereby removing the need to maintain a great big army and nuclear weapons, they would have on their own more than enough power to defend the integrity of the Durand Line. The Pathans no matter how much they really really want a Pushtunistan don't have any money and with no money to contest a Pak Army/ISI looking only at them, there is no chance the Durand Line will disappear. If the international community were to guarantee the line, it will allow the Pak Army/ISI to continue provoking India.
The problem is the strategic outlook of the Pak Army/ISI, no matter that it is composed Pakistan's best and brightest. The strategic outlook consists of not making peace with and completely normalizing relations with India. That is bone stupid and for the international community to further that strategy in any way is just as stupid. The Pak Army/ISI is probably the most dangerous organization in the world and it would be the height of folly to do anything to help them along.
The Pak Army/ISI has run rings around us in Afghanistan, so much so they even got us to pay their bills for them while they did it. But that is small endorsement of their acumen. Like the man said in True Grit "You've done nothing when you've bested a fool." (I think that is how the quote goes.)
Having read many thousands of reports and assessments over many years asserting an understanding of the primary reasons for the military and political conflict in the AF/PAK region I would have to say DAL’s essay is one of only a handful I would describe as factually correct in it’s entirety. Even more commendable is his interpretation of the ramifications & implications of the events he describes - some quite obscure as well occurring many years ago. IMO the essay enjoys the rare success of defining the primary reason for the conflict.
In keeping faith with Clausewitz’s foremost instruction to firstly understand the type of shit-storm you are getting yourself into DAL reveals the COG of the conflict. For those folks who are not familiar with the geography of the region he has helpfully inserted a map of Pashtunistan. As the map indicates Pashtunistan (the grey colored region straddling the Durand Line) splits Pakistan down the middle – ethnic Persians on the western side and ethnic Punjabis to the east. Or more simply light skinned people to the left and dark-skinned folks to the right.
This graphic represents a mind-map of the nightmare that has plagued the original inhabitants of the sub-continent (the Punjabis) for 6000 years. These cultural, physical and geographical differences have created a division that has shaped a form of apartheid that is comparable with the social bigotry and ethnic hatred that existed in US in the 19th century and more recently in South Africa. However unlike those dysfunctional societal disorders that lasted perhaps 5 -10 generations, the fear and loathing in the AF/PAK region has lasted for 300 generations. Think Bosnia and multiply by 15.
I despair when folks attempt to suggest a solution to mankind’s oldest clash of civilizations in terms of religion, democracy, economics, self-determination, gender equally, hospitals, schools. roads, electric grids etc. All of these things are very nice and we can all feel virtuous in our noble effort but if we choose to ignore the COG we are wasting our blood and treasure and anything we insist upon building the ISI will blow it up.
IMO as far as the ISI is concerned if we choose to ignore the innermost fears of the Pakistan Punjabi population then they are honor bound to lay all our Shape, Clear, Hold, Build efforts to waste. It is worth considering to what extent the COIN program over the last 13 years has formed the ‘grist to the mill’ that has enabled the ISI to establish itself as the spearhead of Pakistan’s military and political strategy.
IMO we need to dispel the rather odd assumption that ISI is ‘out of control’ or its ranks are filled with ‘mad takfiri killers’ just because it is we who have spent a trillion dollars whilst they have expended barely a billion but somehow managed to fight us to a standstill.
It may help to remember that up until the recent past undeveloped countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam etc could all rely upon attracting the more intelligent and ambitious individuals into the military for the simple reason that the military offered one of the few professional careers these countries had available. Today many of these countries have achieved new-found prosperity from a emerging private sector and the best and the brightest shy away from the military and enter the far more lucrative commercial workforce.
However in Pakistan’s case its broken economy ensures the most capable still enter the military. From within a select group the ISI gets to choose its recruits. In other words it should surprise nobody rather than being out of control and insane we should acknowledge the possibility that the ISI has methodically and repeatedly out thought and out fought us.
Some gentle souls may have hoped if we spent 1000 times as much money and lose 3500 men we could ignore the COG but still prevail. As Clausewitz warned and subsequent events have shown our continued determination to embrace this folly suggests in fact it is we who are out of control.
So what?
Pakistan is an economic and political basket-case. Many of the country’s institutions and much of its infrastructure are crumbling. The political and military leadership understand that their UW campaign in AF has rendered them an international pariah status and this international isolation has a devastating effect on the prospect of improvement in the economic plight of the average Pakistani. The Pak leadership are probably the first to admit the fallout from its strategy in AF is a death by a thousand cuts but it is the lesser of the two evils. A collapse of the Durand Line and a reunification of the two halves of Pashtunistan would spell the end of Pakistan as a nation state and the end of Pakistani state control of its nuclear arsenal.
It doesn’t matter if we believe the ISI’s approach is right or wrong, moral or immoral, legal or illegal, legitimate or illegitimate 6000 years of fear and loathing does not make for a quiet life based on peace, love and the pursuit of happiness.
The international diplomatic and military community must guarantee the integrity of the Durand Line. A few official crossing points (as in China, India and on many other contentious borders) needs to be enforced. In doing so we must convince the Pakistan elite that the reunification of Pashtunistan will not happen. IMO if we manage to do that the war in AF will end.
Obviously the Mafia will go ape and the flow of 90% of the world’s heroin will be severely affected - but hardly a bad outcome. The Pathan and Baluchi secessionists will suffer at the hands of the redirected ISI but these are domestic law enforcement matters and as such are no business of anyone but Pakistan.
RC
Please reconstitute SORO or something like it. And study the way in which your own training has been used around the globe.
From blogger Pundita's site, I find an exerpt from a C. Christine Fair, Seth Jones RAND piece (a post about Kashmir):
<blockquote>As Stephen Cohen noted, Pakistan began intensively studying guerilla warfare during its engagement with the U.S. military. While the United States was interested in suppressing such wars, Pakistan was interested in learning how to launch such wars against India -- or even to develop its own “people’s army” as a second defense against India.7
With American assistance, Pakistan established the Special Services Group in 1956, a special forces unit initially led by Lieutenant Colonel A. O. Mitha that could fight the Soviets should they invade and occupy the country. It was trained to fight a guerrilla war, and Pakistani officers were brought to Fort Bragg and other facilities in the United States.8</blockquote>
I know the military is proud of its IMET program, or whatever its called. You should be. You trained a lot of guys around the globe.
Yet, that's what I don't get. People learn from us and then reflect back within their own strategic paradigms. Can't our own history of training teach us something? This too for the Egyptian military. And I mean beyond, "gee, that guy I worked with was great." I'm sure he was.
But national interest is cold blooded. Buddy-buddy is great for fostering relationships, but a bad strategic lens to look through in every situation.
When looking to the colonial small wars of the 20th century for COIN, did any suggestion of looking at our own history in training others in this regard come up in discussing campaign planning? If not, why not?
Maybe I was thinking of Eric Margolis:
<blockquote>I knew President Zia well and admired him greatly for his courageous statesmanship in almost single-handedly facing down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. I was the first journalist to learn of Pakistan’s top secret role in the Afghan War, but never revealed the story until 1989. Zia ul Haq’s and Pakistan’s heroic role in bringing down the Soviet Empire has been forgotten by too many people. Once the Soviets were defeated, his former ally, the United States, turned against Zia and Pakistan.</blockquote> Eric Margolis, Big Eye (2005)
Isn't one of his books on your military reading lists? Which is fine, read what you want. Intellectual freedom is important. Look, the Soviets were brutal but is it necessary to fall in love with everyone that resisted? Especially since that resistance served local regional and monetary interests as well.
When I was reading through the New York Times archives, I thought I found an article that talked about different journalists that covered the various anti-Soviet groups in Afghanistan. The article said that different journalists became bonded to various factions that they traveled with and this sometimes was reflected in the writing. I don't remember any names being mentioned. I think it was a John Burns article, but I don't remember exactly.
I don't know, I become conspiratorial sometimes because it's all wheels-within-wheels, this foreign policy business. Who knows.
<blockquote>If we had Pakistan's help.
-- if Pakistan decided to help. My opinion is that so far, if they have not crossed that line, they'd rather not. As I mentioned, they want to keep this asset in place for a future time when the United States might leave the region, and then they can exploit the asset again to aggrandize the position in Afghanistan and Kashmir as well. It's a two-track policy.
Bush was just there. It's a remarkable kind of relationship.
Have you ever noticed that before every major visit, like President Bush or the secretary of state, there's a move against an Al Qaeda type, or there's a little offensive that's launched somewhere in the tribal agencies? This is episodic. It precedes visits from the West, especially from the United States, in advance. They could disarm the protests that are coming through that are going to be coming from foreign leaders coming to meet Musharraf about the continuing violence that's coming from Pakistan into Afghanistan.</blockquote> Peter Tomsen, Frontline (PBS) interview
Nobody's naive and everyone knows the score and always has. What I can't figure out as an outsider--and I know I become conspiratorial and border on the paranoid on this subject--is if people thought they would deal with it after Iraq (Bush on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the Downing Street memos), if they thought they had effectively bought enough support to do the job, or if they thought their guys inside the system were sincere and could deliver. Or maybe we or others were more threatened than anyone is letting on because that wouldn't help anyone with anything.
Or maybe people really thought they could cultivate the leadership, change minds, socially engineer or Afghan-COIN their way to success. That I don't know. Naivete could be in <em>there</em> somewhere, but everyone always knew. Same with Saudi.
States are supposed to control their intelligence agencies and be responsible for their activities. "Going rogue" in this instance is nonsensical but it serves a purpose in a bluntly pragmatic way--the implications for our system would not be good to admit this. I know it's hard to swallow, but national interest is cold blooded business. We can't create an even bigger problem for ourselves.
I don't know what his thinking is but you might be interested in the following from Zbiegniew Brzezinski in Foreign Affairs, "A Geostrategy for Eurasia":
<blockquote>Similarly, China's support for Pakistan restrains India's ambitions to subordinate that country, while offsetting India's inclination to cooperate with Russia in regard to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Chinese and Japanese involvement in the development of eastern Siberia can also enhance regional stability.
The bottom line is that America and China need each other in Eurasia.</blockquote>
Well, I'm cherry-picking but the funny thing is that it doesn't read all that differently from a containment of the Soviet Union strategy, it's just updated to a containment of Russia for the 90's period it was written in. The expansion of NATO created a bit of a backlash as we are currently seeing. The subordinate is a bit strong unless he means plain ole' regional hegemony. At any rate, certain nations are viewed as strategic assets and this never changes.
At any rate, during the Cold War I think some didn't mind support for insurgencies and other proxy activities in India because of its close relationship to the Soviet Union. As William Odom has said, we supported terrorists during that period. No point in sugar-coating it. This stuff never looks good close up. The Indians worked with the Soviets in Afghanistan and they brutalized the country. It's just never nice close up, the innocent always suffer.
Zbig thinks the center of the world is Eastern Europe and all of US security runs through it. Even in the 90's, even today. I think a lot of people are having trouble letting go, American, Russian, European, UK. Certain factions anyway. Comfortable with a certain world view and can't give it up. This too affected our Afghan campaign.
Funny how we immigrants take on certain attitudes, however famous, however humble.
Madhu:
So Bill Lind advocates basically lining up with the Pak Army/ISI against India. Against India which will soon be the country with the largest population in the world, has a very, very long coastline, has an economy that dwarfs that of Pakistan and doesn't create and use jihadist monsters against civilians in other countries. Bill Lind is a mor...Bill Lind's thinking is not impressive.
<blockquote>If we are to have a genuine Afghan strategy, this attitude is the first thing that has to change. Tell Pakistan instead: “We get it. Your problem is India. From now on, your problem is our problem. For starters, we will make sure Kabul breaks with India and becomes your very reliable, indeed subordinate, partner.”
Then we give Karzai an ultimatum: either he does that, openly and unambiguously, or we pull out as fast as we can get out. He can then deal with the Taliban on his own. In the end, he is a puppet and he knows it. The problem is that we have not been pulling the right strings.
With Pakistan’s strategic depth restored and the threat of a second front eliminated, it can then tell an isolated Taliban to swallow the pill labeled “coalition government.” That Afghan government does not have to last forever, just long enough to give us a “decent interval.” That in turn yields us a quiet defeat.</blockquote> - William Lind, The American Conservative
I thought I saw in this shades of the old Cold War attitudes toward Pakistan as a regional strategic asset and balancer ("no power should dominate the eurasian landmass"). Perhaps I misread the situation. TAC is an important anti-status quo intellectual magazine and I gain much from its contributors.
A recent article in TAC by William Lind ways that it is unfortunate some American conservatives see today's Russia as the equivalent of yesterday's Soviet Union.
Yet, isn't is striking that the US returns to to some version of the following formulation again and again: if we assuage the Pakistanis over Kashmir or Afghanistan, the US can use the military and its intelligence services as our effective proxy? Or at least buy it out for a time? Or they can help us out of a tight spot? How many times has this formulation crashed and burned off of the strategists' page because of the complicated compulsions in both capitals, compulsions that Hussain Haqqani nicely details in his latest book?
What happened in the 90's again? When the Taliban gave Pakistan strategic depth, did that stabilize the situation? Doesn't Kashmir and India and the desire to be a regional Islamic player still exist even with strategic depth? Strategic depth has an offensive component to it that is meant to eat away at the sovereignty of others. How does that fit into a 4GW world?
I suppose the plan is to let us leave quietly "in defeat" but we can do that without gifting anything to anyone. And there are constituencies that will resist. Somehow, people always forget this.
And what does 4GW theory say about states that interfere in the sovereignty of other states? If we are a destabilizer in the region for this reason, isn't Pakistan a destabilizer for the same reason? When a state cultivates non-state actors (what a silly term in this context!) or undermines the monopoly of state violence by cultivating said actors, how does that fit into 4GW theory?
I am struck again by how little people seem to wish to understand the complicated history of the US, India, the UK, Pakistan and China, a history that affects many peoples to this day. The standard narratives of both the US right and left--and many of its various factions--requires an update.
The problem is that the military and its intelligence services are both a stabilizer and destabilizer all at the same time. Context sometimes requires refinement of theory.
Nothing from the outside stabilizes the situation because the state has internal problems that neither the US, UK, EU, IMF, or World Bank can fundamentally change. At best, we can try and keep from adding fuel to the fire. In that, I suppose I agree in the most general way with Mr. Lind. But I certainly don't agree with everything; it is too superficial a reading of the complex motivations of the state to think simple geostrategic manipulations--as if a game of RISK--can work.
The study of unconventional warfare requires study of regions at a certain level of "area studies" depth because if we are not careful, this is the realm in which propaganda and information operations can rule.
Adrian UZH:
Thank you very much for commenting and providing a link to your work.
You and Mr. Hegi are plain spoken straight talkers. We need more of that.
From your introduction.
"It also demonstrates the naivety of a superpower that allows an alleged ally to receive billions of dollars, with which Pakistan amongst other things financed groups that kill American soldiers almost on a daily basis. It also uses the money to expand its control over the insurgents in Afghanistan and undermines initiatives for a peaceful solution to the conflict."
and
"...the arrest of an influential Taliban leader is used as an example to demonstrate the effrontery with which the Pakistanis are playing their game (in part four)."
With all modesty, I think the article by Lukas Hegi and me (originally published in German in the Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies in 2011) is still the best account on ISI support for the Afghan Taliban since their foundation in 1994. An English version can be found here: http://www.offiziere.ch/?p=12086
I completely agree with the main thesis of Douglas Livermore: The ISI provides comprehensive and systematic support to the Afghan Taliban since the mid-1990s to gain influence in Afghanistan as a strategic national interest. The main motives for the consistent policy are the rivalry with India and, secondarily, the question of Pashtunistan.
However, there are some historical inaccuracies. Please understand this as a constructive critique in light of potential future research or publications on the topic:
-the coup of Zia-ul-Haq took place in 1977, not in 1979.
-ISI (and, for that matter American!) covert support of the mujaheddin started well before the Soviet invasion.
- The formation of the Taliban is dated to 1991/1992 and the begin of ISI support is dated to some point even before the fall of Najibullah in April 1992. This sounds absurd and I assume it is merely a slip of the pen. I haven't seen any other account (or primary source) mentioning Taliban action - and even less Pakistani support for the Taliban - before 1994. And Douglas Livermore gives no documentation for these dates (There is a reference to National Security Archive's The September 11th Sourcebooks Volume VII: The Taliban File from 2003. However, according to these documents the Taliban were founded in 1994 with some Pakistani support likely beginning in the same year.) Likewise, the ISI did certainly not withdraw its support for Hekmatyar in 1992, as stated in the article. In fact, Hekmatyar was probably abandoned only in early 1995, but certainly not before the second half of 1994. Different factions of the GOP - or even the ISI tself - might have supported different Afghan proxies in 1994. Possibly, the Taliban were first courted by the Interior Ministry under Naseerullah Babar rather than by the ISI.
- The attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and on the US embassy in Kabul in September 2011 were carried out by the Haqqani network and not by the Taliban. ISI collusion - at least in the first attack - is pretty much certain.
I see some joking on intelligence matters further down in the thread but it's more likely that a scholar or journalist or editor wouldn't know how his or her work would be used in a manner to influence publics and decision-makers. These things are done at a remove, everyone does it to some extent, and I've likely passed on misinformation from the papers I read from time to time. Everyone here likely has. Press releases are strategically released by a lot of different governments and if you are not savvy, you may not realize what is happening in a reported news article. Not even the journalist, although the leak phenomena creates a funny relationship between some newspapers and government entities. Happens in many nations but in some nations more pressure of a certain kind is brought to bear. Looking at everything through the lens of Pashtun matters doesn't work, it works best for looking at conditions of a local insurgency. But the world is more complicated than that.
I would like to read this article but I haven't as of yet: "As The Pakistanis See It," The National Review, 1962 by Freda Utley.
Freda Utley is the mother of Jon Basil Utley of The American Conservative. The paleoconservatives and neoconservatives have an interesting, uh, history, as I think we've all learned. From time to time, TAC will publish something by William "4GW" Lind which has a very particular Cold War tinge to it in terms of how the piece views regional stability. For certain Cold Warriors, everything was filtered through how the situation could be used against the Soviets and the ideas about regional stability still seem based on that 1980s pattern.
And this from The National Interest, 1989: Pakistan and the Asian Balance, March 1989 by William E. Odom.
When these sorts of things are presented in papers from South Asia, they sometimes take on a conspiratorial air when it simply the way strategy is done. But one thing I've found missing from the military papers I have read is a sense of the American military's intellectual history on this region based its staff writings, etc.
If SORO is to be reconstituted, can you set up a data base with all these sorts of articles? And for regionally aligned brigades too? Does this happen? Am I being naive?
<blockquote>The payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama. The CIA declined to comment on the agency's financial ties to the ISI.
U.S. officials often tout U.S.-Pakistani intelligence cooperation. But the extent of the financial underpinnings of that relationship have never been publicly disclosed. The CIA payments are a hidden stream in a much broader financial flow; the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the last eight years in military and civilian aid.
Congress recently approved an extra $1 billion a year to help Pakistan stabilize its tribal belt at a time when Obama is considering whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.
The ISI has used the covert CIA money for a variety of purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the capital. That project pleased CIA officials because it replaced a structure considered vulnerable to attack; it also eased fears that the U.S. money would end up in the private bank accounts of ISI officials.
In fact, CIA officials were so worried that the money would be wasted that the agency's station chief at the time, Robert Grenier, went to the head of the ISI to extract a promise that it would be put to good use.
"What we didn't want to happen was for this group of generals in power at the time to just start putting it in their pockets or building mansions in Dubai," said a former CIA operative who served in Islamabad.
The scale of the payments shows the extent to which money has fueled an espionage alliance that has been credited with damaging Al Qaeda but also plagued by distrust.</blockquote>
CIA Pays for Support in Pakistan: It has spent millions funding the ISI spy agency despite corruption. But some say it is worth it. - Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times.
Robert Grenier doesn't say anything about who owns the construction companies.
No one quite knows what to do because there are only so many ways to access the system. It may not sound like it, but in some ways I agree with M. Stone, I just think hopes for a potential partnership are exaggerated. We can work together, but we would likely be working half together, half at odds. That's because our systems are fundamentally at odds strategically. And we can't help the 'solve Kashmir' because our history in the region makes us an unwelcome intruder to the Indians. The conflict was internationalized way back in 1947.
We tend to make things worse. We'd be better of not mucking around but our system is so connected--the international system, I mean--that we pretty much end up mucking around everywhere, often in ways that are at odds with one another.
The trick for the American military is to find ways not to exacerbate the tensions of our "at odds" foreign policy when taking on a task.
<blockquote>Testing the tinsel strength of their rekindled relationship with an angry America, Pakistani ISI urged the CIA to accommodate Haqqani and perhaps give him a token position in the newly formed government.[16] Had America listened to Pakistan, not only could their relationship perhaps fostered into a true alliance, but the next decade of military involvement could have been drastically different. Jalaluddin could have stabilized the Afghan border region early in the conflict, and Pakistan could have become a greater partner in the War on Terrorism clearing and reinforcing the border from their side of the country. </blockquote>
from <strong>American Franketstein: The Haqqani Revival, Matthew Snow, Foreign Policy Journal</strong>
I am so glad the author posted a link to this piece in the comments as part of the discussion. An interesting read. Counterfactuals are hard. I do agree that a different campaign can be imagined, one less costly and with more realistic goals. The nation-building goals we set for ourselves would take a hundred years to accomplish.
But is it not possible that we might have traded in one insurgency for another, instead of a Pashtun "left to right", something from "right to left", so to speak, and including groups traditionally opposed to <em>that</em> set up? We had tried working through the system, the Saudis and the US attempting to get a hand over of OBL--including working through the Pakistanis--and it didn't work. For decision makers caught in the heat of the moment, it must have seemed that we had already gone that route. Hard to know.
As for Pakistan becoming a true partner that would have helped us in the border region, I think we may have run into the same problems we have run into in the past, whenever we attempted to use the Army or intelligence services as our own proxy, and you include some examples from the Soviet era.
What is interesting to me is how often the US military and foreign policy establishment returns to the Pakistan Army and its intelligence services as a useful tool. Every decade, the American military and certain members of the foreign policy intellectual class makes similar arguments. Journals of strategy from the Cold War are lousy with papers about Pakistan as a kind of balancer in Asia. And SEATO and CENTO, etc. It has never worked out as we intended and this is because when we signal that we will work with the Army/intelligence services, we sent an inadvertent signal that regional proxy activities can accelerate. This then highlights our many differences even when our goals overlap in one particular area. This has happened every single time we have tried this in the past.
<blockquote>According to a number of early policy assessments and recommendations, the most important South Asian nation from the perspective of U.S. national security objectives was Pakistan. Colonel Nathaniel R. Hoskut, the U.S. military attaché in Karachi, urged Washington as early as 1948 to consider military assistance to the new government due to Pakistan's "strategic importance." This view, which found resonance especially within the military and intelligence communities, was based on the principle considerations: Pakistan's contiguous border with the Soviet Union, and hence the desirability of establishing air defences and intelligence-gathering facilities there, and Pakistan's proximity to the Persian Gulf, and hence its potential role in the defense of the Middle East oil fields. A Joint Chiefs of Staff Study of U.S. Military interests in South Asia, dated March 24, 1949....</blockquote>
<strong>from The Cold War on the Periphery, Robert J. McMahon</strong>
The US returns to this theme every decade and, every time, it turns out badly in one way or another. I understand the theory on paper, if we listen to Pakistani concerns, we can use them to help us out in the border region with Al Qaeda, but the establishment is still concerned with Kashmir. Attempts to retain some strategic assets or to raise money for this may interfere with the process on the ground even if both parties would like to work together. I think the history has shown that this has proven irresistible and the US then finds itself in a difficult situation.
For instance, the Los Angeles Times had an article some time back talking about the CIA essentially paying bounty for each Al Q member delivered to the US. The incentives in this sort of program can become skewed in a way not to our favor.
Bill M:
I hope Moorthy responds but I will give my unsolicited opinion. Our downsizing or bug-out or whatever it turns out to be, will be perceived as a great victory by both the takfiri killers and by the Pak Army/ISI. The one will figure that Allah has blessed their hard efforts and the other that their very clever creation and use of the jihadist monster was vindicated. And both will figure that a successful effort merits further efforts along the same lines. They are both going to try harder and things will get a lot worse. Eventually they will push a country, probably India, too far and Pakistan will be destroyed.
Ironically, I think the only chance the country of Pakistan had was if the Pak Army/ISI directed proxy war against Afghanistan failed. The Pak Army/ISI would have then been discredited and perhaps turned from their mad strategy. They weren't defeated so will run harder down the road that will lead to the destruction of Pakistan and the death of maybe millions.
As author of the book Defeating Political Islam, I have a different take on where Pakistan is heading now.
In my view, Pakistan has started the process of exploding from within. This is due to the squeeze Teheek-e-Taliban is putting on the Pakistani government. The Taliban demand that sharia law be extended all over Pakistan has very strong support within the country and in the military. If the government accepts this demand, anarchy will eventually reign supreme. However, if the government decides to fight the Taliban, it will gradually lose the war.
I believe, it's a no-win situation for Pakistan. I don't think ISI will be able to extricate Pakistan from this mess.
Move Forward:
I think your entire analysis would change radically if there were no rogue elements of the ISI, if the ISI was a very well run organization that did what it was told as part of a strategy dictated from above. That is what I believe is the case. The ISI is not off the reservation at all. It is part of the Pak Army and does what it is told to the best of its ability. That is why I always, or almost always say Pak Army/ISI.
There are lots of reasons for this but the most persuasive one to me is to look at the career paths of the ISI chiefs both before and after that part of their service. That job is assumed by well regarded army officers and after they finish their careers as army officers continue, not missing a beat. Kayani is the perfect example. You know how army personnel systems work, if the ISI assignment wasn't a conventional career box to be checked, the former ISI heads wouldn't move on and up. It does their careers no harm at all because it is a reliable part of the Pak Army.
The Pak Army/ISI created the jihadist monster. They thought they could control it and they still think they can control it. They most probably can't, but their reality is what they think they can do, so they will continue down the same path. And the further they march down that path the more certain it is they will destroy their country. They are very cunning people but cunning doesn't equal smart.
The other thing is the Pakistani government is the Pak Army/ISI and the feudal elites. What gets done is what will benefit those two groups in the short run. They aren't so bright so the long run doesn't really count. Figure it this way, it is Pak Army/ISI strategy to constantly provoke India, the second biggest country in the world with an economy that dwarfs that of Pakistan, and a country that beats the brains out of the Pak Army every time there is a fight. That is an unwise strategy, in the long run. But in the short run it provides a raison d'etre for the Pak Army/ISI and its drain on the national economy. It doesn't make any sense except to keep things hot and because things are hot it helps the Pak Army/ISI to justify its existence and its privileges.
There are a lot of other considerations but one thing that is really scary is this. It is a part of Pak Army/ISI strategy to keep sticking pins in the Indians. Mumbai was a pin. They will do another Mumbai because they can't afford to let things get too calm. The problem is that India now is not the India of 2008. When the Pak Army/ISI pull their next stunt like that it may result in the destruction of their country and the death of innocent millions.
You should read this document: http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/crisis-states-research-centre-sun-sky-relat…
I hope you're right but I am skeptical that our bug out from Afghanistan will be anything but a complete one. But you are right about things being different from poor old South Vietnam. Nobody at all cared about the fate of South Vietnam. India, Iran, Russia, Turkey and most all the U-pick-astans care about what happens in Afghanistan.
Carl,
I got through about page 11 of the SWJ Council before wearing out. My favorite line was this from Entropy on page 6, comment #109:
<blockquote>Also, one thing you have to keep in mind about Pakistan is that it is a factional country that lacks the kind of centralized power and authority that we have here in the US. The civilian government, military and intelligence services all have a lot of independent power - indeed the civilian government serves at the pleasure of the Army - so there are many times when the right hand not only doesn't know what the left is doing, but the foot is doing something completely different and lying to both hands about it. And there are times when the government may want to do something and the military say's no. In those arguments, the military usually wins and gets its way.
This makes choosing "sides" difficult when talking about India/Pakistan because when something like the India Embassy bombing occurs, and there are indications of Pakistani involvement, we don't know if that involvement was an official act of the Pakistani government, or just another in a long line of ISI going off the reservation and pursuing its own, independent agenda. It must be quite frustrating to the civilian government as well, who might find out that an instrument of its supposed national power has gone and done something from al Jezeera or when the US Ambassador calls.
This reality in Pakistan makes dealing with them very complex and frustrating, but they still remain an ally of necessity. Even if parts of the Pakistani government are working against us, we need those parts which are working for us if we want to continue operations at all in Astan.</blockquote>
Considering that I believe Entropy at one time was a Predator pilot, he may have some special insight relative to whether other elements of the Pak Army and Air Force, not to mention the Pakistan government, allow activities that counteract what rogue ISI members may attempt.
I also read two of MSnow's cited articles in Foreign Affairs Journal. He seems pretty lopsided in favor of the Pashtuns. Neither Snow nor RCJ seem particularly enamored with giving the other ethnicities who outnumber the Pashtuns their due. Sure India and Iran may favor these other ethnicities or northern areas, however, it is undeniable that they were kicked and dragged to live under Taliban rule and most hated it. RantCorp points out that years later, even the Pashtuns are disinclined to welcome back the Taliban.
As for ISI assistance after we leave, I would argue that provided we continue to have airpower and night raid access next year, rogue elements of the ISI could not reinstate the Haqqanis or Taliban into power given the strength of the ANSF backed up by ISAF....something lacking after our departure from Vietnam. The upcoming elections and Pashtun Karzai's backroom deals may affect that positively or negatively as will Pakistani negotiations with the Taliban.
Any help rogue elements may have provided the Taliban in earlier years quite possibly has been overcome by current events where the Pakistan TTP is out for blood <strong>inside</strong> Pakistan and the Haqqanis could turn on Pakistan as well. I read in the council that most believe India would respond to additional UW by LeT with their own UW. Is that a risk Pakistan is willing to take given the potential for a larger India-Pakistan war that now could include nukes? Given the recent retirement of the prior General in charge of Pakistani nukes, it must be unsettling to civil and Pak Army leaders to think of who will be the replacement. Do they want to risk the security of those weapons by playing games that end up giving the wrong folks access?
Move Forward:
There is a long running thread in the Council that is directly applicable and goes over most all the questions you ask. It is called "The US & others working with Pakistan."
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2313
You can start at the beginning, the middle, the end or just poke around here and there. Mike in Hilo at the very beginning makes a comment that helps set the basic stage and thing go from there.
It is under the South Asia heading.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=74
There are additional threads under that heading that go over more of the questions you raise.
Zenpundit does work on this occasionally and has a brilliant post relating directly to the subject of the Pak Army/ISI.
It is a very big subject.
I’ve actually enjoyed and learned from the article and both sides of this heated exchange. I’ve often wondered about the religious, ethnic, and other motivations of all parties concerned on both sides of the Durand Line. Things that puzzle me that come to mind include:
A Fox News article today speaks of madrassas in Pakistan that provide members of both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and the Haqqanis.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/02/07/at-pakistans-taliban-u-jihadist…
Why would the Pakistani government and military allow such madrassas to exist if they likely support TTP and LeT? Couldn’t LeT terrorist activities in India lead to war between the two countries?
Why would the ISI support the Haqqanis and Afghan Taliban while the Pakistani TTP Taliban desire to harm Pakistan and create an Islamic State theocracy. Don’t the two (or three) Taliban parties, HiG, and Haqqanis share somewhat similar desires/goals and isn’t it dangerous to support one therefore indirectly supporting the others?
Why is the concept of strategic depth even applicable? How would Pakistan get the bulk of their armored military into Afghanistan on the few routes available without being susceptible to Indian airpower and nukes following them there? Couldn’t they move dismounts into the Afghan mountains even if an independent or federalist Afghan-only Pashtunistan existed?
It appears that the map of a proposed/postulated Pashtunistan is actually also partly a proposed Baluchistan? Why would the Pakistanis ever give up their coastal ports and the rich resources of the Baluch areas? Couldn’t Afghanistan create an internal Pashtunistan without demanding Pakistani territory that could come later through negotiations?
Carl and company to include the original author and MSnow seem to support the notion of Pakistani/ISI support for the Afghan Taliban, HiG, LeT, and Haqqanis. How does that fit into the security of nuclear weapons and the large death toll of the Pakistani Army in fighting the Taliban everywhere else except Northern Waziristan?
How could we battle Pakistan when they allow our supplies to reach Afghanistan and they have nukes? Why hasn’t Pakistan shared its nuclear technology with more Islamic countries if they are truly as pro-Islamic Jihad and anti-American and anti-Israel as ISI and Pakistani Army conspiracies would imply? Why did they allow us to use their land to enter and sustain a decade of war when it seemingly would be far easier just to never have allowed us access to their ports, highways, and airspace?
Without any firsthand knowledge other than the press, I’ve often wondered why a Pakistani Army and ISI would allow our drones to target Northern Waziristan? Couldn’t they stop those drone attacks with their manned fighter aircraft and air defenses if they so desired? How can we explain a Pakistani Army/ISI conspiracy to support the Afghan Taliban and Haqqanis if they allow us to target them with Hellfires in their cross-border sanctuaries? Why don't these drone attacks also occur in or near Quetta?
How much control of the Pakistani Army and ISI does the Pakistani government have? Could there be rogue elements of both groups who do as they please either in secret or due to instilled fear that interference with them could lead to a military coup or leader assassination ala Benazir Bhutto?
Finally, why is it that Indians and Pakistanis who come to the U.S. seem to have fewer problems adapting to the infidels and each other than those who remain? Is it Darwinism and knowledge that a better life lies elsewhere in the peaceful West? What is it about these two lands with billions of smart folks that precludes them from advancing to the same degree at home? Is Islamic Jihad good for business? How about tensions between India and Pakistan? What the heck is so vital about the Kashmir region that these two countries continue to fight over it?
MSnow:
Another 9 to 11 paragraph blizzard of historical nitpicking the purpose of which is to obscure the point, the Pak Army/ISI is making war upon us. Your protestations that it is all so very well intentioned are disingenuous. What you are doing, cleverly, is to obscure the main point, the Pak Army/ISI is making war on us.
Mr. Livermore,
I certainly appreciate the time you took in your response; however, my wife probably appreciates it more. She's hardly entertained by my Afghan diatribes. Never the less...
The intent of showing historical inaccuracies was not to dispute your overall thesis, but to highlight many of the points that were over-simplified, inaccurate or untrue. I think the scrutiny poses the question: what else was half-stepped in the creation of this article. The intention here isn't to boast my own study of the region and conflict, rather participate in part of the process that keeps the Small Wars Journal revered by media and academic circles. When it comes to putting forth statements to be taken as complete truth, the devil is in the details. Perhaps I should have done an essay response to organize my statements rather than proceeding in the order of the notes I jotted while reading your article. I'll attempt to be more clear here.
Foremost, my statement was not: You're all wrong look at this historical inconsistency. In fact, my statement was: If UW doctrine states the initiation of each phase by State, but early on you mention that it is not clear whether ISI is operating as an extension of State, then how can the argument proceed? A critical line is drawn here—on the one hand, PK is in fact conducting UW. On the other, ISI is operating in accordance with its own interests more akin to a terrorist organization than a State with a doctrinal agenda. Until you satisfy the relation of ISI to PK, I don't think there can be any further discussion, because all evidence begins with “If ISI is, in fact operating under the guidance of PK, then X is true..” From the Peshawar office orchestrating its own coup, and the historical rogue element of the organization, it is difficult to illustrate that the ISI is operating under the direction or influence of the State. This is only clear in its behavior with India—which is why I suggested a much less mottled throughline in that argument.
The Pashtunistan piece of the argument is overstated. If such were the case, ISI would have abandoned the Muslim Youth after the Saur Revolution since Daud was the primary proponent of Pashtunistan as Minister of Defense and Prime Minister. Of course you say it was only ISI “contact” at that time; however, if planning/facilitating/conducting the failed offensive years before the Saur Revolution was only “contact” and not “involvement” then I fail to see how anything in the following decades was “involvement” either. If you would like to read Qazi Amin's account of the ISI/Hekmatyar plan that was executed while Burhannudin Rabbani was in Saudi Arabia, please read Dr. David B. Edwards' account in “Before Taliban: Geneologies of an Afghan Jihad.”
That is the only point at which I would buy the argument for Pashtunistan since the prime proponent of such a state had risen to absolute power. However, when Daud and his family were killed in the Saur Revolution, that argument largely died with him. PK's focus then became the encirclement of communism forming around them, and the existential threat to religion and power. The strategic depth to train jihadists later unleashed in India (as you illustrated) certainly had tremendous appeal, as did the amount of arms and money flowing in from wealthier nations. To prevent the spread of instability would also be a key motivation for PK intervention. Unfortunately, it was their intervention that exacerbated further instability that ultimately spread into their borders.
Iran and Pakistan are certainly not wearing “best friends” necklaces, however, yes—trading nuclear secrets with your existential enemy is not what nations do. Later in the 90s, after the disintegration of the Soviet, it was Pakistan who championed the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan pipeline while US interests pushed for the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan pipeline. Again, States don't tie themselves economically to existential threats when other alternatives exist. Lastly, the emergence of the Silk Road Pact between China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran illustrates modern collusion. Granted, this was all an aside, rather than a central point to your thesis, but since you so humbly mentioned it, I felt compelled to respond.
Ismail Khan, Hekmatyar, Sayyaf—again, these events/people/relations were pulled in to show your inaccuracies. You say “Herat surpise attack” then when I mention the actual occurrence, you say you knew. I guess I don't understand, if you knew why would you write words that don't illustrate the truth? Likewise, you claim Hekmatyar was the Minister of Interior, when in fact he was not—that position was held by Itihad. Hekmatyar was the Prime Minister. Of course, you mention that you knew it all along in your response, but again you failed to put what you knew all along accurately in your article. Instead you wrote an error.
As far as a grassroots Afghan support, I don't know where to begin. It was certainly not just Karzai, but Abdul Haq, Amin Wardak, Mawlawi Yunis Khales, Mawlawi Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi, etc. In fact, when Mawlawi Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi threw in his support, the bulk of the Harakat army did as well which was probably one of the most exponential increases to TB manpower in one movement. But I guess it makes more sense that Mullah Omar was groomed in Quetta to lead the Taliban movement as early as 1991. Of course if we follow the actual narrative, he was only the commander, not the leader of the Taliban until 1996 when he became Amir. Nevermind, that he was approached by Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef after the bare beginnings of the popular movement had already begun.
Your credibility as a writer exists within your ability to create your argument with nothing but accurate truth. Failing to do so calls into question the entirety of your argument. As stated above, Small Wars Journal is a credible entity cited by students, academics, journalists, and Soldiers—I was only providing those corrections to help keep it that way. I know when I've published a mistake, it irritates me to no end, and I assumed that you would have that same sort of dedication to quality. Hopefully, I am correct. Its what keeps the body of academic knowledge true.
I certainly enjoy the discourse.
M
P.S.
“Factoid” means something that isn't true, but you knew that too.
MSnow - While I certainly appreciate your feedback and thoughts, I believe that your "criticism", such as it is, warrants a direct response. While I do not have the time to address your points in excessive detail, I will make every attempt to mention them all. To begin, it is incontrovertible that the ISI was instrumental in the creation of the Taliban and the subsequent conquest of Afghanistan by that group. The evidence I presented alone should sufficiently prove that point. The fact that 80-100k Pakistani soldiers fought in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates the interest held by Pakistan in the success of the Taliban. While you attack my proposed motivation for the ISI as implausible (preventing the rise of "Pashtunistan"), you offer no alternative. Since it is generally accepted that the ISI was involved in the formation and direction of the Taliban, why do YOU suppose the ISI undertook this effort?
Moving on, the "Durand Line" has ALWAYS been contested by the vast majority of Afghans. You fall victim to your own accusation of "cherry picking" facts, as Ghazi Amanullah Khan did reaffirm the "Durand Line" as a part of the NEGOTIATED settlement to the the Third Anglo-Afghan War. A war which Ghazi Amanullah Khan was losing when he accepted those terms. Ghazi Amanullah was so despised by his subjects that he was ultimately forced into exile in 1929. And while I agree that Afghanistan has thawed its relations with a number of neighbors, your "point", fails to address the fact that Pakistan is still predominantly concerned with the threat it perceives from India.
Next, your argument that the Islamic State of Afghanistan was failing is specious, at best. The 1992 Peshawar Accords officially formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA). Every major Afghan belligerent agreed to participate in the ISA except for Hekmatyar. The Pakistanis were backing Hekmatyar, as you conceded. So, any argument that the ISA was “on the verge” of failure in 1992 willfully ignores the part that the Pakistanis were playing in ensuring that instability. Moreover, you acknowledged the fact that different departments of the ISI endorsed Hekmatyar (Peshawar) and the Taliban (Quetta). As my piece was an examination of the UW campaign rather than ISI-internal politics, I fail to see how addressing this issue would have strengthened or taken away from my analysis of the Taliban as a Pakistani UW proxy force?
Addressing the issue of Pakistani “involvement” in Afghanistan, I chose to not consider mere contact between the ISI and Afghan opposition groups as true “involvement” in Afghan affairs. While it is true that many religious extremists fled Daud's crackdowns in 1974/1975, there was really no active resistance to the government of the DRA. For my purposes, I considered “involvement” to be that period when the ISI (with significant US backing) provided MATERIAL support to the mujaheddin. This period began after the Soviet invasion in 1979, as I stated. To target such a trivial point, which really comes down to a matter of semantics (“contact” vs. “involvement”), indicates an overwhelming need on your part to attack the underlying point of my piece. Namely, the use of the Taliban by the ISI as a UW proxy force to pursue its interests in Afghanistan.
Determining who controlled the “endgame” in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal is certainly complicated, as a whole host of various actors maintained contacts and possessed incentives to control the fallout. As I addressed in my paper, the Pakistanis, Iranians, Indians, and AQ (among others) all remained invested to an extent far greater than the U.S. While I agree that the Pakistanis did share SOME nuclear secrets with the Iranians, I would not point to this as a clear rebuttal to my point concerning their regional competition. Clearly, this nuclear development support did not result in a functional nuclear weapon, as the Iranians continue to work toward this end. And how often have nations completely reversed their national policies toward one another, switching from friend to foe overnight? Iraq and the U.S. come to mind. Your argument that two countries must always cooperate because they did so once upon a time is ludicrous, to borrow your term.
Addressing the “Haqqani Network”, I recall going to great pains to point out that the differentiation between the organizations (HiG, HQN, Afghan Taliban, etc.) is quite murky given the constant cooperation and the fact that all three receive support from the ISI. What is clear is that these groups receive support and direction from the ISI in an effort to destabilize GIRoA. For the purposes of my paper, in which I was addressing Pakistan's UW campaign employing the Taliban as a UW proxy force, I believe my discussion of the Haqqani Network was sufficient. Similar to my counterpoint regarding the ISI-internal politics (Peshawar vs. Quetta departments), a detailed discussion of the history of the Haqqanis would not have added to or taken away anything from my purpose. Your feedback is appreciated, but ultimately superfluous.
I have decided to address your next three paragraphs together, as my response will be a reiteration of this tired theme. My discussion of Hekmatyar's time as a member of the ISA was brief because so too was his participation. Moreover, as this was an analysis of the Pakistani-sponsored UW campaign, discussion of the internal politics of the ISA was neither warranted or beneficial to the analysis. I did not highlight the fact that the Iranians backed Ismail Khan's push into Herat, and that certainly would have been a salient point had this paper been an analysis of Iranian UW efforts in Afghanistan (which I admit are also significant). You are correct in your point that Rasul Sayaf of Itihad was vital to the facilitation of AQ's assassination of Massoud, an attack that occurred at a time that Pakistan was still providing significant support to the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance. While I do not know if Sayaf was in the employ of Saudi Arabia, the efforts of AQ to assassinate one man pales in comparison to the larger UW campaign that was ongoing with Pakistani backing. Had I endeavored to write a book on the subject, I certainly would have included more of the fascinating factoids you've presented as some sort of rebuttal.
You are correct in your assertion that Ambassador Robin Raphel did endorse the Taliban in the UN. However, here again you fall victim to your own accusations of prevarication, in that you failed to mention the fact that Ambassador Raphel was often accused by the media of holding preferential opinions of the Pakistanis and the Taliban, while opposing policies that would benefit India or the Northern Alliance. She voraciously argued for the complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban (despite their horrendous human rights record) up until September of 2011. And President Karzai has shown a recurring tendency to “hedge his bets” by undertaking measures to ensure the survival of his family. That said, his donation of a paltry $20k should not indicate some sort of “grassroots” Afghan support to the Taliban. Thanks largely to the Pakistani's UW campaign, there were no viable alternatives to the Taliban, showing the intelligent design of the effort.
Finally, I made the point very early in my paper that the ISI has maintained this campaign despite the rise and fall of multiple Pakistani administrations, indicating that the effort is largely divorced from Pakistani political control. Internal politics aside, the ISI decided very early to undertake this campaign to destabilize Afghanistan and exert its influence. Various ISI departments advocated for the use of different proxy forces, but ultimately the Taliban was the most successful. To assume that all Pashtuns support the creation of a “Pashtunistan”, as you assert, is far too simplistic. I would not presume to understand the personal motivations of every member of the ISI, though I can observe and examine the actions of the organization. If you would be willing to propose an alternative motivation for the ISI to undertake this UW campaign against Afghanistan, I would be delighted to discuss that theory with you. The purpose of this piece was to apply the UW doctrine employed by the USG to analyze the UW campaign clearly undertaken by Pakistan against Afghanistan. My purpose was achieved, and while I appreciate your input, you have failed to disprove my fundamental argument.
While I certainly appreciate your feedback and thoughts, I believe that your "criticism", such as it is, warrants a direct response. While I do not have the time to address your points in excessive detail, I will make every attempt to mention them all. To begin, it is incontrovertible that the ISI was instrumental in the creation of the Taliban and the subsequent conquest of Afghanistan by that group. The evidence I presented alone should sufficiently prove that point. The fact that 80-100k Pakistani soldiers fought in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates the interest held by Pakistan in the success of the Taliban. While you attack my proposed motivation for the ISI as implausible (preventing the rise of "Pashtunistan"), you offer no alternative. Since it is generally accepted that the ISI was involved in the formation and direction of the Taliban, why do YOU suppose the ISI undertook this effort?
Moving on, the "Durand Line" has ALWAYS been contested by the vast majority of Afghans. You fall victim to your own accusation of "cherry picking" facts, as Ghazi Amanullah Khan did reaffirm the "Durand Line" as a part of the NEGOTIATED settlement to the the Third Anglo-Afghan War. A war which Ghazi Amanullah Khan was losing when he accepted those terms. Ghazi Amanullah was so despised by his subjects that he was ultimately forced into exile in 1929. And while I agree that Afghanistan has thawed its relations with a number of neighbors, your "point", fails to address the fact that Pakistan is still predominantly concerned with the threat it perceives from India.
Next, your argument that the Islamic State of Afghanistan was failing is specious, at best. The 1992 Peshawar Accords officially formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA). Every major Afghan belligerent agreed to participate in the ISA except for Hekmatyar. The Pakistanis were backing Hekmatyar, as you conceded. So, any argument that the ISA was “on the verge” of failure in 1992 willfully ignores the part that the Pakistanis were playing in ensuring that instability. Moreover, you acknowledged the fact that different departments of the ISI endorsed Hekmatyar (Peshawar) and the Taliban (Quetta). As my piece was an examination of the UW campaign rather than ISI-internal politics, I fail to see how addressing this issue would have strengthened or taken away from my analysis of the Taliban as a Pakistani UW proxy force?
Addressing the issue of Pakistani “involvement” in Afghanistan, I chose to not consider mere contact between the ISI and Afghan opposition groups as true “involvement” in Afghan affairs. While it is true that many religious extremists fled Daud's crackdowns in 1974/1975, there was really no active resistance to the government of the DRA. For my purposes, I considered “involvement” to be that period when the ISI (with significant US backing) provided MATERIAL support to the mujaheddin. This period began after the Soviet invasion in 1979, as I stated. To target such a trivial point, which really comes down to a matter of semantics (“contact” vs. “involvement”), indicates an overwhelming need on your part to attack the underlying point of my piece. Namely, the use of the Taliban by the ISI as a UW proxy force to pursue its interests in Afghanistan.
Determining who controlled the “endgame” in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal is certainly complicated, as a whole host of various actors maintained contacts and possessed incentives to control the fallout. As I addressed in my paper, the Pakistanis, Iranians, Indians, and AQ (among others) all remained invested to an extent far greater than the U.S. While I agree that the Pakistanis did share SOME nuclear secrets with the Iranians, I would not point to this as a clear rebuttal to my point concerning their regional competition. Clearly, this nuclear development support did not result in a functional nuclear weapon, as the Iranians continue to work toward this end. And how often have nations completely reversed their national policies toward one another, switching from friend to foe overnight? Iraq and the U.S. come to mind. Your argument that two countries must always cooperate because they did so once upon a time is ludicrous, to borrow your term.
Addressing the “Haqqani Network”, I recall going to great pains to point out that the differentiation between the organizations (HiG, HQN, Afghan Taliban, etc.) is quite murky given the constant cooperation and the fact that all three receive support from the ISI. What is clear is that these groups receive support and direction from the ISI in an effort to destabilize GIRoA. For the purposes of my paper, in which I was addressing Pakistan's UW campaign employing the Taliban as a UW proxy force, I believe my discussion of the Haqqani Network was sufficient. Similar to my counterpoint regarding the ISI-internal politics (Peshawar vs. Quetta departments), a detailed discussion of the history of the Haqqanis would not have added to or taken away anything from my purpose. Your feedback is appreciated, but ultimately superfluous.
I have decided to address your next three paragraphs together, as my response will be a reiteration of this tired theme. My discussion of Hekmatyar's time as a member of the ISA was brief because so too was his participation. Moreover, as this was an analysis of the Pakistani-sponsored UW campaign, discussion of the internal politics of the ISA was neither warranted or beneficial to the analysis. I did not highlight the fact that the Iranians backed Ismail Khan's push into Herat, and that certainly would have been a salient point had this paper been an analysis of Iranian UW efforts in Afghanistan (which I admit are also significant). You are correct in your point that Rasul Sayaf of Itihad was vital to the facilitation of AQ's assassination of Massoud, an attack that occurred at a time that Pakistan was still providing significant support to the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance. While I do not know if Sayaf was in the employ of Saudi Arabia, the efforts of AQ to assassinate one man pales in comparison to the larger UW campaign that was ongoing with Pakistani backing. Had I endeavored to write a book on the subject, I certainly would have included more of the fascinating factoids you've presented as some sort of rebuttal.
You are correct in your assertion that Ambassador Robin Raphel did endorse the Taliban in the UN. However, here again you fall victim to your own accusations of prevarication, in that you failed to mention the fact that Ambassador Raphel was often accused by the media of holding preferential opinions of the Pakistanis and the Taliban, while opposing policies that would benefit India or the Northern Alliance. She voraciously argued for the complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban (despite their horrendous human rights record) up until September of 2011. And President Karzai has shown a recurring tendency to “hedge his bets” by undertaking measures to ensure the survival of his family. That said, his donation of a paltry $20k should not indicate some sort of “grassroots” Afghan support to the Taliban. Thanks largely to the Pakistani's UW campaign, there were no viable alternatives to the Taliban, showing the intelligent design of the effort.
Finally, I made the point very early in my paper that the ISI has maintained this campaign despite the rise and fall of multiple Pakistani administrations, indicating that the effort is largely divorced from Pakistani political control. Internal politics aside, the ISI decided very early to undertake this campaign to destabilize Afghanistan and exert its influence. Various ISI departments advocated for the use of different proxy forces, but ultimately the Taliban was the most successful. To assume that all Pashtuns support the creation of a “Pashtunistan”, as you assert, is far too simplistic. I would not presume to understand the personal motivations of every member of the ISI, though I can observe and examine the actions of the organization. If you would be willing to propose an alternative motivation for the ISI to undertake this UW campaign against Afghanistan, I would be delighted to discuss that theory with you. The purpose of this piece was to apply the UW doctrine employed by the USG to analyze the UW campaign clearly undertaken by Pakistan against Afghanistan. My purpose was achieved, and while I appreciate your input, you have failed to disprove my fundamental argument.
When not watching "Little Mosque" that is. Sometimes I contribute here: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-tale-of-two-warriors-finding-bel…
But more often I publish research articles under Special Reports such as "Accidental Alchemy: Forging the Taliban into Effective Governance by Default,"When Idols Turn to Sand: How the West Nearly Killed Malala Yousafzai," and "American Frankenstein: The Haqqani Revival" at Foreign Policy Journal. Primarily I focus on the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, since that's where my expertise lays... Because though "The Beast" was filmed in Israel, it was set in Khandahar, haha.
I watch a lot of "Little Mosque" on Hulu which I feel gives me the inside perspective on Pakistan. And as Carl alleges, I also spy for the ISI with a focus on "article disruption." That combined with a careful study of "The Beast" and "Rambo III" I believe make my subject matter expertise nearly tangible. Hopefully my bonafides will alter history as well as a need for accuracy academic writing.
MSnow:
Did you ever see 12 O'Clock High? It was a great movie that conveyed an essential truth of a part of WWII. But if you watch the movie you will hear the guns of the German fighters as heard from the inside of the B-17s. You couldn't hear the guns of the German fighters from inside a B-17, the ambient noise level was too high. Now if you were to spend paragraphs nitpicking that and other inconsequentials you are throwing dust into the air the effect of which is to detract from the essential point of the movie. You are doing the same thing here, to me obviously intentionally. I figure that is because you are running interference for the Pak Army/ISI. You can say you want to strengthen the work but you don't, you want cast doubt upon the main point, the Pak Army/ISI is warring upon us.
Ready, break? No guy, I always played defense because I like knocking people flat.
Uh oh--does the President know? It's not nit-picking, it's finding errors and inconsistencies to strengthen the body of the work. I like to think that the author would prefer put forth the most accurate article possible rather than seek out a pat on the ego. So, I'll keep finding them while you run and tell the President... ready? Break!
The author seems to abandon the clear UW argument in lieu of a heavily-strained straw man. Despite citations, this seems fairly poorly researched with large leaps and bounds of faith required to complete the argument of doctrinal UW in Afghanistan. He at will either disregards tremendous chunks of pertinent history, or simply doesn't understand resulting an inefficient narrative capable of bearing the weight of his claim.
Just for starters, the Durrand line was re-affirmed a few times throughout its history. I believe Ghazi Amanallah confirmed it after winning the right to manage Afghanistan's foreign policy from the UK. Likewise, although Karzai has warmed to India at the behest of western interest, he has also warmed to China and a budding Silk Road Pact that would isolate India on the subcontinent. Karzai actually referred to China as “the anchor of stability.” The result of this would put India back in the pocket of Russia which would further isolate the west from Asian affairs, thus, the only attempt to block is with interdependent economies between Afghanistan and India which has thus far only resulted in a few offensive bids on mining from India's SAIL.
PK did not “employ” the TB to overthrow the ISA, the ISA was failing and TB developed as a reaction to the instability in an attempt to stabilize Maiwand and Panjwai districts of Khandahar—at least according to its founders which is available to read in Mullah Salaam Zaeef's memoir “My Life with the Taliban.” The narrative illustrated by Zaeef is at least corroborated with media at the time, whereas Mullah Omar being primed by PK prior to even the fall of Dr. Najibullah (1991 as the author stated) seems far-fetched and on the verge of conspiracy theory. Particularly since the Afghan Bureau of the ISI CAD was still located in Peshawar and still championing Hekmatyar. It was ultimately the Quetta office of ISI that approached Bhutto about an endorsement of TB after their creation, but had to convince her away from the Peshawar office. Obviously, this would only complicate such a streamlined narrative as posed above.
The author also claims that ISI involvement began “with the Russian invasion of 1979,” though that isn't accurate, nor is the truth so dramatic. The earliest contact with ISI appears when surviving members of the Kabul University student organization known as the Muslim Youth fled President Daud's regime crackdown on Islamists in 1974/75. This is where Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaladin Haqqani, Ahmed Shah Massoud, Qazi Amin, and a few other notables first arrived in Peshawar and were received by ISI. It was the birthplace of the original Hesbi-Islami, then under the leadership of Qazi Amin. This was the only point of a unified front for resistance. Also notable, President Daud when serving as Prime Minister under Zahir Shah was the primary saber rattler of Pashtunistan. No such claim was ever made by Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, Babrak Karmal, or Dr. Najibullah. While strategic depth has always been important to PK, the Pashtunistan fear is often over-stated as it is here.
The author also claims that in 1989 as the Soviets withdrew, and brokering the “end game” became entirely PK's responsibility--which is simply untrue. US maintained a presence and influence in the region—certainly not to the extent of pre-1989, but certainly still relevant until PK became a nuclear power. At that point, US was prohibited by nonproliferation to give arms to PK even if they were for the seven parties of the resistance. PK, then offered to trade nuclear secrets to Iran (which the author states is an existential enemy of PK, though one rarely gives nuclear secrets to existential enemies) until US returned its non-military aid. It was not until 1992 that there was a zero dollar budget for the Afghanistan project. Regardless, it was ultimately Prince Faisl of the Saudi GIS that brokered the “end game.”
The author also states that for most of the early 80s Haqqani fought under Hekmatyar's HiG banner before starting the Haqqani Network. That's ludicrous—the only point that Haqqani was in Hesb-i Islami with Hekmatyar was in the initial days when it was run by Qazi Amin prior to the Russian Invasion. When Rabbani left to form Jamiat and Hekmatyar took HiG, Malawi Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi was brought in to form Harakat-i-Inqilab which reunited the two parties—however, Haqqani sat out. Rather, he joined the cleric, Mawlawi Yunis Khales, who took the Hesb-i Islami brand he thought was “too valuable to waste.” Until he joined the Taliban in 1996 at the urging of ISI, he was always a commander in HiK along side Abdul Haq and later Amin Wardak. The term “Haqqani Network” is our creation, not theirs. Sarajuddin Haqqani, Jalaluddin's son from his arab wife, has repeatedly affirmed his loyalty to Mullah Omar and the Emirate. The separation occurs so that US can not only pursue HQN as a “terrorist” organization, but also maintain international leverage over PK with a threat of slapping them with State-sponsored terrorism. It's what keeps your Rip-Its coming in through Karachi.
As far as the author's history of the turbulent ISA years, Hekmatyar was serving as Prime Minister from his seat in Charsyab during his attacks. He accepted and attacked off and on a number of times until TB seized Jalalabad. At that time, Hekmatyar realized PK had abandoned him and made a quick alliance with Massoud. However, Massoud was unaccustomed to the new terrain and his men were mostly ineffective fighting without that intimacy, so he tried to keep them north until Hekmatyar eventually goaded him into a strike toward Jalalabad. At that time, Hekmatyar hung him out to dry. A lot of his seasoned men died there, and he took what he could back to Panjshir. That is hardly the “sallied forth” of the author's claim.
Likewise, the surprise attack on Herat was not quite a surprise. Iran sponsored Ismail Khan with Toyota Hiluxes and new arms in an attempt to strike into the fledgling TB controlled area where he maintained a large amount of success. Unfortunately, he ultimately outfought his logistics and had to tactically withdraw while TB simply followed them home.
Al Qaeda is mentioned, but its certainly doesn't mention that Osama bin Laden was invited to Afghanistan by Rasul Sayyaf—the head of the Itihad party and only Pashtun faction of the Northern Alliance. Nor does it mention that the Belgian journalist suicide bombers got to Massoud after Sayyaf vouched for them. Nor does it mention that Sayyaf was on the payroll of Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan. Sidenote, Sayyaf is currently the most powerful member of parliament, chaired a seat at the Bonn conference, father figure to the 1993 WTC bomber, personal mentor to Khaled Sheik Mohammed, and intimate friend of Osama bin Laden, the paternal influence of Abu Sayyaf (Sons of Sayyaf) terror organization... he is also running for president this April as a testament to the US led Global War on Terror.
Although PK may have 30 years invested in the instability of Afghanistan, so does the US. In fact, Robin Raphel, assistant secretary of state stood before the UN and vouched for the Taliban during its infancy, and President Karzai donated 20k dollars of his slim holdings to get them started. Perhaps that was all part of PK's UW plan.
The campaign in Afghanistan is far too complex to hang on a 7 point template—particularly when each of those points begins with the State initiating an action, though we never established whether ISI was working in collusion with Pakistan. The ISI did receive quite a structure change in the early 90s when they solicited help from Saudi GIS and Osama bin Laden to lead a coup against Prime Minister Bhutto—which is right in the middle of the author's State sponsored plan for UW. Likewise, it was two separate, if not opposing offices of the Quetta and Peshawar ISI. Additionally, the Afghan bureau was staffed primarly by Pashtuns—would they not stand to profit from a Pashtunistan? Nothing can wrap up so neatly. The author would have been better served explaining the UW campaign in Kashmir. I do agree that there is likely a template for UW in Afghanistan, but I think it needs to be better researched. Items can't be omitted or misrepresented just for the sake of fulfilling the promise of the article.
I am afraid that the author starts with an unproven premise that Pakistan wages UW in effect as a defensive measure to protect its territory from being taken over by its neighbors by weakening them and imposing its will on them.
The fact that this narrative is peddled by Pakistanis themselves should make one pause.
If Pakistan spends its scarce resources mostly on development and education as opposed to armed jihad, one might be willing to give the country a pass.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.
In fact, a more appropriate alternate premise, supported by data is that Pakistan’s elite see its purpose as a nation destined to wage armed jihad to conquer territory and people in the name of Islam.
The energy starved Pakistan uses nuclear reactors, not for electricity creation, but for building plutonium-based nukes. Here’s one more: Pakistan’s army motto is “Faith, Piety and Holy War in the Path of Allah.” Pakistan-sponsored Lashkar-e-Taiba selectively sought out and killed Jews in 2008 Mumbai attack for religious reasons.
Has anyone read or heard about “Islamic Conquest,” as described in history books?
Just go and ask Indians, they know Pakistan more than anyone else. Right from the day after 9/11 attacks, Indians kept telling us that we are reading Pakistan wrong.
We thought we could make Pakistan dance, and instead, we did, to its tune. We still do, even after a decade.