Should the London School of Economics (LSE) be lauded for announcing, in June this year, the findings of its “study” that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) majorly supports the Taliban, after over 16 years of its creation by the ISI? One does not expect the scholars at the LSE involved in this study to have taken into account what Indian intelligence agencies may have collated on this subject, but it may be relevant to mention what Arnie Schifferdecker, a US foreign service officer, who earlier served in Afghanistan and came back in 1997 as adviser to the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan, wrote in a paper titled “The Taliban-Bin Laden-ISI Connection” in December 2001: “In the fallout from the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Osama bin Laden has become a household name, as have his protectors, Afghanistan’s Taliban. A third force gaining notoriety is the Taliban’s mentor and sometime collaborator with Bin Laden: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. Sweeping into Kabul in 1996, the fundamentalist Taliban militia had significant help from the ISI and Pakistani religious parties. Other Afghan factions were ousted from the capital as unreliable allies. Everyone knew that the militia’s leaders in the Pashtun-dominated south were maintaining close contact with Pakistani intelligence operatives, some of whom had resided for long periods in Afghanistan. Despite regular Pakistani denials that they had created or were supporting the Taliban militarily, sightings of arms, ammunition and vehicles moving from Pakistan across the porous common border to Taliban strongholds were common. So-called volunteers from the Pakistani government-sponsored religious schools (madrasas) provided a steady stream of Taliban manpower — in some cases, cannon fodder — for the battles raging in the north during the summer dry season. Even uniformed Pakistani military trainers were seen in Afghanistan, particularly at Rishkor, a military base outside Kabul.”
Schifferdecker also states in the paper that terrorists meant for “India-occupied Kashmir” were recruited from the same talent pool of Jamiat-e-ulema-Islam seminaries supplying young “fighters” for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. To avoid Indian detection, the ISI conducted much of the training for its Kashmir campaign in Afghanistan, with the cooperation of the Taliban. In return, several camps were placed under Osama bin Laden’s control for the use of the terrorist network he was creating for his own long-term goals of forcing the United States out of West Asia.
On May 10, 2010, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said to the media that “some Pakistani officials were more informed about Al Qaeda and Taliban than they let on… I’m not saying that they’re at the highest levels but I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is and we expect more cooperation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill, those who attacked us on 9/11.”
On whether the US was not getting full cooperation from Pakistan, Hillary said that there has been sea change in cooperation by the Pakistan authorities, adding “we want more”. When asked why the Obama administration was not putting enough pressure on Islamabad to hand over Osama and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, she said: “I have to stand up for the efforts the Pakistani government is taking. They have done a very significant move toward going after the terrorists within their own country.”
How many more thousands of soldiers of the US and other armies forming the coalition force will have to die at the hands of those who Pakistan’s military/ISI is supporting, for the US to finally get it right? So far, what is indeed most disturbing is that with all that is known about Pakistan being the main hub of terror, not only for all of India, but also for the US — and not only in Afghanistan but within the US also — as well as many other countries, why is the US, leave alone not doing the needful to prevent Pakistan actively support it with large amounts of money and weapons, including those not meant for fighting terrorism?
These questions are particularly of great concern to India because not only almost every single terrorist attack in India over the past two decades as well as terrorist attacks on Indians in Afghanistan — including the Border Roads Organisation who constructed the vital Zaranj-Delaram road, the Indian embassy and Indian civilians — have been by the deadly ISI-Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) nexus.
The next matter of great concern to India’s security is the sustained nuclear weapons proliferation by China and Pakistan, the former’s substantial assistance to the latter in the past and the recent step of China brazenly asserting that it will assist Pakistan further in constructing two 650 megawatts nuclear reactors at Chashma in Punjab province. The US’ “concern” over this development amounts to thinking about bolting the stable door after horse has bolted. The US kept a Nelson’s Eye turned ever since Pakistan’s nuke-maker A.Q. Khan began his secret shopping sprees during the 1980s and thereafter when he continued with all the production. Deception, by award-winning investigative journalists Adian Levy and Catherine Scott Clark (Penguin), lays bare all that the US did not do to prevent Pakistan’s entire programme involving assistance from China, assistance to North Korea/through it to even Burma, all behind the charade of Pakistan’s periodic official denials. An excerpt from Deception says it all: “It was a mirror of the nonsensical relationship between Zia-ul Haq and George Schultz in the late 1980s, when the Pakistani President had offered repeated denials that were accepted for the record by the secretary of state — although in private the CIA had unequivocal intelligence showing the opposite”
India must be clear about gearing itself for going it alone by not getting stymied in re-acquiring its conventional weapons edge it had till 1971. And both India and the US need to exercise political will to take their respective assertive measures against Pakistan for their own good as well as the good of the world and even Pakistan itself.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi