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    Taliban Attack: Why Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)?

    By Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/28/2009 - 1:18pm | World Affairs

    When I read about yesterday's Taliban attack on the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), I raised my eyebrows. Why the ISI? It's not an easy target, and in fact the attack was repelled by guards. Nor would a successful attack have been an effective way to create instability. The ISI is not filled with sympathetic targets whose deaths would arouse the nation.

    Hakimullah Mehsud, a militant associated with the Taliban, explained that the attack was a retaliation for Pakistan's Army operations in the Swat Valley:

    "We were looking for this target for a long time. It was a reaction to the Swat operation."

    The papers seemed to have accepted this explanation without question. But the ISI is not the Army. The ISI did not invade the Swat Valley. More significantly, ISI has historically supported the Taliban and other Islamic militants:

    Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, [American government] officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.

    Something has clearly happened to provoke Taliban's ire against its longtime patron. The attack was a retaliation for sure, but it was not a retaliation against the Army's operations; it was a retaliation against the ISI's actions. We can make an educated guess that the ISI has finally moved to cast off its terrorist wards. Indeed, Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayan used to lead the ISI, and as the Swat operation makes clear that he has committed himself ousting the Taliban, it's not surprising that he would push the ISI in the same direction. If that is the case, Pakistan security forces may finally be united in opposition to the Taliban, which could have significant consequences for the war in Afghanistan.

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    Comments

    Excellent blog.

    My brother Stephen was killed in Pakistan in November while directing a 750 million dollar aid mission there. The evidence defies a "terrorist" classification, and is in fact what all the major news organizations defined it as; an assassination.

    This "war on terror", especially now as it is develping in Pakistans' and Afghanistans' border regions have much more in common with Columbia during the Cold War. That is, miltants who transition to fund their violence through the drug trade.

    If there are any questions to be asked, they should be asked within these criteria and forget Allah, 911 or Ben Laden for that matter.

    The story is drugs for guns and money and visa versa.

    (www.stephendvancefoundation.org)


    by jeffrey vance (not verified) on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 4:15am

    Thank you, Jeffrey. I'm very sorry about your brother.

    The comparison to Columbia is interesting. I hadn't thought about it before. There are certainly many similarities: ideological origin; drug-fueled; cross-border; territorial control. Given, the Taliban's history of enforcing sharia, I expect that the organization is still more ideologically driven than what FARC has become, but perhaps it resembles FARC 10 years ago, and the ideology will eventually fall away completely.

    What's missing, however, are the equivalent of right-wing militia. Perhaps that's still to come. Anti-Taliban civilian militias have been formed, though the Taliban has easily routed them when it has moved en force.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 2:14pm

    Jeffrey, as someone who also has relatives in harm's way in the greater Mideast, all my sympathies. Pakistan is not the friendliest place for Westerners.


    by acanuck on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 4:45pm

    Genghis, kudos for even attempting to parse out the real meaning of current events in Pakistan. Most of what filters out to the West is smoke, mirrors, smoke reflected in mirrors, and mirrors obscured by smoke. The Pakistanis, and especially the ISI, like it that way.

    Take the Swat "offensive." Two million-plus people internally displaced -- mostly on orders of the military. But even Pakistani media are excluded from the war zone, fed only carefully selected images of the operation. Kabuki, some have suggested -- a carefully choreographed shadow-play for the benefit of the Americans. Deals struck under which militants withdraw from certain areas, which can then be shown to be free of "Taliban." Until they are, once again, not.

    How would the Lahore attack, ostensibly retaliation for Swat, fit into this scenario? For one thing, even though seven of the 35 killed were reportedly ISI employees, it's an open question whether the attack was specifically aimed at the agency. Mehsud probably has some beefs against the local cops as well. And the ISI has lots to gain PR-wise by playing up discord with the Taliban.

    Taliban should always be read with quotation marks around it, especially within Pakistan and even when a group uses the word as part of its name. Even the Afghan Taliban consists of three separate entities, with slightly different agendas, though all defer more or less to Mullah Omar's leadership. The Pakistani Taliban are even more fragmented, with no acknowledged overall leader, and with varying degrees of connection to their Afghan counterparts. It's a zoo, and, once again, that's how the ISI likes it.  The agency supports, funds, advises and co-ordinates with particular groups (or not) based on the tactics of the moment.

    But strategically, the Taliban are too valuable a proxy force for the ISI ever to abandon them. Pakistani security forces see the U.S. as a short-term friend, but India as the long-term enemy. They see the Karzai government as a bastion of Indian influence, so they are anti-Karzai -- and the Taliban are their allies. In the east, Kashmiri militant groups are a way for Pakistan to keep Indian troops worried and occupied -- a good alternative to actual clashes between militaries, some might argue.

    So no, I don't think the ISI has changed its spots. That won't happen until peace actually breaks out with India. Obama's initial instinct -- that solving the Kashmir border dispute is the key to defanging the Taliban -- was correct. India vetoed that approach, since the last thing they want to do is acknowledge formally any loss of territory.


    by acanuck on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 4:41pm

    Alas, it's all guesswork. There was more than one party who took responsibility for the ISI attack, so it's not even clear who did it.

    It seems that one journalist has asked the same question that I did. Here is the response from a retired Indian intelligence officer:

    Of these various Talibans, only the Neo Taliban of Mullah Mohammad Omar, which was created by the ISI in 1994 when Benazir Bhutto was prime minister, still owes its loyalty to the ISI and the Pakistan government. The Neo Taliban is active against the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghan territory from sanctuaries in Pakistan, but it has never been involved in an act of terrorism in Pakistani territory against Pakistani targets, whether from the army, the ISI or the police. All the attacks on Pakistani territory and on Pakistani government targets were carried out by different Pakistani Taliban groups or by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)--which has transferred its headquarters from Bahawalpur to Swat--and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), an anti-Shia terrorist organization.

    In answer to your point, while a proxy force is valuable to Pakistan, I expect that the cost of what is essentially a rebellion within Pakistan may outweigh that value. I expect that the ISI would start to get very nervous if it were unable to control the proxy force.

    I agree that the Kashmir is the key, but I don't expect progress there any time soon. It offers too much political value to both India and Pakistan. Not only the passive value of avoiding a perceived defeat but also a positive value in the sense that the governments can exploit it to stoke nationalist fervor. I think that Kashmir will only be resolved after average Indians and Pakistanis stops caring. In my opinion, it is one of dumbest of conflicts b/c it's obvious how it will be resolved. Kashmir is split and will remain split. The parties just have to come to terms with it.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 05/31/2009 - 12:27am

    Average Pakistanis and Indians will keep caring about Kashmir as long as their govts. fan the flames. And by flames, I don't mean rhetorical ones. I mean actual flames caused by incendiary devices and bombs.

    Proxy attacks on the hotels in Mumbai and the Indian embassy in Kabul suggest the ISI is doing way more than its share to inflame the conflict. India, by contrast, just elected a less-hardline government. Even though a resolution is in the interest of both sides, I'm with you that full-fledged peace is far in the future.


    by acanuck on Sun, 05/31/2009 - 3:08pm

    If you get a chance, Genghis, pick up The Duel by Pakistani-born Tariq Ali. I've just started reading it, but it makes a lot of sense.


    by acanuck on Tue, 06/02/2009 - 3:58am