By Steve Hynd
Veteran Afghanistan reporter Anand Gopal has an eye-opener of a piece at Christian Science Monitor today.He writes that the major threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan isn't Omar's Taliban or even Bin Laden's Al Qaeda - it's the Haqqani network of militants. And every major attack is planned with the help of Pakistan's shadowy ISI intelligence service.
"The Haqqani network has proven itself to be the most capable [of the insurgent groups], able to conduct spectacular attacks inside Afghanistan," says Matthew DuPee, researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
The network, which is independent of (but allied with) the Taliban, showed its mettle again on May 12, when nearly a dozen fighters stormed government buildings in Afghanistan's southeastern city of Khost. The coordinated attack featured multiple suicide bombers and was one of the most brazen to take place in the city in years.
The Haqqani network is considered the most sophisticated of Afghanistan's insurgent groups. The group is alleged to be behind many high-profile assaults, including a raid on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January 2008 and a massive car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left 41 people dead in July 2008.
The group is active in Afghanistan's southeastern provinces � Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar, and Ghazni. In parts of Paktika, Khost, and Paktia, they have established parallel governments and control the countryside of many districts. "In Khost, government officials need letters from Haqqani just to move about on the roads in the districts," says Hanif Shah Husseini, a parliamentarian from Khost.
The leadership, according to US and Afghan sources, is based near Miramshah, North Waziristan, in the Pakistani tribal areas. Pakistani authorities and leading Haqqani figures deny this, although former Haqqani fighters say this is indeed the case.
The network is better connected to Pakistani intelligence and Arab jihadist groups than any other Afghan insurgent group, according to American intelligence officials.
...In addition to suicide attacks, the Haqqanis are known for their well-orchestrated attacks. US intelligence officials and Haqqani insiders say that this is largely a result of close cooperation with the Pakistani ISI � something Pakistani officials have denied.
Every major attack "is planned in detail with the ISI in camps in Waziristan," says one former Haqqani commander, who declined to be named for fear of retribution. Officials say the Haqqanis use money from Al Qaeda-linked sources, and also possibly from timber smuggling, to finance their operations.
The current head of the Pakistani armed forces, General Kayani, is de facto ruler of that nation, keeping a convenient civilian figurehead so the U.S. can keep sending weapons without looking like it's still arming a dictatorship. He was also head of the ISI back in 2006 when bombs blasted out across Mumbai in India - an attack the Indian's say was as much planned by the ISI as the more recent attacks of last year. There's a massive body of accounts and evidence that the ISI are deeply involved, still and at an institutional level, in using terror groups as proxies. Yet Kayani's bff Admiral Mullen and the Obama administration keep saying the problem is limited only to "certain elements" within the ISI and that Pakistan is a tue, staunch ally of America's GWOT (tm). Either Obama, Mullen et al are being had, or we are.
There's no way Obama doesn't know about this. The NY Times reported last year that the CIA deputy director went to Pakistan to discuss this very issue. It also claimed that Haqqani "maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda."
ReplyDeleteThe Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, has also reported on this:
So it was, only months after September 11, that the ISI was giving refuge to the entire Taliban leadership after it fled from Afghanistan. Mullah Omar was kept in an ISI safehouse in the town of Quetta...while Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most violent Taliban commanders, was given sanctuary by the ISI in north Waziristan, a part of FATA.
Is the Pakistani Army operation in Swat a sign that the army and ISI are beginning to divorce themselves from the TTP (Taliban umbrella group)? Especially with India also providing support for the TTP (Terrorists in Swat using American and Indian made weapons).
ReplyDeleteRuss, I'd guess it was more a sign that the TTP largely divorced itself from the ISI some time back. The ISI's support was always more for Omar, Haqqani and the Afghan Taliban than it was for the TTP in any case, so the ties were easier to dissolve.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Steve
Steve,
ReplyDeleteWhenever you see a report about someone being close to the ISI you might also examine their ties to the US. Remember that the ISI was for the most part funded by us during the glory days of Charlie Wilson's war, so their agents were more often than not were our agents. Haqqani was one of our favorites. We thought he was "goodness personified" and I had heard that he was the first person to whom we offered the presidency of Afghanistan (Karzai was the third). Haqqani stayed on the sidelines for a while after 2001. My 'O shit' moment was when I heard he had allied himself again with the Taleban, because based on his past record he is a very savvy guerrilla fighter. We tried our usual approach of grabbing relatives and presumably torturing them (a brother and a son in his case IIRC) to turn him - probably not that great an idea - especially as it does not seem to have worked.
Kayani's bff Mullen might have good reasons for not openly attacking the ISI and its relationships with Haqqani. It might draw attention to our relationships as well.