Taliban Say They're Getting Played By Pakistan Too

By Steve Hynd

Once in a while a piece of reporting comes along that illuminates and symplifies a complex question. Like "what's the ISI up to, then?"  Ron Moraeu has a gem of a piece in Newsweek entitled "With friends like these...:

The Afghan Taliban logistics officer laughs about the news he�s been hearing on his radio this past week. The story is that a Web site known as WikiLeaks has obtained and posted thousands of classified field reports from U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and hundreds of those reports mention the Americans� suspicions that Pakistan is secretly assisting the Taliban�a charge that Pakistan has repeatedly and vehemently denied. �At least we have something in common with America,� the logistics officer says. �The Pakistanis are playing a double game with us, too.�

Pakistan�s ongoing support of the Afghan Taliban is anything but news to insurgents who have spoken to NEWSWEEK. Requesting anonymity for security reasons, many of them readily admit their utter dependence on the country�s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only for sanctuary and safe passage but also, some say, for much of their financial support. The logistics officer, speaking at his mud-brick compound near the border, offers an unverifiable estimate that Pakistan provides roughly 80 percent of the insurgents� funding, based on his conversations with other senior Taliban. He says the insurgents could barely cover their expenses in Kandahar province alone if not for the ISI. Not that he views them as friends. �They feed us with one hand and arrest and kill us with the other,� he says.

...�Their aim seems to be to prolong the war in Afghanistan by aiding both the Americans and us,� says the logistics officer. �That way Pakistan continues to receive billions from the U.S., remains a key regional player, and still maintains influence with [the Taliban].� And which side is Pakistan on? �That�s a foolish question,� says Anatol Lieven, a professor in the Department of War Studies at King�s College London. �Pakistan is on Pakistan�s side, just as America is on America�s.� Nobody knows that better than the Taliban.

Read, as they say, the whole thing. I'm sure there'll be reasons given by Pakistan's establishment as to why it doesn't constitute a "smoking gun" for their duplicity, but it's yet another item in a litany of reports that together constitute enough smoke for a whole forest fire.

It may be fair to say that Pakistan is on Pakistan's side - that, after all, is what "national interest" is all about. But then again it's also fair for the international community to say, as Britain's David Cameron did, that " It is unacceptable for anything to happen within Pakistan that is about supporting terrorism elsewhere." At the very least, the US military should stop sending such sycophantic messages about the "softly spoken" and "chain smoking" Machiavelli who runs the country - General Kayani - to their stenographic media shills.

And it is, in the final analysis, probably untrue to say that the ISI and military constitute all of or should be taken as the definitive version of what is "Pakistan's side". They're just one part of the feudal elite which rules Pakistan, albeit the part that determines Pakistan's foreign policy. But Pakistan's true "national interests", the interests that serve the majority of the Pakistani people, probably don't map well with what the elite want.