Author: John Daniszewski, Tyler
Marshall, Los Angeles Times
Publication: San Francisco Chronicle
Date: October 30, 2001
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/10/30/MN62581.DTL
Quetta, Pakistan -- Behind a dusty
gray wall in the military district here works an organization with the
secret knowledge that could spell success or doom for U. S. military operations
against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Mysterious and powerful, Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been called a state within a state.
It has been the largely hidden hand in Afghan politics for more than two
decades, working with the CIA to defeat occupying Soviet forces and then,
on its own, funneling arms and advice to help the Taliban movement become
Afghanistan's master in 1996.
Back then, the Taliban's victory
was viewed as ISI's crowning success and a breakthrough for Pakistani interests.
But under American pressure after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States,
Pakistan concluded that the Taliban were too hot to be tolerated, and the
ISI was told to turn on its former friends.
Some accuse the agency of playing
a double game ever since, pretending to help while quietly allowing weapons
to flow into Afghanistan after Sept. 11, encouraging Pakistani religious
parties to rally support for the Taliban and turning a blind eye to many
volunteers from Pakistan going across the Afghan border to fight against
U.S. forces.
"We now see in retrospect the tragic
folly of entrusting our Afghan policy to the ISI -- an institution full
of intelligence but devoid of wisdom," wrote M.P. Bhandara, a former member
of the National Assembly, in the daily newspaper Dawn.
With the United States desperate
to woo at least some prominent defectors from the Taliban and to learn
the whereabouts of bin Laden and other leaders of his terror network, the
ISI's importance is difficult to overstate. If the agency tells everything
it knows, few believe that the Taliban will be able to hold out.
"I am of the opinion that not a
needle in Afghanistan is secret from the ISI," said Mehmood Achakzai, a
leading politician in Quetta from the Pashtun ethnic group, which fills
Taliban ranks. "The Taliban cannot survive for three days without our patronage."
But it is a big if, and some Pakistanis
and Western diplomats view the ISI as at best a reluctant ally in the war
on terrorism.
According to sources in Pakistan's
Afghan refugee community, the ISI has made efforts to enlist new clients
inside Afghanistan to help overthrow the Taliban, as shown by a meeting
arranged in the Pakistani city of Peshawar last week of former mujahedeen
willing to become Taliban opponents.
Whether the Islamic movement was
the stepchild of the ISI or the ISI simply adopted a new indigenous force
with obvious potential, it is clear that the Taliban presented many advantages
for Pakistan at the time.
Riding on the unifying banner of
strict adherence to Sunni Islam, the faith of most Afghans and Pakistanis,
the Taliban could rise above the internecine warfare that had ripped Afghanistan
apart and restore stability. Then, Pakistan would be able to open more
direct trade routes to Central Asia.
The Taliban also would give Pakistan
a friendly Pashtun-led regime to the west while it faced its traditional
enemy, India, to the east.
The Taliban's alliance with bin
Laden also gave the ISI access to al-Qaeda training camps, according to
Pakistani officials. The agency sent Muslim militants to train in Afghanistan
for guerrilla actions in Kashmir, a region claimed by India and Pakistan.
The then-director of the ISI, Lt.
Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, was in the United States on Sept. 11. According to
Pakistani sources, he was given an ultimatum by Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage that Pakistan must assist in the war against terror. From
the first, the U.S. demands included full sharing of ISI intelligence about
the Taliban and bin Laden.
Within days, Mahmood was sent by
Musharraf on the first of two missions to Afghanistan. The aim, as defined
by the president, was to make it clear to Taliban leaders that they would
face U.S. attack unless they turned over bin Laden.
Mahmood came back empty-handed.
But the choice of messenger was significant:
Taliban officials heard that they
were facing elimination from the head of the agency that had been their
staunchest supporter in the war against the erstwhile government of Afghanistan,
now the opposition Northern Alliance.
But when did ISI actually stop helping
the regime?
One Pakistan-based diplomat said
it was widely accepted that a Taliban supply line carrying arms and other
war supplies ran from Pakistan into Afghanistan, even after United Nations
sanctions against the Taliban were imposed in January for the regime's
failure to heed a deadline to surrender bin Laden and shut down terrorist
camps. The supply line continued, the diplomat said, for weeks after Sept.
11.
If such shipments were taking place,
it is unclear whether top officials of the ISI knew of them.
The unmistakable signal that the
ISI's policy had reversed came Oct. 7, the day the U.S. bombing campaign
began. Musharraf suddenly replaced Mahmood as director-general of the agency
with Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, who reportedly is more willing to carry out
an anti-Taliban policy. The shake-up was accompanied by a purge of
the middle ranks of the ISI, to remove officers deemed too close to the
Taliban, the former operative said.