ISI-the Trojan horse?

As the Pakistani government has been fighting terrorism within the country many pertinent questions are raised by the common people about the recent rise of Talibanization in Pakistan, especially in North West Frontier Province. People prick ears by asking where these Taliban have come from, who supports them financially and strategically; how a cleric with meek financial resources becomes able to challenge the writ of the state; how a former truck conductor establishes his government over a considerably large territory; and where the students at Jamia Hifsa have got the weapons from.

These questions must have their answers in the famous 'strategic depth' theory which our security agencies, especially the Inter Services Agency, have been conducting since 1980s.

The ISI began at the time of the birth of Pakistan. At that time, when British officers were still advising the Pakistani and Indian armies, they suggested an inter services intelligence organization that would serve all three services in the Pakistani military. So that was established.

Later on, ISI began to blossom, assuming many responsibilities outside the military intelligence area.

Former Pakistani President Gen. Mohammad Zia ruthlessly used the ISI as the point organization to handle Afghanistan. It was a time when Pakistan was a front-line state.

So he chose to use this very secretive organization to conduct the jihad against the Soviet Union inside Afghanistan. He also insisted that all U.S. weaponry be handed over to the ISI at Karachi when these ships came in laden with weapons, and that ISI would then take control of the ordnance and move it to the frontier and then organize distribution.

Allied with the Americans and Saudis, the Pakistani army — and particularly its intelligence apparatus, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — had as its mission the creation of a jihadist force in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. In order to carry out the agenda the ISI together with CIA used religion as a powerful tool to recruit mujahideens from all over the world. Without looking into the future scenario, what we are facing today, the ISI and CIA headed forward blindly. The Western media and the religious parties played a vital role in mobilizing the common man to carry out a proxy war in the name of Jihad.

In fact, Afghanistan was, and is, a game ground for the major players of international politic. First the Soviets attempting to set up a puppet government in Kabul, and then, when the Soviets left, the Pakistanis attempted to establish a puppet government in Kabul. Pakistan tried Hekmatyar but that failed. When that didn't work, the Taliban were created by ISI.

Throughout this whole period, the ISI played the major role in military matters, from organizing offenses to equipping the forces that were fighting, and even putting out public statements. High rank military officers were coaching Mullah Omar and other Taliban, who were for the most part semiliterate, on how to administer their areas and how to proceed militarily.

One wonders what agenda ISI was pursuing. The answer is the 'strategic depth'.

The ISI and the Pakistanis wanted to emphasize the Islamist Afghan side over the nationalist Afghan side because the nationalist side, the secular side, had always stressed the need to recapture Afghanistan as it existed in the last part of the 18th century and part of the 19th century, which included the Pukhtun areas of Pakistan.

Secondly Pakistan supported the Islamists: to create strategic depth to face India.

When experiments with the various puppet governments of mujahideen failed ISI, with the consent of USA for it wanted to contain Iran, groomed the madarassa students under the name of Taliban. The Taliban captured Afghanistan overnight except the very north which was resisting under Ahmad Shah Masud with support from Iran. The Taliban were then in the good books of USA as it described them as ""probably opposing Western modernism, but not against the West itself."

Then happened the tragedy of Twin Towers. The USA turned against its former allies and asked for Osama bin Laden. The Taliban refused to hand him over to the US government. USA attacked Afghanistan apparently to end the alliance between Al-Qaeda and Taliban but the other important factors were to have an uninterrupted access to the energy resources of Central Asia by stopping Russia and Iran's influence to grow in the region.

In the wake of American attack on Afghanistan Pakistan was forced to take a U-turn in its Afghan policy. An anti Pakistan government was installed in Kabul. Pakistan did not seem happy with the scheme as it was against the strategic interests of Pakistan. This explains why Pakistan did not take the 'war on terror' seriously. The military ruler styled himself as the single 'enlightened' Pakistani by cuddling poodles before the TV cameras of international media. The ISI was not happy what was going on in Afghanistan. The Pakistani security agencies adopted the standard modus operandi, which is to sometimes engage the miscreants and terrorist, and in the course the military agencies turn a blind eye to their activities and give them rope, but ultimately they are taken to ask. The treatment of Commander Nek Mohammad of South Waziristan, Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, Fazalulllah and the arrest of Sheikh Mohammad in Rawalpindi, by American intelligence are a few instances of this modus operandi.

While the top al-Qaeda leadership has continued to elude capture, US and Pakistani military action has poisoned the body politic in Pakistan, fuelled the rise of fundamentalism and al-Qaeda sympathy in the country, and facilitated the grassroots Talibanization in Pakistan. It is the results of the three decades strategic depth security plan carried by ISI that now Pakistan is facing a conundrum. By using religion in this great game of energy resources the ISI has pushed Pakistan to the top of a cliff where one jerk is needed to smash it into pieces. What we see today regarding the 'strategic depth' policy is a complete failure. It seems ISI has proved itself as a Trojan horse for Pakistan.