WASHINGTON — It was three days after the Sept. 11 assaults when Pakistan’s president yielded to the American calls for — but additionally delivered
WASHINGTON — It was three days after the Sept. 11 assaults when Pakistan’s president yielded to the American calls for — but additionally delivered a warning.
President Pervez Musharraf instructed the American ambassador in Islamabad that his nation would help america in its looming struggle in opposition to the Taliban, lengthy the recipients of Pakistan’s patronage. However, he mentioned, he hoped the struggle could be brief and restricted in scope, and wouldn’t create a hostile neighbor for Pakistan.
“You’re there to kill terrorists, not make enemies,” he mentioned, in accordance with a now-declassified diplomatic cable, including that Pakistan wished a “pleasant” authorities in Kabul.
In reality, the Afghan struggle has been lengthy, bloody and destabilizing. However greater than 18 years later, and after years of secret machinations by Pakistan’s spy service to assist equip and finance the Taliban, a fragile deal brokered last weekend holds the promise of a great end result for Islamabad: a weak and pliable neighbor that Pakistan can affect lengthy into the longer term.
Pakistan’s political and army institution has lengthy hoped for an finish to the grinding violence in Afghanistan and the eventual withdrawal of American forces from the nation, each of which america and the Taliban tentatively agreed to in Doha, Qatar. Furthermore, the Taliban management giant elements of the Afghan countryside — removed from the management of the American-backed authorities in Kabul — making certain that Pakistan’s longtime proxies wield appreciable management over the nation’s route.
“The Taliban and Pakistan’s army that backs them see this as their victory,” mentioned Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to america and a senior fellow on the Hudson Institute. “Pakistan wager on the Taliban for thus lengthy on the idea that the Individuals would go away sometime.”
And but regional consultants warn that Pakistan dangers taking part in a harmful sport if the American army withdrawal results in an extra descent into chaos — fueling a full-scale civil struggle during which India, Russia and others again totally different factions and dragging Pakistan right into a protracted battle.
Douglas London, a retired C.I.A. officer who ran counterterrorism operations for South and Southwest Asia, mentioned Pakistan’s main focus in Afghanistan was limiting the affect of India. For that reason, he mentioned, “the underside line is that Pakistan is way extra snug working with the Taliban, which is most popular over the present authorities in Kabul.”
However, he mentioned, they acknowledge {that a} full Taliban takeover of Afghanistan could possibly be bloody and additional attract regional adversaries like India. For that cause, he mentioned, for Pakistan the “establishment and a point of chaos they affect is preferable to 1 excessive or the opposite.”
Pakistan’s longstanding ties to the Taliban have been born from the Afghan civil struggle of the 1990s, when Islamabad noticed the Pashtun group as a useful proxy in opposition to different warring factions that had the assist of India. That relationship was radioactive after the Sept. 11 assaults, when it turned apparent that Al Qaeda had deliberate the strikes from a protected haven the Taliban had supplied for the terrorist group.
The Bush administration compelled Pakistan to make a stark alternative: Sever ties with the Taliban and develop into a companion in America’s deliberate struggle in opposition to international terrorism, or presumably develop into a goal of that struggle.
Mr. Musharraf and his successors held up a part of the discount: working with the C.I.A. to seek out Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and permitting the spy company to unleash a withering drone marketing campaign within the nation’s tribal areas. However Islamabad by no means totally lower ties with the Taliban, and the nation’s army intelligence company, the Directorate for Inter-Companies Intelligence, spent years covertly supporting Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and shielding a number of the group’s leaders inside Pakistan.
At the moment, some Pakistani officers argue that the Taliban is way totally different from the fanatical band as soon as led in the course of the Sept. 11 period by Mullah Mohammed Omar. The group is extra pragmatic, they are saying, understanding the significance of political affect in a power-sharing association. One senior Pakistani intelligence official in Islamabad described the Taliban merely as a political social gathering.
It’s Pakistan’s evaluation, they are saying, that the Taliban struck a deal from a place of energy: The US felt compelled to depart a struggle that the Taliban may have continued combating for years. The senior Pakistani intelligence official didn’t conceal what was his nation’s main focus in Afghanistan: The usage of Afghan soil in collaboration with India is a crimson line, the official mentioned.
The intelligence company’s assist for the Taliban strained — and finally ruptured — America’s relationship with Pakistan, a longtime ally that america noticed as a bulwark in opposition to Soviet enlargement in the course of the Chilly Battle.
And but American leaders wrestled with simply how a lot to push Pakistan to chop ties…