Pakistan & Al-Qaeda: Getting The Genie Back Into The Bottle

I partially agree with Carlotta Gall, whose writings I admire, who recently wrote an interesting article, along with David Rohde, in the New York Times titled ‘Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency (Pakistan’s ISI)’.

Her write-up from Islamabad states: “Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency (ISI) has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.”

(An earlier NYT report adds: “The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate is, according to some, Pakistan’s shadowy equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to others, it is in effect a shadow government, one that has used its ties to drug dealers and Islamic extremists to stir up trouble not only in Pakistan but in Afghanistan and the Kashmir region of India as well.”) More here…

However, Pakistan had not taken a unilateral stand on this issue. (I quote from the NYT again: “The ISI was formed in the early days of Pakistan’s independence, but took on greater importance as the rivalry with India and tensions over Kashmir rose in the 1960’s. Its role increased sharply after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, when the United States pressed Pakistan to support the guerilla war that eventually led to a Soviet withdrawal. In the civil wars that followed, the ISI backed the Taliban, which came from the Pashtun-speaking region on Pakistan’s border. For another article on ISI pl click here…

I partially agree with Carlotta’s NYT story that the ISI has become a Frankenstein’s monster, along with the Islamist militants it is in league with. However, one cannot overlook the fact that President Musharraf, or whoever heads the government in Pakistan, has to please (or had been pleasing) a number of players. It is a balancing/blackmailing game – and you have to be more clever than a fox to do it. The top guy in Pakistan has to humour the White House, the CIA, the Al-Quaeda, Islamist militants of different hues, powerful drug dealers, political/military challenges within the country…and what have you!!!

It is no coincidence that the present Chief of the Pakistan Army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was handpicked by President Pervez Musharraf to succeed him, previously led Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency ISI. (See photo above of Musharraf and Kayani: courtesy Anjum Naveed/Associated Press)

I wrote a post recently grudgingly admiring President Musharraf. Please click here to read the post… Although I have sympathy for him, but I also fear that he may not be able to ride two tigers for long and the old adage may come true sooner than later …. ‘You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time’. But then some believe that so long his present mentor in the White House is there, Musharraf has nothing to worry.