BY ERIC S. MARGOLIS (America Angle)
3 August 2008
IN WASHINGTON, it's 'blame Pakistan' week. As resistance to the US-led occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration and its Nato allies are venting their anger against Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
The White House has just leaked claims to the media that ISI is conspiring with pro-Taleban Pashtun groups in Pakistan's tribal agency along the Afghan border.
Pakistan's defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, told Pakistani media that the White House accuses ISI of warning Pashtun tribes of impending US air attacks. President George Bush angrily asked Pakistan's visiting prime minister, Yousuf Gilani, 'who's in charge of ISI?'
The current Canadian government, which is ideologically close to the Bush White House, dutifully echoed Bush's accusations against Pakistan, including the so far unsubstantiated claim that ISI agents had recently bombed India's Kabul embassy.
I know a few things about ISI, having been one of the first western journalists invited into ISI headquarters in 1986. ISI's then director, the fierce Lt. General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, personally briefed me on Pakistan's secret role in fighting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ISI's ‘boys' secretly provided communications, logistics, heavy weapons, planning and direction in the Afghan War. ISI played the key role in the victory over the Soviets.
On my subsequent trips to Pakistan I was routinely briefed by succeeding ISI chiefs, and joined ISI officers in the field, sometimes under fire.
ISI is accused of meddling in Pakistani politics, which is all too true. The late Benazir Bhutto, who often was thwarted by Pakistan's spooks, always used to scold me, ‘you and your beloved generals at ISI.'
But before Musharraf, ISI was one of the world's most efficient, professional intelligence agencies. Today, it defends Pakistan against internal and external subversion by both neighbouring nations and local extremist groups, some backed from abroad. ISI has long worked closely with CIA and the Pentagon, but it also must serve Pakistan's interests, which are not always identical to Washington's.
The last ISI Director General I knew was the tough, highly capable Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad. He was purged by the new military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, because Washington felt Mahmood was insufficiently responsive to US interests. Ensuing ISI directors were all pre-approved by Washington. All senior ISI veterans deemed 'Islamist' or too nationalistic by Washington were purged, leaving ISI's upper ranks top-heavy with yes-men and paper-passers.
Even so, there is strong opposition inside ISI to Washington's bribing and arm-twisting the subservient Musharraf dictatorship into waging war against fellow Pakistanis and gravely damaging Pakistan's national interests.
ISI's primary duty is defending Pakistan. Pashtun tribesmen on the border sympathising with their fellow Taleban Pashtun in Afghanistan are Pakistanis. Many, like the legendary Jalaluddin Haqqani, are old US allies and freedom fighters from the 1980's. Violence and uprisings in these tribal areas are not caused by ‘terrorism,' but directly as a result of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan and Washington's forcing the hated Musharraf regime to attack its own people.
ISI is trying to restrain pro-Taleban Pashtun tribesmen while dealing with growing US attacks into Pakistan that threaten a wider war. India, Pakistan's bitter foe, has an army of agents in Afghanistan and is arming, backing and financing the Karzai regime in Kabul. Pakistan's historical strategic interests in Afghanistan have been undermined by the US occupation.
Meanwhile, the US, Canada and India are trying to eliminate Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.
ISI, many of whose officers are Pashtun, has every right to warn Pakistani citizens of impending US air attacks that kill large numbers of civilians. But ISI also has another vital mission: Preventing Pakistan's Pashtun, 15-20 per cent of the population of 165 million, from rekindling the old 'Greater Pashtunistan' movement calling for union of the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan, who were divided by British imperialism, into a new Pashtun nation. That would tear apart Pakistan and invite possible Indian military intervention.
Washington's bull-in-a-china shop behaviour pays no heed to such realities. Instead, Washington demonises faithful old allies ISI and Pakistan while supporting Afghanistan's Communists and drug dealers. The real objective of US policy is not the false 'war on terrorism' but control of new energy pipelines. As Henry Kissinger cynically noted, being America's ally is more dangerous than being its enemy.
Eric S Margolis is a veteran US journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for several years