{EOP}ISI in The Eye of The Storm, But Why?

The country’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, is again in the eye of the storm. The timing is significant. The US-led Nato troops are preparing to begin a pullout from Afghanistan after fighting an ‘unwinnable’ war for close to about 10 years. Their stated objective — “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda” — remains elusive. Growing violence shows security is as fluid as ever. Their surrogate Hamid Karzai’s government is nothing but a pressure bandage, which is stemming the bleeding, but not healing the wound. Unnecessary to say what will happen, if the pressure is released.
Understandably, the United States cannot and will not concede defeat. But to save its superpower ego, it needs a scapegoat. The best option it finds is the ISI. That its top intelligence agency, CIA, had worked with to train, arm and fund the ‘mujahideen’ (who later morphed into the Taliban) to fight the ‘jihad’ against the ‘godless’ Soviets in the 1980s.
On and off, US officials have been pointing fingers at the ISI. But the recent bluntness of Admiral Mike Mullen, the US chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, set the alarm bells ringing in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. He accused the ISI of maintaining a ‘longstanding relationship’ with the network of former Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani and his sons, which, the US believes, is fuelling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. And secret-busting website WikiLeaks made a shocking revelation: The US military had classified the ISI as a terrorist-support entity in 2007. These are very serious allegations and ominous too, especially at a time when diplomatic relations between the two countries are at their lowest ebb. But more alarming is the rampant ‘hate-Pakistan’ trend among the Afghans, particularly the ‘westernised’ non-Pakhtun, who are feeding on western media’s unscrupulous, twisted reporting. The Afghans are being made to believe that Pakistan’s military and the ISI are responsible for all their troubles. And they, in turn, are disseminating this propaganda on social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
The US is blaming the ISI for instability in Afghanistan, however, indirectly though. But what about the CIA, which did responsible for all the dirty tricks during the Cold War to reconfigure the global political chessboard to America’s choosing? It toppled democracies, installed dictators and overthrew them when they became ‘rebellious’, in Latin and Central Americas, in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa and even in Europe. Justification: Protection of US interests. The CIA didn’t spare even its own people. Operations like Mockingbird, MK-ULTRA and Chaos are examples of how the CIA manipulated the local news media, used Americans for deadly mind- control experiments and spied on its own people to muzzle criticism of unpopular American wars.
It’s clear now: Pakistan’s and America’s interests are not akin in a post-war Afghanistan. The US, wary of a ‘radical Islamist’ Pakistan, wants a greater role for India, which “shares the West’s respect for human rights and secularism”. This is notwithstanding Pakistan’s legitimate concerns about arch-rival India’s growing influence in its backyard. A stable and friendly government in Afghanistan is what Islamabad wants, which is vital not only for its desire for strategic depth in the region, but also for ensuring that the ‘Pakhtunistan genie’ remains in the bottle. Obviously, Pakistan had not fought America’s ‘proxy war’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s, nor is it fighting the US-led war against terrorism only to see another hostile neighbour on its western border.
This change in the US policy shouldn’t come as a surprise. History is replete with examples where the US turned against its allies when its policy boomeranged. It did this to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, to the Shah of Iran, and to General Noriega of Panama. It is high time Pakistan shunned docility, reset its priorities, reviewed its cooperation in the ‘war on terror’ and crossed red lines for the US administration, because Pakistan and its interests are paramount.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2011.