Whatever the provenance of the documentary evidence, whatever the moral argument for the WikiLeaks revelation, Pakistan and its military establishment is now squarely in the U.S. leadership’s cross-wires. The secret is out, and the vast weight of the proof accumulated over 6 years, tens of thousands of pieces of intelligence, is flat out undeniable and arresting. The ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, the very nucleus of the political establishment in Pakistan has been coordinating moves against the United States, its long-considered ally and sometime paymaster.
Here’s how it cuts. The Inter-Services Intelligence Director (ISI), the keeper of the flame of Pakistan’s patriots has been found in the WikiLeaks to be working against U.S. regional interests in the so-called War on Terror since at least 2003. Indeed, the smart bet is that the ISI has been working against its own long-term interests (externally determined, obviously) by hedging bets and looking the other way, as it has used the Afghan Taliban to plumb strategic depth– the pursuit of long-lasting, mutually advantageous ties to local Talib warlords in Afghanistan, to court whatever politics emerges in the after-math of U.S. and NATO withdrawal. Perversely all that and more would be redeemable if it were possible to right the sunken ship that is this unfathomably intransigent organization. But, it is not possible to now fix this organization in some way that would be advantageous to the U.S. military intervention in the region. The ISI has burrowed itself into the very history of modern Pakistan and it is a history that has borne witness to long spells of uncivilized anti-democratic politics.
Contrary to the best interests and outcomes for the U.S. and its allies, the ISI is no puppet organization; indeed, it is the king-maker in Pakistani politics. The ISI is amongst the most powerful elements in the Pakistani military infrastructure, itself the most respected and most powerful branch of the government. And that’s the most vein to target, to mine. The military is a de facto branch of government in Pakistan, a country which has only recently transitioned from a military dictatorship; a transition that counts as just one of numerous transitions in and out of democracy in Pakistan’s short history as an independent post-colonial nation-state.
Consider that the ISI has expanded its reach exponentially during each tenure of 3 dictatorships that Pakistan experienced under 4 separate autocratic leaders. (Note that many reports point to U.S. involvement in each transition out of democracy, a charge that has always inflamed ant-American rhetoric in Pakistan, and therefore should not be minimized–in fact the charge should be explicated step-wise in both Pakistani and U.S. media.) Indeed, Pakistan has experienced more years of dictatorship than democracy since partition from colonial India in 1947. The ISI and its predecessor organization has been held responsible for Pakistan’s first experience of dictatorship, General Ayub Khan overthrow of Pakistan’s republican democracy in 1956; it has been thought responsible for the corrupt electioneering that triggered East Pakistan’s (now Bangladesh) 1971 War of Liberation and has been squarely targeted as having engineered the slaughter of at least 3 million Bengalis during that devastating year. More recently the ISI was thought to be involved in the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, where through ISI intelligence and contacts, Khan was able to engineer Pakistan’s nuclear capability, a trying act that has bestowed on him the status of national hero, an act that initially disrupted U.S. ties to Pakistan and triggered a series of sanctions. That break was a divorce that is only now on the mend, though far too late in time to save this blighted marriage of near-criminal convenience.
Consider also that the most powerful man in Pakistan, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Army Chief was the Director General of the ISI until 2007. Though General Kayani has promised to not intervene in Pakistans sordid democracy, a great rumbling din is mapping a path to another turn at military rule under Kayani’s thumb. Consider that President Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator ousted from power by the PPP, the late Benazir Bhutto’s party, could not have snatched power from then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif without the ISI’s say-so.
The WikiLeaks pieces point to ISI involvement in Afghan terror coordination throughout the years and into today, through two channels. Most explicitly, General Hamid Gul, a former ISI Director General is revealed as being a frontier contact with Taliban leadership while maintaining contact with current ISI leadership. The second channel? The fact that through half of the tenure during which these documents were written and passed up the chain of command, the chief of that organization was the current head the Pakistan Army. (In some sense, the moral argument for whether or not the ISI is involved is an empty exercise. The Pakistani military heavies have dirty hands and bloodied fingernails.)
The most powerful man in Pakistan, the presumptive future military dictator of Pakistan is the man who is, very likely, responsible for overseeing the coordination of Talib terror tactics against U.S. interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan during his tenure in ISI leadership from 2004 until 2007.
All that for what purpose? For strategic depth in Afghanistan so that Pakistan can have a bulwark against Indian intervention in Afghanistan, and the long squabbled region of Kashmir. For this to be a sensible strategy, the ISI and its leaders must assume that they have control over their fed and weaned militant acolytes. It must plausible that the ISI can rein in elements of the Taliban insurgency at any given opportunity. The Haqqani network must then be thought to stand or fall as the ISI sees fit. However, the facts on the ground do not seem to bear out that supposition.
The militant networks have spawned counter-political moves and have gone out to fight against Islamabad, the hot-bed of ISI’s political and military leadership ( ISI’s military leadership is political through and through). The Afghan Taliban have birthed the Tehrik-e-Taliban, the loose group of organization commonly thought co-extensive with a Pakistani brand of the Taliban, is posing a serious threat to Pakistan’s ailing democracy. Its goal: overthrowing President Zardari’s incontinent PPP rule and overtaking Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.
Now, if any of that is true, and can feasibly come to be then it must be true that the ISI, as a singular military institution, is no longer in control. As reported in far too many media outlets, the ISI’s internal ranks have been overrun with officers who claim a more fundamentally Islamist faith, profess ties, most often seen in tribal leadership structure and confess deep suspicion of U.S pledges on economic and social development in Pakistan. None of this promises fair weather news for the American effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The pertinent, follow-up question to these uncomfortable musings is: Is it more the case that the ISI, the most powerful single organization in Pakistan is no longer in control of the insurgent organizations it helped–likely still helps– run? Rather is it the case that the ISI, the regal military hero, savior of Pakistan’s dignity in the face of India’s bold encroachment, is no longer the same institution, fallen now to Islamist ideology and its more militant maneuvers.
