The story leading the day in the New York Times and Washington Post details the release of some 90,000 U.S. military documents by Wikileaks. Many of which detail the level of coordination between elements within Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, and the Taliban operating in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban and ranking officers within the ISI have worked together is not “news.” Pick up a copy of Steve Coll’s brilliant Ghost Wars, which ably details the relationship. Here’s an excerpt from a PBS Frontline interview with Coll on the topic:
Frontline: You describe [the Taliban] as a client of the ISI.
Coll: They received guns; they received money; they received fuel; they received infrastructure support. They also, we know, had direct on-the-ground support from undercover Pakistani officers in civilian clothes who would participate in particular military battles.
Frontline: Is it a fair characterization to say that the Taliban were an asset of the ISI?
Coll: They were an asset of the ISI. I think it’s impossible to understand the Taliban’s military triumph in Afghanistan, culminating in their takeover of Kabul in 1996, without understanding that they were a proxy force, a client of the Pakistan army, and benefited from all of the materiel support that the Pakistan army could provide them, given its own constrained resources.
The Taliban were important to the ISI in the late 1990s for another reason. The ISI also promoted a rebellion against what it regarded as Indian occupation in Kashmir. The Taliban in Afghanistan provided logistical support, training and other bases that the ISI could use to train and develop its Kashmir rebellion as well.
To sum it up: The ISI has used the Taliban for more than 15 years as a proxy force in Afghanistan. First, they served as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism. Old habits die hard, so when the Americans arrived, the ISI viewed collaboration with the Taliban as a natural point of influence that could be used to suit its interest — namely, keeping Afghanistan weak and unstable and impossible to dominate its neighbor.
Some in the blogosphere have treated Wikileaks’ revelation with a yawn. Check out Andrew Exum’s dripping-with-sarcasm post comparing the shock-value of the story to news that Liberace likes dudes. So sure, if you’re in the expert community, it’s easy to brush off as a non-story.
However, getting these stories out to major news outlets has relevance. Spencer Ackerman points out that the Wikileaks information provides a “new depth of detail” about the long-held ties.
More importantly, it raises the issue to a level that people controlling the purse strings can’t ignore. I’ll bet you a crisp dollar bill that John Kerry has read Ghost Wars. I’ll double down on the fact that Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, soon moves lickity-split to convene an oversight hearing that reexamines the $500 million that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just promised to the Pakistanis last week for two hydroelectric projects, a pledge that comes on the heels of a massive $7.5 billion Pakistan aid package. Keep in mind that this assistance was essentially conditioned on strengthening the Pakistani civilian government at the expense of its military and intelligence services and was accepted by the Pakistanis after some rather significant heartburn in Islamabad.
The bottom line is that widespread public disclosure of the depth of the Taliban-ISI contacts ultimately creates leverage for the Americans, and that’s a good thing.
UPDATE: It occurred to me last night that by saying leverage created by the release of classified information was “a good thing” may have tacitly endorsed the idea that I favor future leaks of classified information. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As a veteran of five years inside the intelligence committee, I deplore leaks of all kinds — they harm sources and methods, which in turn jeopardizes the IC and military’s abilities to collect information germane to America’s national security. That leverage was created by the release of information is a fortunate byproduct of the leak. My preference would been to have none at all.
Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB’s Photostream
