Study: Pakistan's ISI military intelligence directly funds, trains, directs Taliban
New study argues that Pakistan’s secret service, the ISI, directly funds and trains the Afghan Taliban, and provides its fighters with intelligence and logistical support; “Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude,” the report says; “There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign,” it said
Pakistan’s military intelligence agency directly funds and trains the Afghan Taliban and is officially represented on its leadership council, according to a report by a British academic. The study, titled “The Sun in the Sky: The Relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents,” was published by the London School of Economics. It also alleges that Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, met Taliban leaders imprisoned in Pakistan and promised them early release and future support.
The Times’s Jeremy Page writes that Pakistan dismissed the report by Matt Waldman, a Harvard fellow who interviewed current and former members of the Taliban, as “baseless” and “naïve.” A spokesman for the Pakistani Army said that the state’s commitment to opposing the Taliban was demonstrated by the number of soldiers killed fighting on the Afghan border.
Waldman’s report goes further, however, arguing that support for the Afghan Taliban is “official ISI policy” and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. “Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude,” the report says. “There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign,” it said. “Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan Government to make progress against the insurgency.”
Page writes that the ISI helped to create the Taliban in the early 1990s, principally to prevent its arch-rival, India, from gaining a strategic foothold in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. It claims to have severed all links with the Islamist movement but remains determined to prevent a pro-Indian government from taking power in Kabul after NATO troops leave.
The report follows one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign troops in Afghanistan, with thirty NATO soldiers killed, and the announcement of a two to three-month delay in a counter-insurgency operation in Kandahar — the Taliban’s stronghold.
It also comes a few days after Amrullah Saleh, who resigned as head of Afghanistan’s intelligence service last week, described the ISI as “part of the landscape of destruction in this country.”
Waldman worked in Afghanistan for two and a half years as Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam and is now a fellow of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He advised the Liberal Democrats on defense and foreign affairs from 2004 to 2006.
Page notes that Waldman’s study carries weight because it was based on interviews with nine Taliban field commanders and ten former senior Taliban officials, as well as Afghan elders and politicians, foreign diplomats and security officials. The ISI “provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies,” the Taliban field commanders are quoted as saying.
Major-General Athar Abbas, Pakistan’s military spokesman, described the report as ridiculous and “part of a campaign against the Pakistan Army and the ISI.”