Should the CIA Turn Against Pakistan's Spies?

[ajtr]

Should the CIA Turn Against Pakistan's Spies?​

The recent chief-of-station (COS) cover-shredding brouhaha between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate marks an ironic and possibly important shift in the historic affection that Langley has had for Pakistan’s premiere intelligence service. It’s uncommon for a COS to be yanked home from a country where the CIA has enjoyed a pretty intimate relationship with the host service; it’s certain that the Agency did not do so just because the true name of an operative surfaced in the press due to a drone-provoked wrongful death lawsuit.

It’s the political and operational ambience that surrounds the public lifting of the chief’s cover—whether the ISI encouraged the legal case or abetted its publicity—that is probably most disturbing to Langley. FYI: It’s a good bet that every significant terrorist organization in Pakistan, including Al Qaeda, knew the COS’s true identity within weeks of his arrival in country. Chiefs-of-station are well-known personalities among the political and military elites in loquacious Third World countries; in Pakistan, where both civilian and military VIPs can have sympathetic contacts with militant Islamic groups, this “overt” presence of “liaison” CIA officers adds complexity to a fact of most case officers’ lives: the irreversible erosion of cover.

From the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) until recently, Langley had been dutiful, if not zealous, in defending—or more often ignoring—the ISI’s most egregious behavior, especially in its support of violent Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Even after September 11, former chiefs-of-station in Pakistan could defend Pakistani support of the Taliban, including Pakistani support of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the nastiest Pashtun Islamic militants and certainly the only one ever to build fan clubs inside the CIA, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the ISI. (To be fair to Langley: Former Islamabad chief Milt Bearden didn’t ideologically admire Hekmatyar; but could praise the warlord’s eagerness to attack Soviets on an ISI/CIA approved schedule. Rootless, tribe-free, ideology-driven holy warriors did have their operational advantages over insurgents like Ahmed Shah Masoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, who fought only in the lands of his kith and kin.) Excuses for the Pakistanis have come far too easily to the lips of senior CIA case officers—as they have from many officials at the State Department and the Pentagon. These excuses are fewer now because Pakistani-aided Afghan Taliban insurgents are killing Americans and Europeans.
But a change of heart now in Langley about the ISI, and more broadly about Pakistan, is worrisome (however pleasingly ironic). Pakistan’s democratically elected government has been far more successful infighting its own Islamist demons, especially its Pashtun jihadists in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province, than was the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. However erratically and incompetently, the Pakistani military, including its loyal intelligence servant, the ISI, has invested more of its blood and treasure in fighting Pakistani Taliban and other Islamic militants than it ever has in the past.
That Pakistanis also play a double game, with us and with themselves, is beyond question: Old habits die hard, especially when those habits are grounded in ethnicity and faith. Pakistan’s pre-September 11 worldview had a certain holistic logic. Afghanistan—the Taliban war against the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which became a laboratory for Central Asian Islamic militants with a sense of adventure and a high testosterone count—was an escape valve for Pakistani Pashtun religious fervor.

Non-Pashtun Pakistanis of the Sindh and the Punjab have never known exactly what to do with their Pashtuns, who don’t meld well with the “more civilized” peoples of the south. (Putting them into the army has been an effective means of solidifying ties.) Afghanistan also offered secular Pakistanis a place to show their religious bona fides. It offered a training ground for Kashmiri rebels, which appealed to just about everyone south of the Durand Line. Annoying—wounding—Hindu India is an essential part of the nation’s Islamic soul. If Americans or other Westerners perished because of the flowering of religious militancy in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, that was, well, acceptable collateral damage. When that turned out not to be okay, when America responded with unexpected power, Islamabad’s understanding of how their own country worked ceased to function.

Yet Pakistan is making progress: The national discussion about religious militancy and the national identity is vivid, almost as vibrant as the lectures about America’s missteps and sins. Washington’s urgent expectations of Islamabad—that it must do more to stop the Afghan Taliban from using Pakistan as a base of operations, often with the assent of the Pakistani army—are understandable, and necessary, but unrealistic. It takes time—much more time than President Barack Obama had initially wanted to give—for Pakistanis to re-order their universe. This is happening: The thousands of Pakistani lives lost since September 11 in the fight against homegrown Islamic militants is the most convincing proof of an intellectual realignment, within the army and the civilian secular elite.

This revolution—and it’s perhaps not too early to use this word—will continue and, inshallah, become irreversible when the Pakistani military and civilian elites know that the old world has been irretrievably shattered. Which means, first and foremost, that Afghanistan will not revert to a state of civil war, where the Pashtuns again begin their march on Kabul, dragging the Pakistani army along with them. Civil strife among the Pakistanis, which is healthy and essential, could be quieted in a renewed northern mission civilsatrice. Civil war in Afghanistan is crack for Pakistanis: All of their worst instincts supercharge.

Which brings us back to the CIA. With understandable bitterness, senior U.S. military officers now constantly underscore Pakistan’s nefarious role in aiding the Afghan Taliban. American journalists who talk to these officers echo these complaints. Washington’s innumerable conferences further amplify the echo chamber: “We cannot win unless the Pakistani problem is solved.” And now we have added the CIA’s voice to this mix, and it will grow louder in forthcoming National Intelligence Estimates and Special National Intelligence Estimates (whenever America gets into trouble, we get SNIEs).

It’s a truly odd twist of fate that the folks the CIA loved to belittle during the Soviet-Afghan conflict and during the Taliban wars between 1994 and 2001—the Tajiks of the Panjshir Valley—have become an important conduit of information for CIA officials who don’t have comparable networks among the Pashtuns. And, the Tajik view of the Pakistanis is—quite understandably—unrelentingly negative.

As was obvious in Iraq, the CIA’s grasp of a country, especially a violent one where case officers cannot move about freely, is rarely deep and tends to echo those foreigners with whom it primarily deals. (In Iraq, this was the Sunni Arab community, and especially those Sunni Arabs revolving around Iyad Allawi.) A CIA spurned in Islamabad could well spin emotionally the other way and become too anti-Pakistani, a disposition encouraged by the Tajiks, with whom the CIA now probably has its most privileged relations. (I really like Tajiks, so I certainly understand why case officers would want to spend more time with them than with the more difficult, more closed Pashtuns.)

But the CIA’s added voice might produce a tipping point in Washington, where the left is already uniting with the realist right (see the most recent anti-surge essay by the Council on Foreign Relations boss Richard Haass in The Wall Street Journal) behind a nashtun nationalism with Islamic militancy—hasn’t yet reignited on a large scale (in large part because Afghan Pashtuns can remember how unpleasant the Taliban were the first time round).

If properly resourced, the U.S. military really ought to be able check the Taliban from terrorizing the most crucial settled areas in the Pashtun zone. (And contrary to many press reports, the Afghan North, where the Pashtuns live in relatively small numbers, is not on fire.) The issues in Afghanistan, like in Pakistan, are resources and time.

Are we willing to stay until at least 2014, a plausible date for beginning an American drawdown in the country? Are we willing to spend $100 billion per year to ensure that we don’t return to the pre-September 11 status quo in both Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or are we willing, finally, to play the khan, the local ruler who dispenses justice, and play hardball with the country’s abusive warlords? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his generals made a serious error, from which we’ve not recovered: They never challenged the reviled status quo. They cared too much about the warlords and too little about the people. As in Iraq, all they really wanted to do was leave.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves: If we take away American troops on the ground, our ability to wage war against Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Afghanistan will cease to exist. (Many in Washington are afflicted with what might be called the Over-the-Horizon-Yemen-Want-To-Be-Predator-Drone-Hubris Syndrome.) A forced American withdrawal will be a stunning victory for the Taliban and those who’ve been their dogged supporters in Pakistan.

We won’t get to ignore the next Afghan civil war: We will have to choose sides, which will put us in an armed conflict against Islamabad. The Taliban’s ideological brew is unlikely to go dormant upon our departure (“We’ve won, so now we’ll behave—no more Al Qaeda and holy war for us”). The Taliban–Al Qaeda fusion, which is already advanced (it’s much more intertwined now than it was on September 11, 2001), will continue on both sides of the Durand Line. Pakistan is today a headache. But it could get a lot worse. This may seem like an abstract scenario to many on the left and the “realist” right (September 11 is, in American years, a long time ago), but to the CIA, which remains the vanguard in our battle against Islamic militancy, it might not be. And in that, there is hope. As much as Langley may now despise the Pakistanis, we are still wedded to them. And a bad marriage here is much, much better than an acrimonious divorce.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, and author of the forthcoming The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East.

 

[Spring Onion]

CIA has in fact turned against entire Pakistan and specially against innocent people of Pakistan. Please go and probe from media people here and you will find who has blood on its hands for butchering of over 100 women and children in Meena Bazar blast

CIA must understand that if first Afghan war was won then it was that has played the bigger and decisive role and by cheating and playing a double role against Pakistan if CIA thinks we still be good boys then its unlikely; For Pakistan is much important and its spies are much important for us who are going to live with the chaotic region created by US polices, than CIA.


If you want a fair play be fair first otherwise there is no clean business in spy field anyway

 

[JanjaWeed]

i'm sure there is a lot of squablings going on between CIA & ISI privately. but they are never going to fallout publicly. moment they do.. there will be a lot of skeletons falling out of closet from both the sides!! they know that fact & will never venture in that path!!

 

[Jigs]

Well it is the CIA and the organization's only interest is what the U.S. wants they could care less about anything else. They also don't operate under the law. You should look into all the puppet governments they installed in the 70s and 80s and the assassinations they carried out. That being said there are a number of other intelligence agencies that also operate like this.

 

[ajtr]

Well it is the CIA and the organization's only interest is what the U.S. wants they could care less about anything else. They also don't operate under the law. You should look into all the puppet governments they installed in the 70s and 80s and the assassinations they carried out. That being said there are a number of other intelligence agencies that also operate like this.

Indira gandhi assassination?

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

drone-provoked wrongful death lawsuit.

The tone of the narrator blows my mind off...!!!
Okay now
The CIA should turn against Pakistan just beacause they feel ISI made the man to file a lawsuit for an innocent victim of Drone Strikes(Which BTW is quite justified) which uncovered the name of its chief-of-station......??
By doing so they would certainly further distance between people of America and people of Pakistan, it would certainly be the end of improving Image of America in Pakistan..!
Should Pakistan be at the expense of all the BS and the public reaction which normally follows after every drone strike in this failed War..should it be .. are CIA's COS more important here .. ??

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

seems that some media (blogs at that) fail to realize that what's reported on your screens and on print is worlds away from reality or what happens behind those closed wooden doors

General Petraus is on record stating Pakistan's invaluable counter-insurgency support as well as input from Pakistan's ''premier spy agency''


the fact of the matter is the CIA gets a lot of its valuable intelligence (at least that which can be disseminated without compromising our interests) from ISI


the cheap media tactics will go unabated.....ISI is a professional organization and is not required to make answers or replies to immature, inaccurate, sensationalist propaganda whose goal is merely to sell a tabloid story for the naiive readers

 

[Muhammad-Bin-Qasim]

mental slaves are the most obnoxious types of slaves... this explains the Pakistani elite within both the civil admin and pak army...

 

[muse]

We won’t get to ignore the next Afghan civil war: We will have to choose sides, which will put us in an armed conflict against Islamabad

Friends, we have been advising you that Afghanistan exists in a state of civil war, and the US had hoped to keep a lid on it but finds that it cannot -- someone other than the inept US policy makers is to blame, guess who -- surprised? You shouldn't be -- anyway, the larger issue is that as policy makers understand that upon the departure of the US and NATO, should it come in 2014 or till hell freezes over, the competing sides will fight to the last Afghan, the last Tajik, the last Uzbek, Turkoman and Hazara.

Lets not get carried away by Mr. Gerecht's bravado, please do trust that serious people do not want questions such as "should ISI turn against US's spies?" to ever become a reality -- but can Pakistan prevent Afghanistan from spiraling into civil war? It can and it must.

No Pakistani interests are served by a ravaged Afghan nation and no Pakistani interests are served by a Afghanistan broken into pieces - a political accommodation that allows the US and India retreat from a forward posture and to play a positive complimentary role in which the interests of all Afghans, not just the remnants of Northern alliance warlords and their progeny, can be secured -- it does not have to be perfect, it has to be workable.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

Friends, we have been advising you that Afghanistan exists in a state of civil war, and the US had hoped to keep a lid on it but finds that it cannot -.

this thread is an Indian wet dream..

 

[Spring Onion]

this thread is an Indian wet dream..

too much of it may makes one potent

 

[muse]

Mr. Gerecht's bona fides are not about India, they are about his history of pathology when it comes to conversing seriously (in a civil manner) about Israel and the reaction of Muslim majorities -- from Mr. Gerecht's recruitment while still in school to his less then stellar career at the agency, a single thread informs his pathology, an abiding hostility towards what passes for the Muslim world.

Please do some research and see if my (mis)understanding of Gerecht's ideas is anywhere close to the mark. But he does have some powerful friends, to be sure.

Below is the last paragraph of the piece, the person who posted the article realized it was important but could not be honest with himself or us:

but to the CIA, which remains the vanguard in our battle against Islamic militancy, it might not be. And in that, there is hope. As much as Langley may now despise the Pakistanis, we are still wedded to them. And a bad marriage here is much, much better than an acrimonious divorce

.

They realize full well the consequences, so Indian wet dream it can't be - because the Indian realizes the consequences for them as well.

 

[All-Green]

This revolution—and it’s perhaps not too early to use this word—will continue and, inshallah, become irreversible when the Pakistani military and civilian elites know that the old world has been irretrievably shattered. Which means, first and foremost, that Afghanistan will not revert to a state of civil war, where the Pashtuns again begin their march on Kabul, dragging the Pakistani army along with them.

I think the author is deliberately ignoring the facts on ground in his over eagerness to bash Pakistan.

Here it is certainly not a matter of reversion to civil war but the challenge instead is of ending a civil war which has been going on since decades in Afghanistan, a civil war which has only grown more complicated and brutal since the American intervention because it has a foreign invasion dimension to it which only fuels the fire of militancy.

Afghanistan needs all the factions to attempt a reconciliation and try to bring an end to civil war.
This shall ofcourse need active support (not intervention) from Pakistan but it cannot be done without the participation of Afghan Taliban who have ruled the country in the past for a significant time and have considerable political influence.
When the mindset is to brand the Afghan Taliban the same as a purely terrorist outfit like Al Qaeda or TTP, then there is little to be had in way of political understanding and progress in the country.

Since the USA is already attaching a time line to its stay in Afghanistan, maybe same thing can be committed in a political negotiation with Taliban since the foreign troops presence is one of the key points raised by Mullah Omar and he would need some assurance in this regards to jump on board.

 

[Parashuram1]

No Pakistani interests are served by a ravaged Afghan nation and no Pakistani interests are served by a Afghanistan broken into pieces - a political accommodation that allows the US and India retreat from a forward posture and to play a positive complimentary role in which the interests of all Afghans, not just the remnants of Northern alliance warlords and their progeny, can be secured -- it does not have to be perfect, it has to be workable

Afghanistan needs all the factions to attempt a reconciliation and try to bring an end to civil war.
This shall ofcourse need active support (not intervention) from Pakistan but it cannot be done without the participation of Afghan Taliban who have ruled the country in the past for a significant time and have considerable political influence.

When the mindset is to brand the Afghan Taliban the same as a purely terrorist outfit like Al Qaeda or TTP, then there is little to be had in way of political understanding and progress in the country.

As much as your concern for Afghanistan is appreciable you must also realize that the much-assumed influence that you claim Taliban has on Afghan politics is simply because it never allowed the existence of a legitimate opposition and ruled on the basis of gun and sheer terror. While your administration might be interested in using them to consolidate your strategic hold on Afghanistan, other countries in the world community can simply not allow this as having hardened terrorists like Taliban are a threat to everyone around perhaps other than your country, as has been noticed in Europe and North America since the last nine years.

Your recognition of this TTP is that of a terrorist organization is because they are a threat to your country's stability. The same way Taliban has been given the recognition by all of us because they along with many sister terrorist organizations are a threat to us and in simple terms anybody supporting them whether overtly or covertly would mean they are supporting terrorism against Europe and North America.

This would put the Pakistani military and civilian leadership on cross-roads with a lot of countries with whom they have had excellent ties in the past.

Since the USA is already attaching a time line to its stay in Afghanistan, maybe same thing can be committed in a political negotiation with Taliban since the foreign troops presence is one of the key points raised by Mullah Omar and he would need some assurance in this regards to jump on board.

Knowing American administration somewhat, I can safely say that the timeline is more of a political gamble that has been taken in the American administration, simply because most American commanders have lost too much in their war and pulling out half way without any significant gains would be something they would be dead against. It is quite clearly visible in this analysis and naturally this has been written with the view that some of the commander in American military establishment are inspecting the viability of a conflict with some of your agencies, should that be deemed absolutely vital for a timely Afghan pull-out.

Negotiation with Taliban are a no-no for the entire world community and it should be an unlikely move as American opposition seems to have slammed it. The war is likely to continue since Americans are in no mood to repay their already ballooned debt and would simply mean using Chinese and other entities' money to continue the war.

 

[muse]

Parashuram

Please discuss issues on their merits, not on idiot biases among others, the Indian media seeks to cultivate. If the Talib have not allowed any sort of opposition, which rulers in Afghanistan has ever allowed the existence of such a opposition??

I wish to take you seriously, however, the premises on which you build your position, are intellectual quicksand.

I want to point something out about the piece authored by Mr. Gerecht, what is his main point?? What is he asking readers to concede or consider? lets see if this rings a bell:

Are we willing to stay until at least 2014, a plausible date for beginning an American drawdown in the country? Are we willing to spend $100 billion per year to ensure that we don’t return to the pre-September 11 status quo in both Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or are we willing, finally, to play the khan, the local ruler who dispenses justice, and play hardball with the country’s abusive warlords? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his generals made a serious error, from which we’ve not recovered: They never challenged the reviled status quo. They cared too much about the warlords and too little about the people. As in Iraq, all they really wanted to do was leave.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves: If we take away American troops on the ground, our ability to wage war against Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Afghanistan will cease to exist

So there you are - a 10 to 15 US$billion problem, after the expenditure of now close to a TRILLION, and invaluable lives, this genius (chicken little) is left with scaring the public, America will, Pakistan will not be punished and Al-Qaida will rule the roost in Afghanistan - so if you want to avoid this eventuality, give us more money, more blood and more time -- now is this not the essence of a barren argument, such is the desperation that scare tactics must now suffice for reasoned positions.

OK, lets give Mr. Gerecht all he is asking for - but lets ask what is the end state there, is that asking too much? Alas, Mr. Gerecht has an answer, civil war -- more time, more money more treasure, all for civil war??

Now consider an alternative:

A neutral Afghanistan is a Afghanistan with a future - An Afghanistan through which trade flows unmolested and unencumbered, is a Afghanistan in which Afghanistan's neighbors have a stake.

Since you are somewhat familiar as you say with US policy makers, ask yourself whether the US expending blood and $$ on military solutions in Afghanistan only to look forward to civil war, is a US that is RELEVANT, after all, there is a world beyond Afghanistan.