As a person who had boots on the ground, I really hated the Afghan officials. These guys were literal pedophiles. I had to sit across from an official who raped a 9 year old boy. We knew it and we couldn't do shit about it. There were amazing ANA guys, but they are few and far between.
so does the ISI actually control the Taliban or do they do their own thing?
If it were that simple Pakistan wouldn’t be building a fence along the whole border. No one can really control the Afghans. After the 1988 Soviet withdrawal Pakistan tried to get the Afghan factions to sit down and make a government of national reconciliation. Didn’t work.
The current PM of Pakistan (as a private citizen) pushed for dialogue/reconciliation (to bring the Taliban back into the Afghan fold, because he had an understanding of their psychology/cultural dynamics) since 2002 because, as a Pashtun himself, he knows the Afghans don’t take orders from anyone and have to work out their own peace.
But the Tajiks and northern alliance guys didn’t want to reconcile after having just “won” Kabul in 2001. They also had the gravy train coming their way so they had no reason to have the foreigners leave.
Also the Pashtuns don’t want to be dominated by the Tajiks, so coupling that with the 300 year old Afghan civil war between urban and rural Afghans, (which pre-dates Pakistan and even any Western presence in the region) Pakistan it seems just didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Rural Afghans which cross back and forth into Pakistan all the time. Hence the need for the fence.
Pakistan until the operations about ten years ago, had never even sent the army into the tribal areas. Btw, these operations were needed to bring back order after pakistan suffered the blowback of the Drone strikes happening without a thought for how it would affect the civilian population. Even now, they negotiate with the local tribal system to maintain order.
To understand, in an American context the closest show that I’ve seen that capture part of a similar dynamic is Season 2 of the Show Manhunt: Deadly games (came out last year, I think it was on Netflix). I’ll spoil some of it but just a little. The feds and the cops in rural North Carolina wanted to catch the suspect but didn’t want to antagonize the local population, and the local cops also didn’t want to antagonize the local militia, no matter what. It’s something like that. If you watch the series you see the tight rope local police had to walk.
Put it another way. The closest American equivalent. It’s like the Rednecks....Mormon Rednecks. No one can control Rednecks.