The blowback

It is not for the first time that the ISI is being held responsible for the misdeeds of one of its militant protégés. The difference this time is that the two top figures in the Pentagon have openly accused the agency of exporting extremism to Afghanistan. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has blamed Pakistan of “choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy” which is a very serious charge. Mike Mullen has called the Haqqani network as a ‘veritable arm’ of the ISI. The Admiral has further charged that the Haqqani militants, with ISI backing, had conducted the assault on the US embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul last week besides launching two other attacks against the US army. “If they keep killing our troops that would not be something we would just sit idly by and watch.” Whether one likes it or not, Mullen’s warning constitutes a virtual ultimatum.

While Gilani was in Kabul announcing a posthumous award of Nishan-e-Pakistan for Burhanuddin Rabbani, Shafiqullah Tahiri, spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security was accusing the Quetta Shura of being “involved in this case.” That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

One incident after another indicates that the establishment’s policies of proxy war in Kashmir and Afghanistan have turned into two millstones around Pakistan’s neck. Name any Pakistani terrorist group (Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba) and you will find it had received military training in Afghanistan from Pakistani agencies. Once the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan and the US abandoned the region to its fate, the groups were partly shifted to Kashmir to fight the Indian army and partly assigned the task of fighting alongside the factions in Afghanistan favoured by the ISI.

Once launched, some of these groups came under the influence of other forces like Al-Qaeda which has a global agenda and Saudi financiers with antipathy for the Shias. While they also pursued the agenda given by the ISI, they sometime got involved into activities not liked by the Pakistani agency as these led to domestic complications or harmed relations with friendly countries.

The initial attitude on the part of the establishment was to defend these groups because they were bleeding the Indian army with no loss on the part of Pakistan’s security forces. This continued till these groups started getting involved in activities detrimental to the interests of the ISI itself.

One of the outstanding examples is Jaish-e-Muhammad. The group had attacked churches and missionary institutions in a number of towns in Punjab. Its leader Maulana Masood Azhar was wanted by Interpol which wanted to interrogate him for the 1999 hijacking of an Indian plane and for Daniel Pearl’s murder. But the request was declined by the Pakistan government. It was only when the organisation was found to be involved the two attacks on Musharraf in Rawalpindi in 2003 that a crackdown was ordered against it.

The terrorist groups had become so strong that action against them continued to be delayed till the UN-imposed sanctions left no option for Islamabad but to ban them. This led some of them to turn against the instructors who had been teaching them the importance of jihad for a Muslim. The government was thus in a nutcracker. It faced international sanctions if it did not proscribe these groups and the terrorists’ wrath if it did.

The sectarian killings in Quetta and elsewhere, attacks on Sufi shrines that have led to the killing of hundreds of innocent people as well as assaults on military personnel, the GHQ, and Mehran Navy Base are the retaliation from the terrorist groups for the arrest and persecution of their activists.

The ISI may or may not have pushed the Haqqani network to attack the American soldiers. Common sense indicates it would have stopped short of such a rash action. There is however little doubt of close links existing between the agency and the terrorist group. This explains why the Haqqanis have discouraged the TTP from using North Waziristan as its headquarters and have helped the government in brokering peace in Kurram Agency.

But this is a dangerous connection. The Haqqani network is involved in attacks on foreign troops and has used North Waziristan as a safe haven. It was here that they kept the kidnapped The New York Times’ reporter David Rohde for weeks. A number of foreign militants have received training in the area.

It is a wrong policy to rely on a terrorist group in the hope that it would provide leverage to Pakistan in the political setup in Kabul after the departure of the US. The ISI had patronised several Afghan militant groups during the fight against the Soviet occupation. Once in power, they invariably tended to become independent, often acted against Pakistan’s advice and sometime against its most vital interests. Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul was attacked when Burhanuddin Rabbani was the President. Even Gulbadin Hikmatyar, the blue eyed boy of the ISI became a deadly opponent. The Taliban turned Afghanistan into a staging ground for launching jihad in a number of countries including China despite Pakistan’s opposition. They also harboured sectarian terrorists wanted by Pakistan and refused to hand them over to Islamabad when demanded.

There is a need to take action against each and every terrorist group using Pakistan’s territory for planning attacks against any other country. Unless we do it on our own, others will intervene. This is quite natural.

The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.