How ISI agents play double role in Pak

The stocky, bearded man they call the Subidar is an encyclopedia of the jagged mountains...

The stocky, bearded man they call the Subidar is an encyclopedia of the jagged mountains and insular tribes here along Pakistan’s northwestern border. As a retired career officer now on contract to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, he would be just the man to enforce his government’s declared policy: to stop Taliban and allied guerrillas from crossing into Afghanistan to attack US troops. But the Subidar’s mission is just the opposite, say US, Afghan and Pakistani sources.

Working from his home in this village, and reporting to the ISI office in the nearby town of Chitral, he recruits and organises guerrillas to make those attacks, sources say. In Afghan districts just over the border, guerrilla attacks have escalated this year, killing at least six US soldiers since June. President Pervez Musharraf and senior Bush administration officials say Musharraf is America’s best friend in the war against al-Qaeda and its Islamic extremist allies in this region. But the case of the Subidar appears to illustrate assertions by many scholars that Pakistan is deeply divided and playing a double role.

Its ruling army denied any knowledge of the Subidar, whose name is being withheld because he could not be reached directly to comment. While Musharraf is allied with Washington, many in his army and security services are wedded to the Taliban, say independent analysts including Boston University’s Husain Haqqani.

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Parts of the ISI, the army and political and religious elites form a support network to help the Taliban and allied guerrillas recruit and train fighters, raise money and infiltrate Afghanistan, the analysts say.

In this shadowy war, the Taliban’s main bases and support networks are hidden in the rugged mountains of Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas, along the border south of here. A US National Intelligence Estimate report said in July that the same tribal districts are “a safe-haven” for al-Qaeda. Those districts are closed to foreigners, except on occasional, army-escorted trips.

In the other main Taliban stronghold, around the southwestern city of Quetta, Pakistani authorities have harassed, arrested or attacked journalists who inquire into Taliban activities. Pakistan’s support for jihadist guerrillas is an old cornerstone of its national security policy, Haqqani and other scholars say. Working largely through the ISI, Pakistan’s army cultivated the Taliban and backed their fight for power in Afghanistan as a way to keep Pakistani influence there.

The ISI sponsored groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba to battle India in the disputed territory of Kashmir, scholars say. The Subidar was one of hundreds of men who served as “handlers” for the ISI’s guerrilla clients. In the 1980s, he helped provide US-supplied weapons and logistical support to Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and other mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, according to residents in Chitral.

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After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he oversaw camps over the border in Afghanistan that trained Jaish-e-Muhammad guerrillas, they said.

After September 11, 2001, the United States leaned on Musharraf to shut down the ISI’s guerrilla clients, which also were allied with al-Qaeda. The ISI retired dozens of its guerrilla handlers, most of them junior officers, said Hassan Abbas, a Harvard analyst of the Pakistani military and a former Pakistani police official. The Subidar was among them. But Musharraf’s anti-jihadist purge of the ISI and the army has not been effective, especially among lower-level officers, Abbas and other analysts say. For example, militants linked to al-Qaeda used army connections twice to bomb Musharraf’s highly secured motorcades in 2003, coming close to killing him.

Interviews with dozens of former and current army and intelligence officials make clear that many officers of Pakistan’s covert security agencies remain emotionally committed to jihad and hostile to the US role in the region. In part, anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s army and the ISI simply reflects the public mood in a country that feels Washington repeatedly has abandoned it as an ally.