Near the height of the US war in Afghanistan, a former head of neighboring Pakistani military intelligence – an institution affiliated with the US military and its Taliban opponents – appeared in 2014 in a talk show called ‘Joke Night’. forecast on the record.
“When writing history,” said Genl. Hamid Gul, who led the dreaded espionage service known as the ISI, declared during the last piece of the Cold War in the 1980s, “it will be said that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America.”
“Then comes another sentence,” General Gul added after a short pause, giving his loud applause to loud applause. “The ISI defeated America with the help of America.”
In President Biden’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September, Pakistan’s powerful military establishment finally gets its wish after decades of bloody intrigue: the exit of a disruptive superpower from a backyard where the ISI previously had strong influence through established a friendly Taliban regime. invaded the USA in 2001.
A return of the Taliban to some form of power would turn the clock back to a time when the Pakistani army was playing gatekeeper to Afghanistan and was constantly working to block the influence of its arch-enemy, India.
But the sheltering of the Taliban insurgency over the past two decades by the Pakistani army – following a narrowly defined geopolitical victory next door – dares another wave of disruption at home. Pakistan is a fragile, nuclear-armed state that is already being washed away by a failed economy, waves of social unrest, agitation by oppressed minorities and a pervasive Islamic militant it struggles to contain.
If Afghanistan falls into chaos, Pakistani will probably feel the burden again, just as after Afghanistan disintegrated in the 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal. Millions of Afghan refugees have crossed the porous border in search of relative security in Pakistan’s cities and towns.
And more: A Taliban return to power, whether through a civil war or through a peace agreement that gives them a share of power, will encourage the extremist movements in Pakistan that have the same source of ideological mentorship in the thousands of religious seminaries spread across Pakistan. These groups have shown no hesitation in opposing the country’s government.
While the Pakistani army played a dangerous game to support militants abroad and contain extremists at home, the country’s Islamic movements rallied in the presence of an invading foreign force next door, openly gathering their Afghan classmates and they rejoiced. New extremist groups have continued to shrink Pakistani civil society – often targeting abusers or assaults by intellectuals and professionals – and have even found sympathizers in Pakistan’s security forces.
Pakistani generals have used a mixture of violence and calm to tackle the country’s growing militant problem, Drs. Ayesha Siddiqa, a research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said. But a strategy to counter the spread of extremism was elusive.
“It scares me, it scares me,” said Dr. Siddiqa said. “Once the Taliban return, it would make it difficult for the Pakistani government or any government. It will be inspiring for all the other groups. ”
According to Nazir, a retired brigadier and defense analyst in Islamabad, Pakistan has learned some lessons “from the backlash of past support to jihadist groups. The country will have to tread more carefully in the end game of the Afghan war.
“Victory will not be claimed by Pakistan, but tacitly the Taliban will owe it to Pakistan,” he said. Nazir said. “Pakistan fears the recurrence of events in the past and fears a bloody civil war and violence if there is a rapid withdrawal and no political solution takes place at the same time.”
Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said that although the military and intelligence establishment in Pakistan “undoubtedly celebrates the Biden announcement”, there is still no greater control in Afghanistan.
“It will be difficult, if not impossible, for Pakistan to control the Taliban and other militant groups in Afghanistan while the country is embroiled in a civil war,” he said. ‘Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other groups are already operating in Afghanistan. There is no way Pakistan can control this mix of groups with different interests, leaders and objectives. ”
Since its birth as a country in 1947, Pakistan has been surrounded by enemies. The new borders drawn up by British officials immediately trapped Pakistan in a number of territorial disputes, including a serious border with Afghanistan, which still claims what most of the world considers to be the northwestern regions of Pakistan.
It was at the height of the Cold War in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union sought to expand its influence in South and Central Asia, that Pakistani leaders found a formula to deploy Islamic delegates they have held ever since. The United States armed and financed the training of the mujahedeen insurgency that would defeat the Soviet Army in Afghanistan and overthrow the government it advocated. Pakistan’s army, especially its intelligence wing, would serve as handler, host and coach.
Through the ensuing civil war in the 1990s, Pakistani generals helped a younger group of fundamentalist Afghan fighters, known as the Taliban, sweep the fighting factions and form a government with control of more than 90 percent of Afghanistan.
But when the United States invaded in 2001 to oust Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda after their terrorist attacks on American soil, the Americans also turned their sights on Pakistan’s allies in Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban. Pakistan finds itself in a difficult position. In light of President George W. Bush’s ‘with us or against us’ ultimatum, the Pakistani military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, reluctantly passed.
The decision had an immediate setback: Pakistan faced attacks from the Pakistani Taliban for choosing the US military campaign against its ideological brethren in Afghanistan. It has cost years of military operations that have claimed the lives of thousands of Pakistani forces, displacing countless people in northwestern Pakistan to oppress the group.
At the same time, the Pakistani army continued to work to help regroup the Afghan Taliban as an insurgency to keep the United States in check. Although U.S. officials relied on Pakistani aid to wage war and intelligence, some were embittered about the dual role the ISI played. The assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan by US troops in 2011 was a rare moment when the tension played out in public. .
But the generals of Pakistan also managed to make themselves indispensable to the United States – they offered a nuclear-armed ally in a region where China, Russia and Islamic militants all had interests. Effectively, this means that the United States has chosen to turn heads because its Pakistani allies have helped the Taliban repel US and allied forces in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Afghan government officials are becoming increasingly upset because their US allies are not coming down harder on Pakistan.
On one trip to Afghanistan shortly after he was elected vice president in 2008, Mr. Praying by President Hamid Karzai urged Pakistan to eradicate the Taliban shrines on its land. It is reported that Mr. Biden responds by saying that Pakistan is 50 times more important than Afghanistan.
While U.S. officials have been looking for a way to leave Afghanistan in recent years, they have had to turn to Pakistan again – to pressure the Taliban to enter into peace talks, and to provide assistance when the United States confronts Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. State had to move. subsidiary in the region.
With the US intention to leave in public, Pakistan has dispelled the denial that the Taliban leadership is hiding there. Taliban leaders flew from Pakistani cities to take part in peace talks in Qatar. When negotiations reached sensitive moments that required consultations with field commanders, they flew back to Pakistan.
When the United States finally signed a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February last year, sentiment in some circles in Pakistan was an open celebration.
Former Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who has repeatedly visited the House of Representatives in Washington as a US ally, tweeted a photo of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo representing Taliban mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar deputy, met during the talks in Qatar.
“You may be on your side, but God is with us,” he said. Asif said in the tweet and ended with a victory cry. “Allahu Akbar!”
But there are signs that extremist groups in Pakistan are already feeling encouraged by the alleged victory of the Taliban, which gives a glimpse into the problems that Pakistani officials are likely to face.
The once defeated Pakistani Taliban have increased their activities in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Barriers to security forces have become more frequent.
In the streets of two of Pakistan’s most important cities, Lahore and Karachi, the past few days have seen exactly how big the problem of extremism can be.
Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a movement that sees itself as protecting Islam from blasphemy, smashed uniformed members of the Pakistani forces and took them hostage for tens of hours. There have been videos of Pakistani army officers trying to reason with the violent protesters. Officials said two policemen were killed and 300 wounded. The showdown continues as the government tries to ban the group as a terrorist outfit.
“The state has not been able to control the stick-wielding and stone-throwing members of the TLP who have paralyzed most of the country for two days,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a former chairman of Pakistan’s human rights commission. “How will they handle trained Taliban militants?”
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt reported.