Gates says ISI playing double game, CIA backs ‘effective’ drone attacks

[Skeptic]

Gates says ISI playing double game, CIA backs ‘effective’ drone attacks


Accusing the ISI of engaging in “strategic hedging” and “playing both sides” in Afghanistan, top Pentagon officials have said that getting rid of the al-Qaeda “safe haven” in Pakistan is the “top priority” for the US to win the war against terrorism in the region. Also on Tuesday, in a rare public acknowledgment of the raids, CIA chief Leon Panetta described the drone attacks on al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan as the “only game in town”, saying the missile strikes have been “very effective” in the war against terrorism.

In an interview to CBS News, US defence secretary Robert Gates said ISI is “playing both sides”, adding that though Pakistan has committed itself to be part of the US-led war against terrorism, it continues to maintain links with the extremist elements. “Look, their maintaining of contact with this group, in my view, is a strategic hedge,” he said. “They (Pakistanis) are not sure who’s going to win in Afghanistan. So to a certain extent they play both sides,” he said

Another top Pentagon official said there is a need to exert continued pressure on Pakistan’s tribal belt to defeat terrorist outfits. “I think the long-range piece with Pakistan is to continue to put pressure on the Federally Administered Tribal Area and NWFP in a way that eventually puts us in a position to be able to defeat al-Qaeda,” Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said at the Brookings Institute.

Dismissing Pakistan’s concerns, CIA chief Panetta said US air strikes aimed at al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan have been “very effective,” with few civilian deaths. Panetta further said, “I can assure you that in terms of that particular area, it is very precise and is very limited in terms of collateral damage”.

“Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaeda leadership,” Panetta said in Los Angeles.

 

[Skeptic]

Terrorists with WMDs worry Robert Gates

* US defence secretary says Pakistan ‘playing both sides to a certain extent’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Asked what keeps him up at night, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said, “I suspect everybody would say the thing that frightens them the most is a group like Al Qaeda getting hold of a weapon of mass destruction. And I think that really is a serious worry.”

“Like a nuclear weapon in Pakistan?” he was prompted by a CBS interviewer.

“Not necessarily from Pakistan. North Korea’s another worry,” he replied.

He said it was up to Pakistan to clear out the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists there.

“We want to try and persuade the Pakistanis of the importance of doing this... We’ll just have to keep working with the Pakistanis. These problems aren’t going to be solved overnight.”

Asked if the Pakistan Army was capable of neutralising the Taliban, he said, “They can do this. They just need training and probably some different kinds of equipment.”

He reiterated “They’re maintaining contact with these groups, in my view as a strategic hedge ... They are not sure who’s going to win in Afghanistan. They’re not sure what’s going to happen along that border area. So, to a certain extent, they play both sides.”

Gates would not say how long US troops might remain in Afghanistan. “I think what the people in the United States want to see is the momentum shifting to see that the strategies that we’re following are working,” he said. “That’s why I’ve said in nine months to a year, we need to evaluate how we’re doing.”

 

[Patriot]

ISI is of course maintaining contacts with Talibans.That's what intelligence agencies do.KGB had contacts in CIA and CIA had contacts in KGB.Does this mean KGB was playing double game to Soviet Union or CIA was playing double game against America?As long as we're not supplying weapons we're not playing double game.If anything Americans are playing double game for not removing poppy from Afghanistan which continues to be the main source of money for talibans.

 

[Patriot]

Ok, here's the article i posted a month ago..still relevant.

Why the Pakistan intelligence agency's close ties with the Taliban should not be condemned

No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act against its core self-interest. The United States has struggled with this dilemma for decades in regards to its relations with Israel and South Korea. Self-interest based on the facts of geography is what makes America’s relations with these two close allies particularly fractious. Israel has long refused to scale back settlements in the occupied territories, frustrating U.S. efforts at peacemaking, even as American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, South Korea has, in certain periods, extended an olive branch to the North Korean communists, frustrating U.S. efforts to erect a strong, united front against the Pyongyang regime. Now the U.S. faces the same problem with another of its ostensible allies, Pakistan.

The U.S. demands that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan’s own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor’s future?

This is particularly the case when one considers the long and unruly land border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and how both countries form one organic region. Indeed, Sugata Bose, a history professor at Harvard, in 2003 described the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier area as “historically no frontier at all,” but the very “heart” of an “Indo-Persian and Indo-Islamic economic, cultural, and political domain that had straddled Afghanistan and Punjab for two millennia.” The fact, which we all keep repeating, that there is no solution for Afghanistan without a solution for Pakistan, is itself an indication of the extent to which both countries are joined. This makes it even more crucial for the ISI to maintain contacts and highly developed networks with all principle Afghani political and guerrilla groups.

We've done the same thing ourselves. In 1976, U.S. special envoy Talcott Seelye was able to effect the evacuation of American diplomats and their families from war-torn Beirut only because of contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a group that we weren’t supposed to be talking to at the time. And all agree it was a grave mistake on our part to have abruptly left the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region after the fall of the Berlin Wall, letting our own carefully constructed networks there wither on the vine.

Remember, it wasn’t radicals burrowed deep within the ISI who made the decision to help bring the Taliban to power in the mid-1990s: it was the democratically elected government of the western-educated Benazir Bhutto who did that, on the theory that the Taliban would help bring stability to Afghanistan. This history indicates the degree to which talking to the Taliban has broad support within the Pakistani political establishment.

The Pakistani military and political establishment both view Afghanistan through the lens of their conflict with India. When they look to the west they envision an “Islamistan” of Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries with which to face off against Hindu-dominated India to Pakistan’s east. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with his pro-western and pro-Indian tendencies, gets in the way of this Pakistani vision. But even if Pakistan were to come to terms with Karzai, it would still need to have lines of contact with all Afghan groups, including the Taliban.

Of course, we can and should demand that Pakistan cease helping the Taliban to plan and carry out operations. But cutting links to the Taliban altogether is something the Pakistanis simply cannot do, and trying to insist upon it only worsens tensions between our two countries.

So what do we do? There are those who say we should abandon the Afghanistan enterprise altogether, with the exception of direct strikes against al-Qaeda. But President Barack Obama has already decided against that, and is adding both troops and civilian experts to the campaign, which amounts to Afghan nation-building in all but name. The hope is that by turning the tide of the war in our favor, the Pakistanis will, for the sake of their own self-interest, cut a better deal with the pro-western Karzai, even as they continue to maintain less-harmful, low-level links with the Taliban. That is the best we can expect.

As in Iraq, we may find that in order to make progress and find an exit strategy, we will have to engage in negotiations with some of the very people we’ve been fighting. At some point we may even end up negotiating with elements of the Taliban ourselves. The one thing that we cannot afford in this messy situation is to issue very public, cut-and-dried ultimatums to our purported friends.
Talking to the Taliban - The Atlantic (April 6, 2009)

 

[Skeptic]

Actually, he made those comments in full knowledge of the facts mentioned in the article and your logic that - It's done by every Intelligence agency, is indeed true, but he made his reasons for mentioning the fact clear aplenty. He asserted that ISI is not sure of a US victory in Afghanistan.

I think we'll need to concede it to him. Because if ISI is sure that US will be able to defeat Taliban in Afghanistan, then hardly any need to have contacts in enemy camp. Also, the sentiments against Afghan Taliban are still mixed. Even on this forum, which represents Pakistan's educated segment,

People do sympathize with the Afghan Taliban and PA is not in direct conflict with them. The fact that Afghan Taliban are supporting TTP is also disputed by some members. I assume this (Mixed feelings for Afghan Taliban) to represent the general consensus in Pakistani populace and indeed will be reflected in ISI. This is troubling Mr. Gates I presume.

 

[S-2]

"Because if ISI is sure that US will be able to defeat Taliban in Afghanistan, then hardly any need to have contacts in enemy camp."

More to the point, Pakistan absolutely couldn't afford such if American victory was evident.

What explains this initial choice of the Pakistani gov't to provide sanctuary? The suspicion that we didn't have the stamina to assure our apparent victory.

As matters have regressed, stamina has taken a back-seat to the hope that we might not win at all. A victory without the stamina to consolidate, sustain, and assure the Afghani government's permanence would be comparable to a defeat. Either offer an opportunity at reversal for Pakistan's ambitions to again be put back on the table.

Thus the rationale in 2002 has morphed to an equally acceptable perspective by the ISI/PA/GoP now and, indeed, it is what troubles Mr. Gates.

 

[muse]

Unforunate for some Pakistani interlocutors, they imagine that if the American says night is day, night actually will be day.

Mr. Gates statement is entirely meaningless in itself, it's value is proportional to the degree to which it can be used to make accusations out of facts and to make them stick.

This is yet more U.S. double talk to further the effort to maintain pressure on Pakistan so that attention can be deflected from the continuing U.S failure in Afghanistan.

 

[jeypore]

This is yet more U.S. double talk to further the effort to maintain pressure on Pakistan so that attention can be deflected from the continuing U.S failure in Afghanistan.

This comes at a bigger question in my mind. Whom is really losing this battle with the talibans, US in Afganistan or Pakistan in it's own soil?

There are numerous clear signs that the ISI does want to keep talibans in the back pocket, not only for domination of afganistan, but the main fear is India's having a larger hold into Afganistan, isn't that the main purpose.

 

[S-2]

"...that attention can be deflected from the continuing U.S failure in Afghanistan."

You could be correct but would Gates be wrong?

 

[muse]

We should have no problem with gates being right - That the U.S chooses to paint ordinary diplomacy as if it was other than prudent diplomacy, is of course a reflection of it's desperation.

This is the same U.S. which supported Hikmatyar, then tried to kill and is now engaged in talks with him -- Pot calling the kettle black?

S2, it seems to me you have difficulty in being a reasonable interlocutor, because you are at all times unwilling to grant to others what you demand from them, honest and integrity in our deliberations, the govts will do what they will but our deliberations and conversations must be based on some common ground.

 

[S-2]

"...the ISI does want to keep talibans in the back pocket, not only for domination of afganistan, but the main fear is India's having a larger hold into Afganistan..."

jeypore, the essence of "strategic depth" has nothing to do with a Pakistani final redoubt if attacked by India from the east. It is ALL about denying India the ability to envelop Pakistan from two sides.

Pakistan doesn't need an active role in Afghanistan and simply requires a pashtu-dominant gov't that can keep the Indian-friendly tajiks, uzbeks, turkomen, and Hazaras in their rightful subjugated space.

Remember- the pashtu are a double edged sword. Pakistan's goal is ALWAYS to point pashtu nationalist aspirations towards Afghanistan. The rest of Afghanistan, of course, encourages pashtus to look eastward towards FATA and NWFP to satisfy their nationalist needs.

Doing so vacates Afghanistan for the N.A. and India while equipping Pakistan with it's own raging insurge...whoops!

Sorry.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

There are numerous clear signs that the ISI does want to keep talibans in the back pocket, not only for domination of afganistan, but the main fear is India's having a larger hold into Afganistan, isn't that the main purpose.

No there is no such 'clear' sign, nor is there any indication of a lack of faith in the US prevailing being replaced with 'hope' that the US fails, as S-2 suggested.

The central issue for Pakistan remains the same that led to it supporting the nascent Taliban movement in the 1990's - stabilizing an unstable Afghanistan. The 'denying India space' factor did not come into play until India chose to meddle in Afghanistan by supporting her own proxies against Pakistan.

If the US fails, and there are already indications from the US legislature that they are running short on patience with the lack of progress, then Afghanistan will likely slide back into ethnic strife with warlords, druglords and other assorted criminal elements running the show (or multiple shows rather) as they were post Soviet withdrawal.

The instability in Afghanistan was a great threat and drain on Pakistan then (millions of refugees, a haven for criminals and smugglers and an open source of drugs and weapons flowing into Pakistan), and it would be a huge threat and drain on Pakistan if the US effort fails in the future - confronting that nightmare scenario with absolutely no options to control events in Afghanistan is why Pakistan is hedging its bets.

Musharraf couldn't have been clearer in his interview - the problem is in Afghanistan, solve Afghanistan and the Pakistani issue resolves itself.

Some quotes from US legislators:

As for the military spending, during the Bush administration many Democrats stressed their opposition to the war in Iraq while supporting efforts against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But an increasing number of party liberals are skeptical of success in Afghanistan.

Chief among them is Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., author of the House legislation as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But for now he’s giving Obama a chance to demonstrate greater progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“This is a bill that I have very little confidence in,” Obey said. “I think we have a responsibility to give a new president — who did not get us into this mess — the best possible opportunity to get out of it.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is opposing the infusion of war funds. He’s not impressed with Obama’s plans on Afghanistan.

“Sometimes great presidents make mistakes, and sometimes great presidents make even great mistakes. I hope that doesn’t happen here,” McGovern said. “As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague.”
House passes funding for Afghan, Iraq wars - Army News, news from Iraq, - Army Times

But House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey said he was “very dubious” about the chances of success in the region and wants a “fish or cut bait” assessment in a year’s time that will determine how long the U.S. continues on this path.

“It gives the president one year to demonstrate what he can do,” said the Wisconsin Democrat. “It gives him ample resources.”

Much as the administration may wince, Obey draws a parallel between today and 40 years ago, when he first came to Congress in the spring of 1969 and gave Richard Nixon a year to make progress in Vietnam.

“The president feels obligated to give it a shot, and we’ll help him give it a shot for a year,” Obey said. “At the end of the year, I want to have a hard-nosed, realistic evaluation based on the performance standards we’re talking about.”
House Democrats unveil $94.2 billion wartime spending bill - David Rogers - POLITICO.com

 

[S-2]

"S2, it seems to me you have difficulty in being a reasonable interlocutor..."

You've a personal problem.

"That the U.S chooses to paint ordinary diplomacy as if it was other than prudent diplomacy, is of course a reflection of it's desperation."

Ordinary diplomacy has rarely included seven years of sovereign aborgation to the defeated taliban government and army upon your soil while raising the high heavens about PREDATOR.

That's deceitful, duplicitous, utterly aberrant behavior, and not in the slightest "ordinary". It is recognized as such by, obviously, ourselves. No less, though, the Afghan gov't and forty other nations with whom you must co-exist.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Transcript of Gates's interview with Couric:

COURIC (on camera): Isn’t it ironic, though, that the very people the U.S. befriended and armed in the 1980s have morphed into our enemies. What lesson can be learned from that? Be careful who you cozy up to?

GATES: Or just that history is ironic.

COURIC (voiceover): The Taliban and Al Qaida have safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the mountains along the Afghan border. Gates told us it’s up to Pakistan to clear those terrorists out.

GATES: We want to try and persuade the Pakistanis of the importance of doing that.

COURIC (on camera): But the Pakistani army clearly has its hands full, right now fighting the Taliban much closer to its capital. So, what are you going to do about these safe havens?

GATES: We’ll just have to keep working with the Pakistanis. These problems aren’t going to be solved overnight.

COURIC: But the Pakistan army is still focused on conventional warfare against India. And there are more terrorists per square mile in Pakistan than any place in the world. Do you think that Pakistan’s army is capable of neutralizing the Taliban?

GATES: They can do this. They just need training and probably some different kinds of equipment.

COURIC: Since 2001, America has given Pakistan’s military more than a billion dollars a year. Still, parts of Pakistan’s intelligence service support the Taliban in Afghanistan.

GATES: Look, they’re maintaining contact with these groups, in my view, as a strategic hedge. They are not sure who’s going to win in Afghanistan. They’re not sure what’s going to happen along that border area. So, to a certain extent, they play both sides.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003119703

 

[muse]

A section of opinion has argued that they are a Failure in Afghanistan because the Talib exist in FATA -- however; informed opinion is convinced that that Pakistan are destabilized by U.S failure in Afghanistan -- the continued effort at destabilizing Pakistan cannot contribute to the possibility of U.S. success in Afghanistan.