WikiLeaks and the ISI-Taliban nexus

• Peter Galbraith
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 July 2010 21.30 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/26/wikileaks-isi-taliban-nexus?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The WikiLeaks documents, splashed in the Guardian and several other papers, provide useful confirmation of what is readily discerned from public sources: the Afghanistan war is going badly, the Taliban are exceptionally brutal, US forces have not always attacked the right targets and elements in Pakistan continue to support the Taliban.

The most striking feature of the documents – an unprecedented 90,000 pages of mostly raw intelligence that could only be leaked thanks to 21st-century technology that enables large volumes of data to be compressed into a tiny thumb drive – is the inconsistent quality of the intelligence. Americans should be asking why they are paying upwards of $50bn for this kind of information and why military officers and diplomats so rely on it.

Of all this information, the most troubling concerns the duplicitous double dealing by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. While some of the intelligence seems wildly implausible (surely the ISI did not plot to poison Kabul-bound beer, an enormously complex operation with limited pay off since US troops are not allowed to drink alcohol in Afghanistan), the WikiLeaks documents show a continued relationship between the ISI and the Taliban. This is not surprising. In the 1990s, the ISI helped create the Taliban and Pakistani support was decisive to the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996. The US has known since 2001 that Pakistan did not break its ties with the Taliban as President Pervez Musharraf had promised President Bush. After all, Mullah Omar and his close associates have been in Pakistan since 2001 and it is not plausible that Pakistan did not know where any of them were.

President Bush could have forced Pakistan to break the ISI-Taliban nexus but did not. He was dealing with Musharraf who, as the country's military dictator, presumably did control the ISI. Bush, who liked to talk tough but rarely was, preferred to accept Musharraf's false assurance that Pakistan was not supporting the Taliban connection to the unpleasant task of having to put pressure on an ally.

President Obama is dealing with an elected civilian government that is, as its leaders admit privately, in office but not always in power. President Asif Ali Zardari has tried to make the war on terror the centrepiece of his administration. Taliban-linked extremists murdered Zardari's wife, Benazir Bhutto, in circumstances where, as a recent UN report documents, the Musharraf dictatorship was at best grossly negligent when it did not provide Bhutto adequate security. After reading the UN report, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there was some level of official complicity in her killing, possibly by ISI officials. But Zardari does not control the ISI.

Obama's Pakistan strategy involves strengthening the civilian government through engagement and with substantial monetary assistance. The strategy has produced results. Under pressure from Zardari and the parliament, the army has transferred some units from the Indian border to combat insurgents operating in the tribal areas on the western border. The ISI has cooperated in the arrest of militants, including Mullah Baradur, the Taliban number two and a key figure in its military operations. But, as the Wikileaks documents underscore, the ISI's double game continues.

Obama has few policy options. It is not easy to find ways to pressure the ISI directly. Threatening to withhold US assistance to Pakistan will undercut the elected Pakistani government that it is America's most eager ally in the effort to break the ISI-Taliban connection and to defeat extremism in Pakistan.

The WikiLeaks documents highlight another shortcoming in the war effort: US hi-tech weapons are very good at hitting specific locations (although not without mishaps, as the documents illustrate) but the US often lacks reliable intelligence as to who is on the ground. Poor intelligence contributes to civilian casualties that, in a society organised by extended family and tribe, make new enemies for the coalition.

Good intelligence comes when the local population is willing to inform on the insurgents, which they will only do where they have confidence in the Afghan authorities. In the areas where the Taliban operates, the local population generally sees Hamid Karzai's government for what it is: corrupt, ineffective and, after last year's fraudulent presidential election, illegitimate. Without reliable intelligence, the US cannot make full use of its technological advantages.

ISI duplicity is a small factor in the coalition's failing military effort in Afghanistan, which is largely related to the absence of an Afghan partner. Pakistan, however, could end up as the scapegoat in a failed war, with potentially disastrous consequences for the country. Pakistan's military and intelligence leaders should ask whether continuing to play the Taliban card is worth the cost.