In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

insurgents who would go on to fight U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. There was considerable disagreement about whether ISI support was directed by senior Pakistani government officials, at least until mid-2008, when the United States collected fairly solid evidence of senior-level complicity.²² But many U.S. officials, especially at the CIA, found it highly unlikely that ISI units would be able to carry out missions in support of groups like the Taliban without approval from senior ISI and military leaders.

ISI assistance, especially from Directorate S, which was charged with external operations, appeared to take several forms. One was a willingness to provide sanctuary to Pashtun militant groups and their senior leadership. Some ISI officials sent money and logistical supplies to insurgents, as they had previously done. As Husain Haqqani, who became Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, acknowledged during the 1990s, “Pakistani support for the Taliban was crucial.” ²³ In addition, ISI agents based in Peshawar, Quetta, and other areas kept in regular contact with militant leaders, including Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Siraj Haqqani.

At the end of his tenure as U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad quipped: “[Mullah Akhtar] Usmani, who is one of the Taliban leaders, spoke to Pakistan’s Geo TV at a time when the Pakistani intelligence services claimed that they did not know where they were. If a TV company could find him, how is it that the intelligence service of a country which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces cannot find them?”²⁴

Khalilzad was among those most frustrated with U.S. policy toward Pakistan. As the ambassador to Afghanistan, and later as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he complained in person and in video teleconferences about the growing sanctuary in Pakistan. “We had the data and the intelligence estimates,” said one adviser to Khalilzad in Kabul, “but senior officials in the U.S. government were unwilling to put pressure on Pakistan and President Musharraf, especially to go after the Taliban.”²⁵

Indeed, some individuals in the ISI were helpful in providing strategic and operational advice to three main Afghan groups active on different fronts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border: Mullah Omar’s Taliban, based in Quetta; the Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan; and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, based in the northern parts of Pakistan’s tribal agencies and in the North West Frontier Province.

ISI officials helped train some Taliban and other insurgents destined for Afghanistan and Kashmir in Quetta, Mansehra, Shamshattu, Parachinar, and other areas in Pakistan. In order to minimize detection, the ISI also supplied indirect assistance—including financial assistance—to Taliban training camps. Some ISI officials also used former operatives to collaborate with Afghan insurgents to ensure deniability. One NATO document concluded that “external/local elements trained in Pakistan (Taliban/Hezb-i-Islami Haqqani/ISI) enter through the Paktika border.”²⁶

United States and NATO officials uncovered several instances in which the ISI provided intelligence to Taliban and other insurgents (such as the Haqqani network) at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. They tipped off Taliban forces about the location and movement of Afghan and Coalition forces, which undermined several anti- Taliban military operations. ISI operatives were highly aggressive in collecting intelligence on the movement and activity of Afghan, U.S., and other NATO forces in eastern and southern Afghanistan. ISI members then shared some of this information with the Taliban and other insurgent groups.²⁷ Most shockingly, some Pakistani intelligence officials were also involved in suicide attacks, including the Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul in July 2008.

The majority of the ISI’s assistance appeared to come directly from individuals in the middle and lower levels of the organization, but there were some reports that senior officials of the ISI and the Pakistani government were aware of the ISI’s role and were actively encouraging it. It was even reported that General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of army staff, had referred to Jalaluddin Haqqani as a “strategic asset.”²⁸ Pakistani military officials (especially from the Frontier Corps) regularly failed to cooperate on stemming cross-border activity, and, in some cases, they actively helped insurgents cross the border. David Kilcullen, who served as a counterinsurgency adviser to Condoleezza Rice and General David Petraeus, remarked that some militants moved into Afghanistan “with direct assistance from Pakistani Frontier Corps troops.”²⁹ Officials such as General Hamid Gul (former head of the ISI) and Sultan Amir (former ISI member also known as Colonel Imam) gave speeches at Pakistani government and military institutions calling for jihad against the United States and the Afghan government.³⁰ Pakistan’s Frontier Corps also supported insurgent offensive operations. Interviews with U.S. soldiers indicated that there were dozens of incidents in 2006, for example, where Pakistani military posts—especially Frontier Corps posts—provided supporting fire for insurgent offensive operations. ³¹ One joint paper by the United Nations and the European Union offered a grim assessment:

Given the wide-ranging nature of ISI involvement, [the ISI] would need to endorse any talks with the Taliban. Anyone negotiating without their sanction would have to do so covertly, or face heavy consequences. It was not clear President Musharraf could be persuaded to control the ISI in this regard, which was not even obviously in his interest. His direction to the formal side was explicit, but forward and informal elements, retired generals with extremist views (e.g. Hamid Gul, Aziz Khan, Ehsan), retired Taliban liaison staff (e.g. Imam, Afridi) and many in a variety of services below the rank of major were more difficult to make accountable.³²

The U.S. government found that Pakistan largely refrained from conducting operations against the Taliban leadership structure.³³ As one Pakistani journalist pointed out, the Pakistan government “plunges into action when they know they can lay their hands on a foreign militant but they are still reluctant to proceed against the Taliban.”³⁴ The reluctance was even true of some key Taliban leaders who were arrested by Pakistani security forces. For example, Mullah Ubaidullah Akhund, who was captured by Pakistani forces in February 2007, continued to communicate with Taliban leaders even after his capture.³⁵

The Pakistani government negotiated several agreements with tribal leaders, including those allied with—or even members of—the Taliban. In April 2004, the government established an agreement, known as the Shakai Agreement, with the Taliban and local tribal leaders, including Nek Muhammad. Nek Muhammad was an upstart jihadi born in 1975. He had a youthful handsomeness, a thick black beard, and long, wavy hair, but it was his extraordinary confidence and tribal mien that catapulted him to power in South Waziristan. “Nek never had an intellectual mind but some other traits of his personality became evident during his stay at the Darul Uloom” seminary, recalled one of his teachers. “He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul and an obstinate determination to carry out his will no matter how mindless it might be.”³⁶ He was mercurial and cavalier but also extremely charismatic, and the Pakistan government made a deal with him.

The Shakai Agreement included several provisions: Pakistan Army troops would not interfere in internal tribal affairs and agreed to stay in their cantonment areas; local insurgents would not attack Pakistan government personnel or infrastructure; and all foreigners would have to register with the government.³⁷ But Nek Muhammad quickly violated the agreement and refused to hand over any foreigners, while also publicly humiliating the Pakistan government, boasting to reporters, “I did not go to them, they came to my place. That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”³⁸ He ultimately paid a hefty price. In June 2004, he was killed by a CIA Predator strike near Wana.³⁹ His successor, Maulvi Abbas, agreed not to attack Pakistani government positions if the government allowed him to run the affairs of his tribe without interference.

In September 2006, the governor of the North West Frontier Province, Lieutenant General (ret.) Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai, reached an agreement in Miramshah with a tribal grand jirga whose members were drawn from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. As part of the agreement, the Taliban promised that it would not use the area to conduct attacks against the Afghan or Pakistani governments; it would stop targeted killings of pro-government maliks (tribal elders); and it would not impose its lifestyle on others by force. It also permitted the Taliban to retain their administrative and political position, allowed them to retain their weapons, and permitted foreigners to remain without any registration on promise of good conduct. In return, the Pakistan Army agreed to withdraw from most areas.⁴⁰

But the agreement had the exact opposite impact: It strengthened the power of the mullahs at the expense of the maliks. A Pakistan Ministry of Interior document informed President Pervez Musharraf that “Talibanisation has not only unfolded potential threats to our security, but is also casting its dark shadows over FATA and now in the settled areas adjoining the tribal belt. The reality is that it is spreading.” The document summarized the situation by affirming that there was “a general policy of appeasement towards the Taliban, which has further emboldened them.”⁴¹ A U.S. government assessment came to a similar conclusion, arguing that cross-border infiltration increased by 300 to 400 percent in some districts after the 2006 agreement in Miramshah. It found that the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) constitute an active