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> Did the U.S. Choose the
> Wrong Allies in the Global Fight Against Terrorism?
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> By Scott Johnson | Takepart.com 18
> hours ago Takepart.com
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> Taliban forces in Afghanistan hit hard last week,
> unleashing three separate attacks across the country that
> left at least 37 people, including two dozen civilians and
> several women and children, dead. The most high-profile
> attack occurred Thursday evening when four pistol-wielding
> men ran through Kabul's upscale Serena Hotel killing nine
> people before Afghan police gunned them down. Two more
> attacks—one in the eastern city of Jalalabad and the other
> in the northern Faryab Province—left 10 police officers
> and 18 civilians dead.
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> Related Stories
>
>
>
> Afghan Taliban order fighters to disrupt
> vote Associated
> Press
> Afghanistan alleges foreign hand in hotel
> attack Associated Press
> Karzai says Afghanistan doesn't need US
> troops Associated Press
> Suicide bomber kills at least 13 in
> Afghanistan Associated Press
> Kabul irked at haphazard release of Afghan
> Taliban prisoners in Pakistan Reuters
>
> The attacks, part of a threatened increase in assaults
> in the weeks leading up to national elections, came even as
> senior Taliban officials in neighboring Pakistan continued
> to negotiate with the Kabul government. Pakistan, which for
> years served as a sort of rearguard base from which Taliban
> fighters fought the Soviet Union during the 1980s, and later
> as a refuge for various factions during the Afghan civil war
> that culminated in the misguided Islamicists' harboring
> of al Qaida as it planned and carried out 9/11, has in
> recent years become its own battleground as rival Islamist
> groups violently vie for power and influence
> there.
> It has never been easy to unravel the myriad tribal,
> cultural, political, and religious ties that bind the two
> countries. But one thing that's been strongly suspected,
> if not entirely clear, is support for the Taliban from
> factions within Pakistan's own government. These
> suspicions culminated last week when Carlotta Gall,
> a New York Times reporter who spent the
> last decade reporting from both countries, published a scathing account alleging
> that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, has not
> only been supporting the Taliban for years but probably knew
> about Osama bin Laden's whereabouts long before he was
> killed by Navy SEALs in 2011.
> I spent almost a year as a reporter in Afghanistan and
> Pakistan right after 9/11. Even then, suspicion about the
> ISI's involvement with the rise of the Taliban Al Qaida
> was brewing. I wanted to hear how things had developed
> since, so last week I called Latif Afridi, whom I used to
> visit regularly when I lived in Peshawar in 2002. Afridi is
> a prominent leader in Pakistan's National Party, which has
> long been outspoken in its opposition to the Taliban in both
> countries.
> "I've been talking about this for 10 years,"
> Afridi told me. "Unfortunately, the Americans have failed
> to either convince the ISI to stop, or have failed to
> persuade them to cooperate." Apparently both, I thought.
>
> Afridi told me that the vast majority of support for
> the Taliban is rooted in Pakistan, something Gall's
> reporting from both countries also revealed. "The only
> support for them is from Pakistan," Afridi said.
> "They're being trained, supplied with weapons. Every
> person, every man and woman in this province, is convinced
> that it's the army, the ISI, which has been doing all
> this, that they're behind the destruction in Afghanistan
> and in Pakistan."
> A key figure in the rise of the Taliban in both
> Afghanistan and Pakistan is Hamid Gul, a former head of the
> ISI and outspoken critic of American foreign policy in the
> region. Gul has for years, openly or covertly, supported
> efforts to strengthen the Taliban.
> Back in 2002, I spoke with Afghan General Rahim Wardak,
> who just last week withdrew from the presidential race. At
> the time, Wardak told me this of Gul: "When Hamid Gul was
> the head of the ISI, he had a lot of Arab fighters under
> him, including Osama bin Laden, so maybe they have some
> friendly contacts."
> Gul denied this when I later interviewed him at his
> home. But Gul's power within Pakistan and now, by
> extension, Afghanistan, is well established. In 2011, he
> helped establish the Defense of Pakistan Council, a
> coalition of right-wing, conservative, and mostly Islamist
> groups and individuals who advocate closing NATO supply
> routes through their country to Afghanistan, among
> other policies. Among its members is Maulana Sami ul Haq,
> called "the Father of the Taliban" and believed to be a
> close friend to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fugitive leader of
> the Afghan Taliban and onetime friend and adviser to Osama
> bin Laden.
> "Hamid Gul is probably the biggest supporter of al
> Qaida in Pakistan right now," says one well-placed
> Pakistani source who spoke on condition of anonymity for
> fear of reprisal from terror groups. The source is familiar
> with the politics of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier
> Province, where the Taliban harbors a good deal of support
> and U.S. drone strikes have targeted Taliban members while
> stoking resentments against America. Having worked with
> senior American officials on military and intelligence operations in the
> region, he adds about Gul: "He's still very, very
> powerful."
> Taliban foe Afridi, who says that huge portions of his
> ancestral tribal land and villages were overrun by
> ISI-supported al Qaida and Taliban fighters last year, says
> America has pursued a wrongheaded policy in Pakistan for so
> long, and so intensively, that it may be too late.
> "It's very unfortunate that the Americans have
> always been supporting dictatorships and the army here,"
> he told me. "They have made Pakistan into a mother of
> terrorism."
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