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Pakistan’s Interest
Following the Afghan and Indian government, the U.S. accused Pakistan’s intelligence service ISI of facilitating the attack on India’s embassy in Kabul.
The
conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani
intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the
officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani
intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to
combat militants in the region.
That ‘clearest evidence to date’ may be something or not. But I wonder why the U.S. has released this at all. This puts pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government, but what is the expected result of revealing this now?
The Pakistani government can not do anything against ISI, its main intelligence service. Before Giliani recently came to Washington, he ordered the ISI to
be subjugated to the Interior Ministry. The Pakistani military establishment vetoed that move. ISI has a history of resisting civilian influence.
It will continue to operate against India, Afghanistan and the U.S. as long as those three operate against Pakistan’s perceived interest.
Here are good description of Pakistani priorities by McClatchy and from the Globe and Mail:
The ISI, and the Pakistani army it serves, don’t want to see the United States, and the government of Hamid Karzai, win in Afghanistan because they believe it would fatally undermine Pakistan’s own national security, analysts say. The army does not trust U.S. intentions in the region, and it does not trust the Karzai government, which is close to India, Pakistan’s giant and hostile neighbour.
"Nobody in Pakistan wants to see America win," said Hameed Gul, a retired general who is the most infamous former director-general of the ISI. "That would spell danger to Pakistan in the long run. They, America, want to make us subservient to India."
…
The Taliban is merely the tool of a policy aimed at keeping Afghanistan from falling into the hands of Islamabad’s adversaries, as Pakistan would be left sandwiched between two enemy states. This is a military doctrine about national survival, not an ideology of religious fanaticism. Civilians are not welcome to meddle with it.
"If your perception, as the Pakistan army, is that RAW (the Indian intelligence agency) and the CIA are acting in unison, then you try to protect yourself," said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc. "You do not give them [the Taliban] sufficient room to completely take over Afghanistan but you do enough to stop growing Indian influence."
The nuclear deal the U.S. struck with India, which also undermines the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, has certainly confirmed the Pakistani view.
Some 70 percent of the logistics for the troops in Afghanistan are
landed in Karachi and transported from there through Pakistan and the
Khyber pass, into Afghanistan. The new line of communication that was opened
through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may help to lower the
dependency on Pakistan. But without Pakistan’s support, the occupation
of Afghanistan will become much more difficult and expensive.
So what is the actual strategy the U.S. has towards Pakistan. Is it hoping to confront it while depending on it?
If the U.S. wants to stay in Afghanistan for long it will have to make a deal with Pakistan. The Pakistani condition for that deal will be less U.S. support for India. The only alternative to this is an outright attack on Pakistan. Is that really in the cards?
Many interesting thoughts in this thread particularly some raised by shanks. I’m going to steer clear of an opinion on the thorium stuff because I simply don’t know enough about it and hope to rectify that omission before developing a pov.
However one thing that shanks said in his initial post touches on something I have been mulling over lately and goes to the heart of the current pressure that is being put on Pakistan by foreign countries.
shanks wrote “As an Indian, I find the notion that the CIA works with RAW a little hard to believe. From my limited understanding, I believe it to be at the same level of what the ISI collaborates with the CIA.
Uneasy bedfellows.”
What I’m about to say doesn’t relate to Indian or Pakistani intelligence services any more than any other national intelligence service, particularly those whose services have been ‘westernised’ as I believe both the Indian and Pakistani intelligence services have. It also makes me sound even more like a paranoid conspiracy nut, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
A couple of years back there was a minor furore when a story ran in the media that German intelligence agents had assisted in targeting sites for amerikan bombing raids (ie terrorism) in Baghdad in the early stages of the USuk invasion of that sovereign nation.
b stated his belief that the German intelligence service wouldn’t be a part of any such thing but the ‘facts’ such as they were, repudiated b’s position.
A conscious effort by USuk intelligence services has created a world where ‘our’- meaning we as individual citizens of various sovereign nations dotted about this rock, opinion of what being a loyal citizen means, and those who work in ‘westernised’ intelligence services’ view of loyalty, don’t amount to the same thing.
We consider loyalty as being loyal to the group or society we belong, pretty much always and anyhow. If it is directly threatened a loyal person will defend the society they are loyal to without too much consideration of the political leaning of the current political elite of that society. Of course there are exceptions to this. Especially when the political elite proposes some particular egregious outrage, but generally speaking most people are loyal to the community they live in, no matter what point of view it’s leadership may have adopted.
This is not true of intelligence services. They may spend a great deal of time considering loyalty and it’s implications, rights and responsibilities but they are also subjected to a combination indoctrination and culling process which is aimed at ensuring that the agents are loyal to a particular ideal not the society which may or may not support that ideal. That ideal is of a globally coherent (ie monolithic) integration of their own country with a sort of bourgeois-friendly, corporate-capitalist, semi-democratic, market-economic model.
Two quick examples. In my own country, all those years ago when French intelligence agents committed an act of terrorism by blowing up a Greenpeace vessel and murdering a crew member, it is certain that the NZ intelligence agency the S.I.S., knew French agents were operating in their territory at the time. Some knew of the impending unprovoked act of aggression against NZ, but they said nothing. After the bombing, the SIS were worse than useless at apprehending the criminals. The terrorists were caught by the civilian police who repeatedly complained of SIS obstruction of the investigation. Same thing later when police work uncovered a mossad scam to get NZ passports for it’s agents. The only obvious role the SIS had in either case was to pressure the government using their media contacts (agents of influence) into getting the agents from their fraternal organisations released.
When reactionary forces within Turkey attempted to unseat the democratically elected government of the AKP, it would be reasonable to expect that Turkey’s intelligence services would be loyal to the elected government.
Not so, it is apparent that it has been elements within the Turkish Intelligence agencies that have driven this anti-democratic action.
One of amerika’s biggest gains from the undemocratic dictator Musharraf’s military regime was that it enabled USuk to bring the ISI ‘into line’. eg
“After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Pakistan joined the American led Global War on Terror and turned against the Taliban. Some men in the ISI whose loyalty was suspect were removed and currently, the ISI have been heavily engaged in counter terrorism against both Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants as well as tribal/sectarian terrorists in Pakistan.”
I suspect that any evidence of ISI involvement in India’s recent bombings in Pakistan and domestically, will be a classic misinformation play. That is if the ISI were involved or if evidence has been manufactured to implicate the ISI it will have been a result of ISI elements who want USuk to increase attacks in the so called tribal areas.
This current bullying of Pakistan by amerika and by use of India’s intelligence service as a proxy, is a classic piece of abuse of intelligence agency. Abuse of both ISI and RAW.
I have no doubt that the elements within India’s RAW and even within the ISI believe that oppressing the fiercely independent but also fiercely ethical people of FATA known as the North West frontier back in the days of the english empire, will serve what they believe to be the long term interests of Pakistan and India.
Of course particularly in Pakistan, these traitors will have been convinced that there are no plans to actually invade Pakistan, that this sabre-rattling is merely to assist the Pakistani ruling coalition to “see the light” and do the job of oppressing the people of Baluchistan, Waziristan and the other FATA areas themselves.
But unfortunately for freedom loving people everywhere ut specially those in Pakistan, that is not the case. It may even transpire that those vicious terrorist acts on the people of Gujarat were phase one of a plan to get popular support in India, then amerika for an invasion of Pakistan.
Since even the allegedly most ‘liberal’ candidate in Prez 2008 is advocating invasion of Pakistan it is difficult to conceive how anyone in the ISI loyal to the notion of an independent democratic Pakistani state would do anything as downright stupid as blowing up the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Any evidence of ISI involvement, real or manufactured can only be from those elements of the ISI who imagine their interests lie with assisting the amerikan empire. The same goes for agents in India’s RAW.
No patriotic Indian in their right mind would advocate USuk interference in Pakistan because it will cause an enduring rebellion, the sort of weeping sore no one wants next door, just ask Syria, Jordan or Iran.
Most people in India will be aware of the dangers inherent in USuk invasion of Pakistan, that makes the odds high both the Gujarati and Kabul embassy acts were deliberate provocations by those sympathetic to USuk dominance.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 3 2008 3:32 utc | 10
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