The ISI War

 The title is not correct.  I did not mistakenly type "ISI" when I meant "ISIS".  Nor am I talking about some obscure event.  Instead, I am talking about a War that recently returned to front page prominence.  The War I am talking about is usually called "The Afghan War" or "The War in Afghanistan".  I think that my title for that War is more accurate.  And I will explain why after doing a quick historical dive.

I am going to start my dive in 1812 with the War of the same name.  What is called "The War of 1812" in the U.S. is seen as a side show to the main event, the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.  The Napoleonic Wars had been going on for a long time by 1812.  The U.S. was feeling frisky.  It was not that long after the success of the Revolutionary War and the fledgling country was feeling its oats.

There were several reasons for the start of the War of 1812.  But a big one was the opportunity to pull off a land grab.  Thousands of miles away Britain and France were fully occupied with trying to beat the shit out of each other.  From this side of the pond that opened up what looked like a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Just march North and grab Canada while no one was looking.  What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, as it turned out.  The U.S. lost every major engagement in the War except the one that happened after the peace treaty had been signed.  The U.S. capitol got sacked and burned.  It was just embarrassing fiasco after embarrassing fiasco.  In the end, the U.S. was happy to get of as lightly as they did.

As a result, administrations of all stripes took to heart the advice Washington had given the country in his farewell address.   Not getting involved in foreign entanglements became an oft repeated mantra.  For a long time the country mostly sat things out when it came to foreign adventure.  Then the U.S. got dragged kicking and screaming into World War I.  How this came about is an interesting story but I am going to skip over it.

The U.S. emerged from the fighting with a reputation for having saved the day.  The U.S. paid only a small price to win this accolade so it decided to become heavily involved in the peace talks that followed the War.  The process was generally considered a failure in the U.S. so the country went back to hiding behind its two oceans.  They seemed sufficient protection from anything any other military power might attempt to throw our way.

Then the U.S. got dragged kicking and screaming into World War II.  This story is well known (hint:  Pearl Harbor), so I am going to skip over it too.  But things had changed greatly by the time that War ended.  War now featured submarines, aircraft carriers, long range bombers, and, most importantly, the Atomic Bomb.  The two oceans were no longer the barriers they had once been.

So, the U.S. reversed course and became heavily engaged in world affairs.  Judged to be successful, necessary, or both, the U.S. went from non-participant to World Leader over a period lasting only a few years.  And that brings us to 1953.

The British government found that it had a problem with the government of Iran.  Sure, it was democratically elected and all that.  But it wanted to come between powerful U.S. and British oil companies and the abundant quantities of cheap oil its oil fields were capable of producing.  The Brits asked for U.S. help dealing with the situation.

Instead of just providing help the U.S., in the form of the CIA, elbowed the Brits out of the way and stepped in and took the lead.  The CIA engineered a coup.  The democratic government was ousted and the Shah installed in its place.  He did what we wanted and Iranian oil production remained under the  control of U.S. and British companies.

A PR offensive was launched to paper over the crass commercial motives that were the actual reason for the intervention.  But most of the rest of the world was not fooled.  And, if it had been a one-off then that would have been that.  But it was not.

Over the following decades the CIA engineered many coup attempts in many places.  All were more or less modeled on the original Iranian success.  Some were successful, some were not.  Often the coup attempts were motivated by the interest of one U.S. multinational or another becoming threatened.  Among the failures was, for instance, the U.S. backed invasion of Cuba that resulted in the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco.  Most famously, there was the entire Vietnam War.

The U.S. became notorious for this sort of thing.  But over time the high failure rate became more and more apparent domestically and these tactics fell out of favor.  But the world, particularly the "Third World" remembered.  The U.S. was often labeled as "imperialist" in these circles.  As a result, nationalists in third world countries did not want to be labeled as "imperialist lackeys of the U.S.".

Then Russia invaded Afghanistan in the late '70s.  President Jimmy Carter saw a wonderful opportunity to "Vietnam" the Russians.  Afghans were fiercely patriotic.  They had a reputation for being formidable fighters.  They would be willing to fight hard to throw the Russians out.

But as things stood they lacked the means.  The U.S. could easily provide those means.  But if the U.S. overtly offered to provide such means patriotic Afghans would be forced to turn it down because of the whole "imperialist lackey" thing.  What to do?

I covered how this dilemma got solved in a blog post I wrote all the way back in April of 2012.  Here's the link:  Sigma 5: Afghanistan.  In short, we engaged in War by Proxy.  Proxies were used in all stages of the process.  I am going to focus on only one of those proxies, the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.

Various methods involving several different proxies were used to get arms and supplies to Pakistan.  From there the ISI managed the movement of men, money, and material into Afghanistan.  They also organized the final step of getting all of it to the Afghan fighters.

And the whole thing worked.  Everybody in Pakistan and Afghanistan was provided with a cover of plausible deniability.  "What?  These guns.  They are not American guns and I have had no dealings with Americans.  How dare you attempt to impugn my patriotism or anti-imperialist credentials."  And here I am going to stop for a short detour.

Afghanistan has always had its own cultural identity.  Not so with Pakistan.  It used to be part of India.  Before that it had no particular cultural or political identity of its own.  The British granted India independence in the late '40s.  There are thousands of religions in India.  Islam is one of them.  But most Indians are not Muslim, so the religion would have been in the minority in India.

A large percentage of the Muslim population was concentrated in one particular area.  The Muslims in that area decided to revolt.  They succeeded and the area they were able to gain control of eventually became Pakistan.  So Pakistan's original identity was "we're not India".  Unfortunately, things have not improved all that much since.

By the time India succeeded in becoming fully independent the Cold War was running hot and heavy.  Everybody was supposed to pick a side.  Countries joined the U.S. or the Russian camp.  India decided to opt for "none of the above".  They would form a third "non aligned" political bloc.  Rightly or wrongly, this was widely interpreted in the U.S. and Europe as an anti-U.S. move.  This created an opportunity for Pakistan.

They said "we'll join with the U.S. and Europe if you are willing to pay a big enough bribe in the form of foreign aid".  This would have the effect of poking a stick in India's eye, not a bad thing from the Pakistani perspective.  But mostly it meant that a lot of money would be flowing Pakistan's way.  Because the U.S. bit.  They paid Pakistan handsomely for the right to "count Pakistan in the ranks of anti-Communist countries".

This had a perverse impact on Pakistan.  The foreign aid meant meant that Pakistan was never forced to create a viable and robust domestic economy.  They are an economic basket case to this day.  It also provided a big opportunity for power hungry bureaucrats.

It gave them access to very large amounts of money and arms that were effectively outside the control of elected Pakistani government officials.  The bureaucrats soon leveraged this arrangement to their advantage.  They ultimately became the masters rather than the servants of those elected officials.

The two bureaucrats that were the most successful at doing this were the head of the military and head of the intelligence service.  The generous amounts of military aid lavished on Pakistan resulted in the military having a great deal of autonomy.  They could often dictate terms to the civilian government rather than the other way around.

Until the money to fund the Afghan resistance started flowing in, most of the outside money ended up going to the military.  But this new and very large pot of "resistance" money went straight to the ISI, the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency.  This arrangement gave the ISI the same kind of autonomy the military had long enjoyed.  It wasn't long before they made use of it. 

As part of the deal to fund the resistance the U.S. had made a promise.  As soon as the Russians were gone the U.S. would be gone too.  The U.S. kept its promise.  It did make an attempt to exert influence with the the Afghan government that got stood up after the war.

The mechanism that was chosen was to provide a generous amount of foreign aid.  But the U.S. congress decided it was having none of it.  It wanted a clean and complete break so the money was never appropriated.

That left a power vacuum in Afghanistan.  The ISI decided that it would be nice to make Afghanistan a vassal state to Pakistan.  Did this initiative come from the elected officials in the civilian government?  No!  The ISI did not even feel the need to get their blessing before proceeding.

Afghanistan was a poor country with a small population.  Even though Pakistan was no great shakes as an economic power, they towered over Afghanistan, both in terms of population, and in terms of economic power.  Once all of the great powers had exited the stage, by now the Brits had neither the interest nor the wherewithal to act, Pakistan's meager capabilities were sufficient to the task.

And Pakistan had not confined itself to blackmailing just the U.S.  They were an equal opportunity blackmailer.  China was too poor at the time to fork over much cash.  But they could and did provide military technology.  They also provided the assistance necessary for Pakistan to develop a nuclear weapon of its own.

The ISI knew all of the players in Afghanistan from their time running the smuggling end of the successful effort to oust the Russians.  They took advantage of that knowledge when they decided to take control of Afghanistan.  Their tool of choice was the Taliban.  Another short digression.

About a century ago the Saud family in Saudi Arabia did a deal as part of their strategy for getting and keeping control of the government.  They made the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam the official religion in Saudi Arabia.  As part of the deal, Wahhabi religious leaders got and kept control of the country's school system.  That's bad.

Here's what's worse.  Lots of rich Saudis like to indulge in various western vices.  In order to keep on the good side of the Wahhabis they give generously.  One of the ways this giving manifests itself is in the funding of Madrassas in countries like Pakistan.  This is all done in the name of "serving the needs of the local Muslim population".

A Madrasa is more than just a mosque.  It also often includes a school.  These schools provide a basic education.  But every student is required to attend religion classes.  In the Madrasas funded by rich Saudis every class, whether it is ostensibly about religion or not, is taught from the Wahhabi perspective.  The price of getting an education is becoming radicalized.

Many Saudi funded Madrasas were built in Pakistan.  There the civilian government was weak and corrupt.  So, it should come as no surprise that government run schools were poorly run.  They often lacked the resources necessary to provide a good education.

On top of everything else there were not enough state schools to educate all of Pakistan's large population of children.  This forced many parents to chose between a Saudi funded Madrasa and leaving their children illiterate.  It's not surprisingly that many chose the Madrasa.

It should come as no surprise at this point that the Taliban hewed to a way of thinking that was close to the Wahhabi one.  One thing these Madrasas did a good job of was turning out religious zealots.  Religious zealots are not good for much.  But one thing they are good for is soldiering.  They do what they are told and the do it the way they are told to do it.

The ISI initiative to use the Taliban to take effective control of Afghanistan quickly started bearing fruit.  This alarmed some in the west.  But, after all, it was Afghanistan, a piece of desert on the other side of the world that no one wanted.  What could possibly go wrong for anyone other than the Afghans?  And who cared what happened to the Afghans?

And none of this mattered until Osama bin Laden took up residence.  And even that didn't matter until he launched a successful operation to pull off 9/11.  The result was, of course, what was originally called "The War in Afghanistan" or "The Afghan War".  And, at the beginning, that was an accurate title.

But that particular War has been going on for almost 20 years.  If it had just been about Afghanistan and the Afghan people it would have been over 18 or so years ago.  The initial phase only took a few months.  It resulted in an overwhelming victory for the forces supported the the U.S.  Whatever their other shortcomings, the Afghan people are not fans of the Taliban.  If it were up to them they would be long gone and would stay gone.

Unfortunately, it has never been up to the Afghan people.  It has been up to the ISI.  And that's why I think the War is misnamed.  It it the ISI who are the key players.  They have neither the interests of the U.S. nor the interests of the Afghans at heart.  But they have the capability to maintain a powerful and effective force within Afghanistan in the form of the Taliban.  For their own reasons they chosen to do so.

The U.S. has tried a couple of times to escape the vice the ISI has put us in.  The attempts have failed.  The ISI has used the same tactic every time.  They hold U.S. troops hostage.  They have engineered things so that supplies must come through Pakistan.  And that means they have to go through the ISI chokepoint.  As long as there are U.S. troops in Afghanistan the ISI tactic will continue to work.

I have listened carefully to what all the talking heads have had to say in light of President Biden's announcement that the U.S. military (and our NATO allies) will be out of Afghanistan by September 11, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.  I have trouble taking anything they have to say seriously because they never mention the ISI and what they are likely to do.

When the War started roughly twenty years ago the U.S. was able to get supplies and men into the country through several different countries.  More than a decade ago the ISI and the Pakistanis managed to put a stop to that.  They found ways to convince those other countries to stop cooperating.

Since then they have successfully blocked U.S. efforts to create alternative routes.  Pakistan has been successfully playing the blackmail game for more than 60 years.  They do not make amateur mistakes like giving their victim an easy out.

The ISI has been the principal beneficiary of the ISI War.  But the elected government in Pakistan has also benefitted.  That's one reason they have not tried to rein the ISI in.  As long as we have troops in Afghanistan we are forced to spend vast sums in Pakistan.  Some of it is in the form of foreign aid.  Some of it is in the form of fees and service charges.

This has the effect of making the U.S. pay for both sides of the War.  We pay directly to the government and various other entities in Afghanistan.  But we also pour lots of money into Pakistan.  Some of that goes to fund the ISI.  And the ISI funds the Taliban.

It also goes to fund Taliban safe havens in Pakistan.  If you want to understand just how "not a real country" Pakistan is, then take a gander at the "autonomous territories".  Large parts of territory that is labeled "Pakistan" on maps is not actually controlled or administered by the Pakistani government.  The Taliban has been in compete control of portions of these "autonomous territories" for many years now.

Once all of the U.S. troops are out of Afghanistan then the lever Pakistan has been using to extract vast sums of money out of the U.S. diminishes considerably.  The same is true of the NATO and allied troops who will be leaving at the same time.

Pakistan will be able to continue the blackmail game.  There are still lots of countries that think sending some money their way is a good investment.  So the money spigot will not be shut off.  But hopefully the rate of flow will be reduced considerably.

Then there is Afghanistan and the Afghan people.  I have some sympathy for them.  But only some.  Government corruption is rampant.  Given all of the money and equipment we have provided, Afghanistan should now have a top notch military.

Afghanis make legendary fighters so it's not a shortage of the right kind of people.  And have made sure that they don't lack for equipment and training.  So, that's not the problem.  Instead, it's that a lot of people in power in Afghanistan have been focused on personal enrichment rather than what's good for their country.

The U.S. largess has made that kind of behavior possible.  I presume we will still be sending large quantities of money their way.  But they are now on their own when it comes to fighting and other on-the-ground activities.  And if things go wrong, as everybody expects them to do, then the money spigot may get mostly or entirely turned off.

And let's say that the Taliban win and gain total control of the country.  What then?  Then they become the interlopers.  Once the current corrupt government is out of the way then the fighting prowess of Afghans will likely be turned in the direction of the Taliban.

Pakistan has spent decades ignoring the border between the two countries.  The U.S. has felt that it had to respect the border anyhow.  Will future Afghan "freedom fighters" also feel that they can't violate Pakistani sovereignty, especially when it comes to the sovereignty of the "autonomous territories"?  Maybe yes.  Maybe no.

I don't know what is going to happen.  But I do know that the gridlock that has prevailed for the last fifteen years is likely to get shattered.  What will happen will largely depend on the Afghans.  And that's as it should be.  After all, it's their country.