Rich is right that the New York Times story which reports that a senior CIA official, who was willing to be named, went to Islamabad to offer proof that Pakistan’s very powerful spy agency, called Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had aided Afghan Islamists in bombing the Indian Embassy in Kabul is big news. Except that it isn’t really new news — apart from the fact that CIA is putting out the story now to make a point. ISI has, for more than a quarter century, aided the most radical Islamist factions in Afghanistan that they could find, first against the Soviets, then against more moderate interim governments in Kabul, now against the U.S. And, given the history and geopolitics of the sub-Continent, ISI has always worked against India, which has been their primary enemy since the split at founding. They began fomenting Islamic jihad, and backing militants in Kashmir, during the ’80s and 90s. ISI virtually created the Taliban, and certainly armed it. It isn’t much of a leap to guess they have good working relations with various al-Qaeda cells and officers.
The CIA has known all this forever. Nonetheless, the Agency made a deal with ISI early in the 1980s, which led to funneling covert US money for the Afghan resistance through ISI. Our choices may have been limited back then, but it didn’t take long for the folly of the policy to be clear to the few who were watching.
Why does Pakistan tolerate this powerful, wayward government within a government? The problem is that all democratically elected governments in Pakistan are weak, and need the co-operation of the military to govern. (Ditto the military governments.) No Pakistani head of state — and this includes military dictators like Musharaf — has ever had enough political strength (or will, though that is a different matter) to disband ISI, or even to limit it’s activities meaningfully. Indeed it has grown more powerful as the society around it has become more Islamically radical.
As a practical matter, it is hard to imagine how ISI can be made to follow the policies that the U.S. requires of the Pakistani government, vis-a-vis Afghanistan (or India), in order for our alliance with that government to make sense. It is hard to see how the current, fragile government, could muster the power to disband or severely constrain ISI.
Meanwhile, the vision of the Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, one Mr. Stephen R. Kappes, waving his proof of ISI complicity in the July 7th bombing, at the current Pakistani Prime Minister, recalls exactly the scene in Casablanca when Inspector Renault announces that he will be closing Rick’s Cafe because, as he says with a straight face, “I am shocked, shocked and surprised to find gambling going on here!” At which point an underling brings him his evening’s winnings. Mr. Kappes’ winnings, on the policy front, will be considerably smaller, even if his outrage is equally manufactured.