Cut the Gordian Knot of Pakistani Support for the Taliban; Support Afghan Resistance

Taliban terrorists stand in front of a sign at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 9, 2021. (West Asia News Agency/Reuters)

Commentary

A major road to weakening the Taliban goes through Islamabad and its notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Anti-Taliban strategy can’t work without dealing with the ISI. One such possibility could be to offer to recognize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as a fact in exchange for suspending support for the Taliban; however, that would upset India.

Taliban forces routinely brutalize Afghan civilians. They storm their homes and beat up their women. Women can’t get a proper education. Pakistan’s top leadership condemned the Taliban for barring women from Afghan universities. Foreign NGOs can’t employ women, which caused many to suspend operations.

“The United States of America had previously had humanitarian interventions and have gotten into conflicts to nations abroad. This time, it is not just humanitarian intervention but also [a] national security matter,” Habiba Marhoon, a former assistant to ex-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, told me.

Top Taliban leadership maintains close ties with Pakistan. Many were educated at the Dar Uloom Haqqani seminary near Peshawar, an institution supported by the Pakistani government. It’s referred to colloquially as the “University of Jihad” due to its violent interpretation of Sunni jurisprudence.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan appropriated funds for the school.

Videos reportedly showed the seminary’s leaders voicing support for the Taliban insurgency, cementing the perception among Afghans that the Taliban is nothing other than an extension of Pakistan.

In fact, the Haqqani network that controls Kabul takes its name from the school. Just prior to the Taliban’s storm across Afghanistan and the destruction of the U.S. and NATO-backed Afghan government, at least 4,000 jihadis resided in Pakistan and received free food and clothing.

Pakistani paramilitaries helped the Taliban during the last days of mopping up in the face of opposition.

The rivalry between India and Pakistan looms in the background because the Haqqani network opposes India. Taking down the Taliban will be impossible unless that gordian knot is cut. The anti-India angle was evident during the allied withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Haqqanis targeted Indian assets in Afghanistan. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani network “as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency” during congressional testimony in 2011.

ISI Chairman Faiz Hameed showed up in Kabul on Sept. 4, 2021, shortly after the fall of Kabul, which openly hinted at the Pakistani intel agency’s glee with the Taliban’s takeover of the city. The Haqqanis happen to be the Taliban faction that rules the city, and the assassination of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri reiterated the long-known connection between al-Qaida and the Haqqanis.

Reports from inside Afghanistan suggest that the Taliban’s elite Badri special-operations units are made up of Pakistani operatives.

Putting pressure on the ISI should be accompanied by covert actions to support Afghans opposed to the Taliban to provide armed resistance to Taliban efforts to brutalize them.

The United States and other allied nations should offer covert assistance to the Afghan people in the face of increasing Taliban brutality and oppression of its women.

Sources inside Afghanistan urge the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies to provide covert assistance to foster organizational development and leadership for Afghans who want to resist the Taliban. They don’t want another disastrous American intervention any more than Americans want one. They suggest that money should be spent on such covert actions to bribe corrupt Taliban leaders to part with their captured American weapons, work to exacerbate tensions among the Taliban factions, and promote inter-factional fighting using propaganda and psychological operations.

This includes giving funding and training to groups such as the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), which includes members of the former Afghan National Army, to carve out safe zones throughout the country free from Taliban rule. The Syrian Civil War offers a precedent in which fighters backed by foreign intelligence agencies carved out Assad-free zones across Syria.

The NRF largely consists of Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north. Its leaders say that it’s the only option for building Taliban-free safe zones for Afghanistan’s women and oppressed populace. The NRF’s goal is for the Afghan people to restore the former government and army. The remnants of the Afghan National Army have gone underground and require leadership and organization, according to people inside Afghanistan who I’m in communication with, which the CIA’s paramilitary arm can assist with helping to reconstitute.

The NRF needs money, and with money and logistical assistance from the CIA along with bridge-building with disaffected elements of Afghanistan’s Pashtun communities, it could spread to a nationwide resistance movement. Psychological warfare strategies could be used to undermine support for the Taliban among Afghanistan’s Pashtun population.

Non-violent civil society protest movements, such as the women’s protest movement for education and human rights across the country, need covert funding to help support their leaders financially and with organizing. The movement needs secure technologies for communication, computers, Internet connectivity, and supplies for the illegal schools for women it runs. The movement needs 3-D printers that offer dual-use capabilities that could be used either for craft projects or manufacturing small arms, and 3-D printers can give the movement the ability to covertly manufacture its own guns. The Agency would have plausible deniability that its arming people against the Taliban.

A Pashtun source claims that the Pashtuns are ripe for rebellion against the Taliban, and Pashtun women are a key part of that. Exploiting inter-clan rivalries among the Pashtuns can contribute to undermining Taliban control, the source said.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.