Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
and set up a command post at the air force base in Jacobabad in the
southern Sindh province. The American military build-up and the
presence of US troops in Pakistan had fuelled public anger. Thousands
of people, largely supporters of hardline Islamic organizations, poured
into the streets of Pakistan’s main cities.
It was a tricky situation for the USA when it decided to go for military
action against bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
For Washington, the factors that made the ISI valuable also made it
suspect. Not only had Pakistan turned a blind eye for years to the
growing ties between bin Laden and the Taliban; the ISI had also
relied on al-Qaeda camps for training Kashmiri militants. The agency
had maintained an indirect but long-standing relationship with Osama
bin Laden. The connection came to light in August 1998 when the USA
launched a cruise missile attack against al-Qaeda camps near Khost in
Afghanistan in response to the bombings of two US embassies in East
Africa. The casualties included several members of a Pakistani-backed
Islamic militant group, HuM, who were training in the camps.
In some cases, ISI agents also facilitated Arab militants travelling
to Afghanistan to wage jihad. It was widely suspected that bin Laden
escaped the attack because of a tip-off from the ISI. 25 However,
there had not been any evidence of the agency ever being directly
involved in al-Qaeda terrorist activities against the USA. In fact, the
ISI cooperated with the CIA and the FBI on several counter-terrorism
operations in the 1990s. The agency was instrumental in the 1995
capture in Islamabad of Ramzi Yousuf, the mastermind of the first
World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the arrest in Pakistan in
1998 of Aimal Kansi, who had shot dead two CIA employees outside
the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1993. 26
With its deep involvement in Afghanistan, the ISI had the most
extensive intelligence data on that country and the Taliban. When
Pakistan changed its course, it also brought about a reversal in the
ISI’s role. The ISI was back together with the CIA for a new war, very
different from the one that they had fought in the 1980s. It was not
the convergence of interests that fostered the alliance this time, but a
forced relationship. The agency was now required to undo the politics
of militancy, which it had actively promoted for almost a quarter of a
century. It had never been easy for the agency to completely break its
association with the Islamists.
With General Mahmood at the helm of the powerful ISI, President
Musharraf would have had a difficult time pushing his new US-backed