The ISI provided refugee cards to Pakistani citizens of Pashtun origin and facilitated their recruitment in the Afghan national defence forces
The swift takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban was a culmination of cunning and conspiratorial moves by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), outsmarting the American leadership on the one hand and planting its jehadi cohorts in the ranks of the Afghan national defence forces on the other, without an inkling of its designs to the allied forces or the Afghan government.
In 2001, when the first edition of Taliban was ousted in Afghanistan post 9/11, the US forces did not have their boots on the ground immediately. Their only option was to conduct air strikes but it needed domination on the ground to capture and control the territory. So, the US entered into an agreement with anti-Taliban groups who would capture the ground and hand it over to the American forces.
From its bases in the CIS countries, the US air force conducted airstrikes at Taliban bases situated across the territories controlled by the anti-Taiban forces. The latter would then capture and hand over these aerially attacked areas to the Americans.
The anti-Taliban forces had a pre-condition: Hand over power in Afghanistan to the military grouping once the American objectives, including killing Al Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden, were achieved.
However, the US put a rider that power cannot be shared or handed over to an armed group but can only be done in a democratic manner. The US ensured that Hamid Karzai was made President of Afghanistan in 2004.
To enter the governance mechanism put in place by the US, the armed groups formed political fronts that were headed by the insurgents. However, the US did not accept the insurgents as the leaders and put Karzai at the helm of affairs. All the insurgent groups opposed to Taliban accepted the leadership of Karzai who was from the royal lineage of Afghanistan with historical influence in the erstwhile Ottoman Empire.
For capturing Taliban-controlled territories, the anti-Taliban groups told the US that they do not have enough fighters to capture all of Afghanistan and sought recruitment to ramp up their strength. But the US could not have allowed recruitment of fighters.
At this stage, a second agreement between the US and such groups was reached for the raising of an armed force. Such insurgent groups were also allowed to join the officially raised armed forces and also recruit soldiers. The training support and weapons supplies were to come from the US.
Between 2003 and 2005, the scheme of raising the armed forces continued and a one-lakh-strong force was formed. The anti-Taliban groups then told their US partners that thisnumber was not enough as the Taliban too had a similar number of fighters. They wanted the Afghan national armed force to be doubled.
However, every insurgent group opposing Taliban had an area of specific influence and one lakh more candidates were not available for recruitment. These groups could manage to recruit 50,000 men to join the ranks of the Afghan national defence force. This resulted in the Force’s strength reaching 1.5 lakh.
The Afghan government then allowed recruitment of another 50,000 men from areas other than those under the control of the insurgent groups backing the Kabul government, saying the move will boost employment. The US acquiesced.
During 2005 and 2010, the Afghanistan government held recruitment camps in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan populated by the Afghan refugees.
The idea was that the candidates from this region would have knowledge of the area and serve to contain the Taliban there. However, no background checks were made and recruitments were based on vetting by respective leaders of the various tribes they belonged to.
“In the process, the then Afghan government committed two mistakes, one being recruitment from an area in Pakistan and the other being lack of background checks of the candidates. Due to these two faults, the ISI got a breathing space for manipulation,” said counter-terrorism expert and an Afghanistan watcher Ajmal Sohail.
The ISI fabricated and provided refugee cards to Pakistani citizens of Pashtun origin and facilitated their recruitment in the Afghan national defence forces. The ISI move ensured free training and weapons to its men deployed in the Afghan regular force waiting for the final message from the ISI to act on its designs. At least 50,000 such Pakistani men were planted in the Taliban. These men were trained in the US and allied countries including India where they were exposed to the military training infrastructure, Sohail further said.
To register their presence, the Pakistanis on the rolls of the Afghan army conducted drone strikes on the fellow Afghan army men which was widely known as Green Beret attacks. This continued for two-three years between 2010 and2014. Subsequently, the American forces identified the game plan of ISI and stopped such attacks, he said.
The ISI-Pakistan army combine also launched operations against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that was opposed to it. This pressured the TTP cadres to flee to Afghanistan where they were targeted by the ISI’s plants in the Afghan national defence forces.These 50,000 Pakistanis became influential in strategic planning.
Now, the ISI launched yet another propaganda warfare claiming that the Afghan army, being a blue-eyed boy of the international community, may attack the Pakistan army. The Pakistani propaganda gained credence and was aimed at strengthening the Taliban in the area.
The Afghan army again requested for recruitment of another one lakh personnel in its ranks for which the US agreed. By this time, the Afghan army had become both complacent and corrupt, experts said. The US provided the funding and weapons but the recruitments never took place. So, out of the three-lakh-strong Afghan army, 50,000 men were planted by the ISI and another one lakh was never recruited. Out of the remaining 1.5 lakh Afghan army, a significant number of them were compromised by ISI’s men in the Afghan army ranks, they said, adding this was the reason for Afghan forces melting quickly in the face of Taliban onslaught in August.
Having created a significant threshold of strength, the Taliban launched aggression early last year before the talks for the peace deal with the US began. The direct negotiations between the US and the Taliban led the Pakistan government to declare that it will not recognize the outcome of the talks.
Subsequently, tripartite meetings between the US, Pakistan, and Taliban were held in Doha for negotiations on the contours of the troops’ withdrawal. Since the US had decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it was cornered and signaled an end of India’s influence in Kabul.As part of the deal with the Taliban, the US would hand over bases to whichever side between the Taliban and Afghan national army wins.
“The ISI machinations for 10-15 years ensured both weapons and resources to the Taliban besides men trained by the US and its allies in its ranks. These factors helped the Taliban in capturing territory rapidly within a matter of just 10 days as against the Pentagon estimate of Kabul falling to the Taliban in 18 months,” Sohail said.
In this backdrop, calls by American lawmakers for a US Congress report on the nexus between Pakistani agencies and Taliban leading to the fall of Kabul to the hardline group is more than timely.
(The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal.)