Pakistan’s Dangerous Double Game

Haqqani has also claimed responsibility for the January attack on Kabul's premier hotel, the Serena, that killed seven and nearly missed the Norwegian foreign minister, and the abortive April assault on the country's National Day parade that targeted Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who escaped unharmed. Afghan and U.S. intelligence have fingered Haqqani as the mastermind of the bloody suicide car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul last July that killed two Indian officials and more than 40 others. U.S. officials say they intercepted communications between an ISI officer and the Haqqani operatives who were planning the embassy attack. Pakistani officials strenuously deny the charge.

U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked for anonymity discussing official assessments, say they do not believe that the top levels of the Pakistani military or ISI have sanctioned aid to the Haqqanis; they think local and perhaps retired operatives are to blame. Nevertheless, the insurgents certainly believe that they have powerful connections. One jihadist, a 25-year-old named Shah Muhammad who fights for Haqqani, says he recently got caught in a roundup of militants by the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan. After checking the identity papers and the loyalties of the fighters, the soldiers released the Afghans who could prove they were linked to Haqqani and arrested those tribal militants linked to Baitullah Mehsud.

Today, Haqqani has become the ISI's "darling," says a former Taliban cabinet minister who is still an active supporter of the insurgency and who would speak only on condition of anonymity for security reasons. According to Jan, the Haqqani defector, the clan frequently received visitors he believed to be ISI operatives in the family's North Waziristan camps back in 2004. Jan says a young Pakistani Army officer named Salim, who he believed worked out of the ISI office inside the 11th Army Corps's main base at Miran Shah, located near the Haqqani madrassa complex, used to meet regularly with Siraj. Jan also claims he believes the Pakistanis used to tip off Siraj whenever a U.S. missile strike was imminent. Soon after suddenly huddling with a visitor, whom Jan associated with the ISI, Siraj would immediately change his position and order his men to move from the Miran Shah area to the mountains.

While top Pakistani officers reject out of hand any accusation that the ISI or any Pakistani intelligence agency is aiding the Taliban, Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the armed forces' spokesman, does not rule out that the ISI is maintaining contacts with the Haqqanis. "Do you think any intelligence agency in the world would like to sever its last contact with any organization it has an interest in?" he asked rhetorically. "It would like to maintain at least one last channel through which it can access and get feedback on the on the-ground realities." Indeed, Afghan Taliban sources say that at the behest of the ISI, Haqqani may now be trying to persuade his ally Mehsud to cease his attacks against Pakistan and to focus on Afghanistan instead.

Whatever ties they may have to the ISI, the Taliban don't feel entirely secure, says the former cabinet minister. He claims the ISI knows the location of Taliban safe havens, training and military facilities, and the precise addresses in towns and villages along the border where commanders and their families live. "I wouldn't be surprised if the ISI arrested us all in one day," he says. "We are like sheep which the Pakistanis could round up whenever they want." He adds that many insurgents still don't have a strong enough foothold inside Afghanistan to spend the winter months there. But more and more are planning to do so, worried about their position within Pakistan.

Recognizing that trend, Schloesser plans to keep his troops operating deep inside Taliban territory this winter. "I plan on having a winter campaign that will take advantage of the mobility that I have to seek out any [insurgent] safe havens in Afghanistan, any facilitation areas, any places they go to for rest and recreation in Afghanistan," Schloesser says. "We're going to give them those options: either flee, get killed or captured, or reconcile." But if they escape across the border—and Islamabad doesn't step up—a new kind of war could well begin.

With John Barry and Michael Hirsh in Washington

© 2008