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U.S., Pakistan face each other again on Afghanistan threats

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R) meets with Pakistani Overseas Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi (L) on September 23, 2021, on the sidelines of the 76th UN Normal Meeting in New York.

Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty Pictures

The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul has deepened the mutual mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistan, two putative allies who’ve tangled over Afghanistan. However either side nonetheless want one another.

With the Biden administration in search of new methods to cease terrorist threats in Afghanistan, it’ll seemingly look once more to Pakistan, which stays essential to U.S. intelligence and nationwide safety due to its proximity to Afghanistan and connections to the Taliban leaders now in cost.

Over 20 years of struggle, American officers accused Pakistan of enjoying a double recreation by promising to struggle terrorism and cooperate with Washington whereas cultivating the Taliban and different extremist teams that attacked U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Islamabad, in the meantime, pointed to what it noticed as failed guarantees of a supportive authorities in Kabul after the U.S. drove the Taliban from energy following the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults as extremist teams took refuge in japanese Afghanistan and launched lethal assaults all through Pakistan.

However the U.S. needs Pakistani cooperation in counterterrorism efforts and will search permission to fly surveillance flights into Afghanistan or different intelligence cooperation. And Pakistan needs U.S. army assist and good relations with Washington, whilst its leaders brazenly have a good time the Taliban’s rise to energy.

“During the last 20 years, Pakistan has been very important for varied logistics functions for the U.S. army. What’s actually been troubling is that, sadly, there hasn’t been numerous belief,” mentioned U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the Home Intelligence Committee. “I believe the query is whether or not we will recover from that historical past to reach at a brand new understanding.”

Former diplomats and intelligence officers from each international locations say the chances for cooperation are severely restricted by the occasions of the final 20 years and Pakistan’s enduring competitors with India. The earlier Afghan authorities, which was strongly backed by New Delhi, routinely accused Pakistan of harboring the Taliban. The brand new Taliban authorities contains officers that American officers have lengthy believed are linked to Pakistan’s spy company, the Inter-Providers Intelligence.

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., mentioned he understood “the temptation of officers in each international locations to attempt to benefit from the state of affairs” and discover widespread floor. However Haqqani mentioned he anticipated Pakistan to provide “all potential cooperation to the Taliban.”

“This has been a second Pakistan has been ready for 20 years,” mentioned Haqqani, now on the Hudson Institute assume tank. “They now really feel that they’ve a satellite tv for pc state.”

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U.S. officers try to shortly construct what President Joe Biden calls an “over the horizon” capability to observe and cease terrorist threats.

With out a associate nation bordering Afghanistan, the U.S. has to fly surveillance drones lengthy distances, limiting the time they can be utilized to look at over targets. The U.S. additionally misplaced most of its community of informants and intelligence companions within the now-deposed Afghan authorities, making it essential to seek out widespread floor with different governments which have extra sources within the nation.

Pakistan might be useful in that effort by permitting “overflight” rights for American spy planes from the Persian Gulf or allowing the U.S. to base surveillance or counterterrorism groups alongside its border with Afghanistan. There are few different choices amongst Afghanistan’s neighbors. Iran is a U.S. adversary. And Central Asian international locations north of Afghanistan all face various levels of Russian affect.

There are not any identified agreements to date. CIA Director William Burns visited Islamabad earlier this month to fulfill with Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan’s military chief, and Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, who leads the ISI, in accordance with a Pakistani authorities assertion. Burns and Hameed have additionally individually visited Kabul in latest weeks to fulfill with Taliban leaders. The CIA declined to touch upon the visits.

Pakistani Overseas Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi famous this week that Islamabad had cooperated with U.S. requests to facilitate peace talks earlier than the Taliban takeover and that it had agreed to U.S. army requests all through the struggle.

“We’ve got usually been criticized for not doing sufficient,” Qureshi told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “However we have not been appreciated sufficient for having accomplished what was accomplished.”

Qureshi wouldn’t straight reply whether or not Pakistan would enable the basing of surveillance tools or overflight of drones.

“They do not need to be bodily there to share intelligence,” he mentioned of the U.S. “There are smarter methods of doing it.”

The CIA and ISI have a protracted historical past in Afghanistan, relationship again to their shared purpose of arming bands of mujahedeen — “freedom fighters” — towards the Soviet Union’s occupation within the Eighties. The CIA despatched weapons and cash into Afghanistan by means of Pakistan.

These fighters included Osama bin Laden. Others would change into leaders of the Taliban, which emerged victorious from a civil struggle in 1996 and gained management of a lot of the nation. The Taliban gave refuge to bin Laden and different leaders of al-Qaida, which launched lethal assaults on People overseas in 1998 after which struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

After 9/11, the U.S. instantly sought Pakistan’s cooperation in its struggle towards al-Qaida and different terrorist teams. Declassified cables printed by George Washington College’s Nationwide Safety Archive present officers in President George W. Bush’s administration made a number of calls for of Pakistan, from intercepting arms shipments heading to al-Qaida to offering the U.S. with intelligence and permission to fly army and intelligence planes over its territory.

The CIA would perform a whole lot of drone strikes launched from Pakistan concentrating on al-Qaida leaders and others alleged to have ties to terrorist teams. Lots of of civilians died within the strikes, in accordance with figures saved by exterior observers, resulting in widespread protests and public anger in Pakistan.

Pakistan, in the meantime, continued to be accused of harboring the Taliban after the U.S.-backed coalition drove the group from energy in Kabul. And bin Laden was killed in 2011 by U.S. particular forces in a secret raid on a compound within the Pakistani metropolis of Abbottabad, dwelling to the nation’s army academy. The bin Laden operation led many within the U.S. to query whether or not Pakistan had harbored bin Laden and angered Pakistanis who felt the raid violated their sovereignty.

For years, CIA officers tried to confront their Pakistani counterparts after amassing extra proof of Pakistani intelligence officers serving to the Taliban transfer cash and fighters right into a then-growing insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan, mentioned Douglas London, who oversaw the CIA’s counterterrorism operations in South Asia till 2018.

“They’d say, ‘You simply come to my workplace, inform me the place the placement is,'” he mentioned. “They’d simply normally pay lip service to us and say they could not verify the intel.”

London, creator of the forthcoming e-book “The Recruiter,” mentioned he anticipated American intelligence would contemplate restricted partnerships with Pakistan on mutual enemies resembling al-Qaeda or Islamic State-Khorasan, which took accountability for the deadly suicide attack outside the Kabul airport last month during the final days of the U.S. evacuation.

The danger, London mentioned, is at occasions “your associate is as a lot of a menace to you because the enemy who you are pursuing.”

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