Is Pakistan colluding with the Taliban?

Or is the Taliban - not to mention other interested parties - trying to nail the ISI and by extension Pakistan?

In this report, from what would seem to be an aptly named place, Pashtunabad (I'm not kidding here), a neighborhood in Quetta, Pakistan, as well as other places, the New York Times explores the rumors that Pakistan's intelligency agency, the ISI is behind a resurgent (and insurgent) Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban, the reader will recall, were dominated by the Pashtuns.

The problem one is struck by when reading the Times report, is how does one ferret out what the real truth is in a place named Pashtunabad? (Actually, I think it's a very nice name in a very nice language in a very nice culture, to those readers who will barrage me with emails for making fun of their neighborhood, their grandmother's, or the local language.)

According to the Times, Western diplomats, Pakistani officials, and almost everyone the newspaper spoke to said they thought that Pakistani officials were backing the Taliban. This isn't because Pakinstan loves these guys (lovable though they ,may be; again, I don't want to be appear to be racist or Islamophobic here), but because they regard the Taliban as Pakistan's "strategic depth."

Now, knowing what we know now, it would seem to be odd to characterize the Taliban as anyone's strategic death, wouldn't it? (Well, ignoring Al Qaeda for a minute.) But according to who the presumably knowledgable sources the Times quotes, there is some logic here.

The idea is that the Taliban are supposed to provide a buffer to block Indian and Russian expansion on Pakistan's Western front. This would be that lovely resort area on the Afghan-Pakistani border that everyone wants to seek refuge in because no central government has never been able to control it.

Of course I don't need to point out that the ISI is notorious for having enabled the Taliban back in the day, i.e., before 9/11. In fact, the head of the ISI during this period, Hamid Gul, is still said to believe that Pakistan was right to encourage these, could we say, fanatical madrassah types to take over Afghanistan. Yes, I acknowledge, the Taliban did provide some security, in Mr. Gul's defense. And, no less an authority than the Pakistani president himself has said that retired intelligence officials may well be supporting, as the Times puts it, these "former protégés" of theirs.

That said, the reader should bear in mind that many of the people the Times polled would seem to have a vested interest in fingering the Pakistani government, as opposed to say, themselves or their children - as the Times noted, Pashtunabad is "flagrantly" Taliban.

But would these "flagrant" Taliban sympathizers really be reliable sources on this story? Wouldn't they fear Pakistani reprisals if they sided with those who are harming Pakistan's international standing by opposing the UN-supported government and the NATO forces in Afghanistan?

Also, bear in mind that many people the Times asked to weigh in on the situation were identified as Pakistani dissidents. Surely they wouldn't lose any sleep if they were simply trying to frame the Pakistani government as being dissidents, they oppose it.

So, the moral of this story is: Keep in mind that old Roman question when you read this piece; namely, qui bono? (Who benefits?)

One person who did not subscribe to the popular perception, incidentally, was one Hajji Abdul Hai, 50, the father of a 25-year-old killed in Afghanistan in an airstrike in May. As Cindy Sheehan fans would say, surely he would have some moral authority. He told the Times that, au contraire to what everyone else seems to have thought, his son was not motivated by any sinister force but only his faith.

“From the start it was his spirit to take part in jihad,” he is quoted as saying. “It’s all to do with personal will. If someone agrees, then he goes. Even if someone wishes to, no one can stop him.”

The elder brother of a 22 year-old also killed in Afghanistan, Allah Dad, however, summed up the general opinion, when he said yes, the ISI was to blame for sending his brother to his death: “We don’t know how he made contact with those jihadi groups,” he told the Times, "[But] it is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the I.S.I. Everyone says this.”