ISLAMABAD – STEVE Coll, a US writer has recently published a book titled‘Directorate S-the CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan’. In thisbook the writer has said the US has not won its war on terror inAfghanistan because the Diretorate-S of Pakistan’s Inter ServicesIntelligence (ISI) has been training the Afghan Taliban. Although factswould prove Coll’s allegation against the ISI as wrong, his book will takesome sympathy merely due to the credibility of his earlier book titled,Ghost Wars:

The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden till 2001. Inthis Ghost Wars, Steve Coll has written about the CIA-ISI joint campaign inestablishing training camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 1980sto train Islamist fighters from the world over to fight a successfulguerilla war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

However, Mr. Steve’s claim made in his latest book ‘ Directorate S-the CIAand America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan’ that the US failure inAfghanistan is due to Pakistan ISI’s training of the Afghan Taliban isnegated by the facts and the ground realities that existed in Afghanistan.There are three main reasons for the US failure to bring peace inAfghanistan. Firstly, since the beginning of the US led NATO offensive inAfghanistan, the support of about 42 percent Pashtuns in Afghanistan wasavailable to the Taliban.

Moreover, the NATO and ISAF have failed in gaining control over the Pashtunhabituated 40 percent rural areas of Afghanistan, which were available tothe Taliban to stay there safely without any worthwhile threat.But, rather, the US goes along to blame Pakistan for providing sanctuariesto the Taliban just to scapegoat it for US failures in Afghanistan.

No doubt, this criticism washes off all the valuable contributions Pakistanhas made in the war on terror as a Non NATO ally. Although since 1947 manypeople from Pashtun tribes from both countries have the facility to crossto either side to meet their relatives, under cover of which some terroristsuspects could also cross.

In any case, to rule out crossing over by terrorists from either side ofthe Pakistan-Afghanistan porous border, in the guise of Pashtun civilianvisitors to meet their relatives, allowed by both the countries as per theold tradition, Pakistan has been seeking cooperation of the US and theAfghan Government, to fence the border area to regulate the border crossingof legitimate persons to meet their relations, which never came. Thenultimately Pakistan has itself started fencing its border with Afghanistan.

Secondly, as far as training of the Afghan Taliban by ISI is concerned,there was no such need as they were already battle hardened with theirinbuilt training system as they had defeated all warlords of Afghanistanbefore coming to power in the 1990s. Therefore, blaming Pakistan’s ISI fortheir training is nothing more than a wishful conclusion.

And that too at this stage when Pakistan has eliminated FederallyAdministered Tribal Areas (FATA) based terrorism of the Tehrik TalibanPakistan and any hiding elements of the Afghan terrorists by undertakingthe arduous military operations in Swat and FATA, culminating in operationZarb-i-Azb, by sacrificing 60,000 men and suffering economic losses ofabove $ 103 billion.

Now, operation Radd UL Fassad is in progress to hunt down any hidingterrorists in the country.Thirdly, the main reasons for the Pashtun population’s sympathy for theTaliban are that comprising 42 per cent of Afghanistan’s population, theyhave not been given fair representation in the Government, as per theirpopulation. Moreover, the US and the Afghan Government have been reluctantto include the Taliban in the Afghan peace process.

Even now the US can conveniently succeed in bringing peace in Afghanistanif it supports Afghan Government’s recent initiative of accepting theTaliban as a political reality and starting a sincere peace process betweenall ethnic groups in Afghanistan with the prior commitment of giving fairrepresentation in the Interim Afghan Government to them as per theirpopulation and giving a firm programme of the withdrawal of the US forcesfrom Afghanistan, which may be acceptable to the majority of the Afghans..

In view of the above ground realities and the discussed reasons, it isopined that the criticism by Steve Coll in his book, that US has beendefeated in Afghanistan because the Pakistan ISI has been training theAfghan Taliban is not logical. At the most, Steve has tried to project theUS Government’s policy of blaming Pakistan for providing sanctuaries to theAfghan Taliban, which is meant to scapegoat Pakistan to cover the US andISAF failures in Afghanistan. Hence, by doing so, without sufficientevidence, Steve Coll has himself put the credibility of his book in doubt.

Muhammad Hanif —The writer, retired Lt Col, is a freelance columnist basedin Islamabad.