Pakistan's policy toward the Taliban comes under scrutiny once again writes Graham Usher in Islamabad On 17 January, Afghani intelligence released a videotaped interrogation of Mohammed Hanif, a Taliban spokesman captured by Afghan forces after entering their country from Pakistan. Hanif said Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was in a safe-house in the Pakistani city of Quetta, under the protection of the ISI , the country's premier intelligence agency. He also said that suicide operations in Afghanistan, which now total over 100 and have left nearly 300 dead, were planned by the Taliban and ex-ISI officers from Pakistan's tribal areas with Afghanistan. Pakistan army spokespersons dismissed the charges as "absurd", as did many other more neutral observers (including the accused ISI officer). There was the obvious suspicion that Hanif's "confession" had been beaten out of him by an intelligence force whose attitude to torture is no different, and no better, than Pakistan's. Nor were the allegations new. In December, Afghani intelligence presented to the press a supposed suicide bomber who mouthed the same claims word for word. It was dutifully reported, and caused barely a ripple. Now there is an "international uproar", says the Christian Science Monitor, the world-renowned Boston-based newspaper. The cause is that the old question of whether Islamabad is a friend or foe in the United States-led "war on terror" is again under an intense, microscopic lens. There are three reasons for the renewed focus, aside from a reinvigorated Afghani insurgency that NATO is finding difficult to contain let alone quell. One is the admission by Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, that there is Taliban infiltration into Afghanistan, but that he is powerless to prevent it, save by mining the border (which Afghanistan and, less publicly, the US oppose). The second are reports -- most notably by the International Crisis Group and also the New York Times -- that recent peace deals between the Pakistan army and "elders" have turned large parts of Pakistan's tribal areas into sanctuaries for the Taliban, their Pakistani supporters, and thousands of Al-Qaeda linked foreign fighters. Finally, there is the accusation by the Afghani President, Hamad Karzai, that Pakistan seeks to "enslave" Afghanistan, consistent with its pre-9/11 policies of "strategic depth" and sponsoring the Taliban. Musharraf shrugged off the opprobrium as the usual complaints, by the usual suspects. But then, another voice was added to the litany which could not be shrugged off. Addressing the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this month, outgoing US Intelligence Chief and incoming Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that Pakistan was at once a friend and foe to American interests. On the one hand, it was "our partner in the war on terror," he said. On the other, Pakistan provided a "secure hideout" from which Al-Qaeda "radiates to its affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe." Pakistan was also "a major source of Islamic extremism and the home for some top terrorist leaders." Finally, its policy of striking peace deals with pro-Taliban tribesmen had "failed".Washington in fact believed that while "eliminating the safe haven the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan's tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan, it is necessary." So what is Pakistan's role -- defender or saboteur? Both, says author and expert on Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, Ahmed Rashid. Since 9/11, Islamabad has pursued two, contradictory policies -- one for Al-Qaeda and one for the Taliban. Against Al-Qaeda -- under American duress -- the army has mounted offensive operations often incurring great casualties but occasionally, pulling off a spectacular success. Perhaps the most notable scalp captured was that of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks. But "Pakistan allowed the Taliban and its supporters to take root in Quetta and the tribal areas," says Rashid. This was not only due to past alliances and the Pakistani establishment's quiet conviction that the Taliban are more of a Pashtun-nationalist movement, than an Islamist one. It was driven as much by a view of the future, says Rashid. Pakistan is convinced that the Americans and NATO will eventually "concede to its (Pakistan's) version of reality and give the Taliban and other Afghan extremist factions a place at the table in Kabul." The problem is that granting sanctuary invites Talibanisation, according to Rashid. "This is what happened in the 1980s when the mujahideen mobilised for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan spread a gun and drug culture to Pakistan." The same autonomy and its militant expansion are being seen in the tribal areas today. Pakistan military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa says that the fundamental problem is not Pakistani policy toward the Taliban, but, rather, the absence of one when it comes to the Taliban. Pakistan's apparently contradictory actions seem rather, to be driven by the army's perception of its interests. "And these interests disctate that after 9/11 it has to support the West. But they also stipulate that there can be no return to the pre-1979 era, when Afghanistan was led by a nationalist government hostile to Pakistan and allied with India." "And as long as that is the perception, Pakistan will seek a force in Afghanistan that represents its interests, as defined by the army." says Siddiqa. "That force need not necessarily be the Taliban, but it could be." Nor does she see a change in the apparent incoherence of policies, any time soon. "As long as Afghanistan is unstable, so will Pakistan's policy to the Taliban be," she predicts.
