Pakistan linked to Afghan bombing

The tense relations between the United States and Pakistan were under additional strain this week after the U.S. said it had evidence that Pakistan’s spy agency helped plan the July bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, which left 60 people dead. Communications from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency intercepted by the U.S. “confirmed some suspicions that were widely held,” a State Department official told The New York Times. In the wake of the finding, the CIA dispatched a top official to confront the Pakistani government over ISI support for the Taliban, and President Bush personally raised the issue with Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, during Gilani’s Washington visit last week.

After meeting with Bush, Gilani pledged to put the largely independent ISI under the control of his civilian government. But he reversed himself almost immediately after receiving hostile calls from army generals. A similar promise to purge the ISI of Taliban sympathizers was also followed by a swift retraction.

“Why does Pakistan tolerate this powerful, wayward government within a government?” said Lisa Schiffren in National Review Online. While the country is officially dedicated to aiding the U.S. in the war on terror, the ISI brazenly aids the very militants Pakistan is supposedly hunting down. Gilani’s wobbling proves that his government remains too weak to stand up to the Islamic fanatics in the military and secret service. Until that changes, it’s hard to see why the U.S. should consider Pakistan an ally.

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The ISI’s support for the Taliban has nothing to do with America’s war on terror, said Robert D. Kaplan in TheAtlantic.com. It’s all about Pakistan’s ongoing struggle with India. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been “cozying up to India,” even raising the possibility of military cooperation. To Pakistan, preventing India from gaining an ally on its western border is a matter of national security. The U.S. has been obsessively focused on terrorists. We’d be more successful if we concentrated on “vigorous shuttle diplomacy between Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi.”

“Quieter diplomacy” would help, too, said Mort Kondracke in Realclearpolitics.com. By leaking the ISI story during Gilani’s visit to Washington and embarrassing Pakistan’s newly elected government, the U.S. is undermining a regime it should be bolstering. When Gen. Pervez Musharraf ruled Pakistan with an iron fist, he also tolerated ISI’s links to extremists. If the U.S. gave the dictator a pass, surely it can be more discreet now.