Chapter 3 continues…

While some may have agreed with Bhutto, a large faction within the ISI asked for unlimited covert aid to the Taliban and for permission to equip and train the Taliban for a final drive on Kabul. Bhutto told the American writer, Steve Coll, that she got “slowly, slowly sucked into it. It started out with a little fuel, then it became machinery.”

The ISI sought assistance to fix planes and other weapons captured by the Taliban, and then trade concessions which benefited the growing cabal of business- intelligence interests in fuelling the insurgency. The ISI then asked Prime Minister Bhutto for money from the treasury, arguing that the Taliban were stubborn and would only remain loyal to Pakistan if supplied with money. Bhutto said, “it was carte blanche.” Bhutto, however, kept her increasing unease at supporting the ISI’s Taliban cause from the US policy makers, often point blank denying any covert or overt assistance to the Taliban.

Bhutto was succeeded by Nawaz Sharif who was, once, seen as a protégé of the Pakistan Army. Sharif, however, had good links with extremist groups like the Taliban. But he soon ran into rough weather with his old patrons in Rawalpindi and got embroiled in a slugfest. Sharif, for instance, accused his army chief, Aslam Beg, of proposing a fresh round of covert operations in Afghanistan with the help of drug money.

Though Beg denied the allegations, subsequent reports did indicate involvement of the army officials in narcotics trade. Sharif later reportedly attempted to persuade the Taliban to divest itself from al Qaeda but without much success.

In many ways, Sharif’s view of Kabul matched that of the military but his army chief, General Musharraf, was not happy about the former’s attempts to control the army, and forcibly took charge of the country in a bloodless coup in October 1999.

To be continued…