Center for a New American Security

Ghaith Abdul Ahad breathes a breath of minty fresh air into the fetid Wikileaks debate. It was kind of obviously really; everyone was arguing about Pakistan's links to the Taliban, the Pakistanis denied it, the Pakistani media complained, the British PM slapped Pakistan around publicly in India, the Americans said it was OK, the Pakistanis were behaving much better now. The only people who didn't get a say in it all were the Taliban. Until Ghaith went and asked them.

"Pakistan's ongoing support of the Afghan Taliban is anything but news to insurgents who have spoken to NEWSWEEK. Requesting anonymity for security reasons, many of them readily admit their utter dependence on the country's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only for sanctuary and safe passage but also, some say, for much of their financial support. The logistics officer, speaking at his mud-brick compound near the border, offers an unverifiable estimate that Pakistan provides roughly 80 percent of the insurgents' funding, based on his conversations with other senior Taliban. He says the insurgents could barely cover their expenses in Kandahar province alone if not for the ISI. Not that he views them as friends. "They feed us with one hand and arrest and kill us with the other," he says."

To me, this is even better than delicious irony (a phrase I've been bandying about on twitter quite a lot recently). This is practically sublime. Wikileaks is the media world readjusting itself to the decline of investigative news media. But the only way to add context and any semblance of authentication to the raw, undigested field reports turns out to be good, old fashioned, contact-working, field reporting.

Read the whole thing. It's a rare bit of what reporting is supposed to be about.

PS: Has Ghaith left the Guardian?

[Abu Muqawama here. I think Ghaith merely took the picture for this report. The article was written, it appears by some guy named Ron Moreau. Readers may not be aware that Ghaith got his start as a photojournalist and still has a talented eye.]

Londonstani: Ah, right you are. Good on Ron Moreau. Good on Ghaith for the photo too. The minty breath praise goes to Ron. Not come across his stuff before, but I'm a big fan of this artilcle.

From today's New York Times. Hot scoop!

WASHINGTON — The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials.

The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.

Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.

I guess the possibility exists that the administration is sending messages to the Pakistanis via the Times. I was on Dawn yesterday, though, and that seems a lot easier.

Kip's out of pocket and asked Charlie to post the newest chapter in our ongoing tale of ISI woe:

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said. [...]

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. [...]

With Pakistan’s new civilian government struggling to assert control over the country’s spy service, there are concerns in Washington that the ISI may become even more powerful than when President Pervez Musharraf controlled the military and the government. Last weekend, Pakistani military and intelligence officials thwarted an attempt by the government in Islamabad to put the ISI more directly under civilian control.

That the ISI maintains relationships with some rather unsavory folks in the tribal areas is old news. What does seem to be new is the intensity of American pressure and an implied suggestion that ISI elements may have been involved in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul earlier this month. To Charlie's mind, it seems rather implausible that ISI actions are fully sanctioned by the new Pakistani government and more likely that it's going off the reservation.

Unfortunately that probably further reduces US options, which weren't looking so hot to begin with. Increased pressure on the civilian government to rein in the ISI risks a backlash or coup. CIA-ISI relations are notoriously bad. But at the end of the day, the ISI has the intel and we don't. (Also, the whole "India is our strategic partner in the region" routine probably isn't doing much to undermine the ISI's position in Islamabad.)

This state of affairs--to include the Taliban/AQ sanctuary in FATA--has to be a major planning assumption in any strategy for Afghanistan as we go forward. And suggests that all right thinking people should adjust their mental file folders to read "Afg-Pak strategy." As if Afghanistan wasn't complicated enough on its own.