Cameron, Wikileaks and the Taliban

From the president to the foreign minister to Pakistan's ambassador to the UN, everyone has jumped to the defence of the country's premier intelligence agency, the ISI, after its unbroken nexus with the Taliban was highlighted in the Afghan war logs published by Julian Assange's unbelievably brilliant website, Wikileaks.

Pakistan has not been alone in defending the ISI. Just as badly stung by the war logs, senior US officials have been in a rush to convince the world that as far as the ISI-Taliban connection is concerned the logs contain nothing new and they had known about it all along. Some have said that the logs cannot be treated as actionable or even credible intelligence. Others have argued that the ISI's support for the Taliban is a thing of the past.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was perhaps the only western leader who tried to call a spade a spade but drew such sharp criticism from Pakistan that he found himself publicly wondering why one couldn't speak frankly with friends. His predicament was best summed up by Pakistan's high commisioner to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan who told the BBC that “he is new but will learn with time”.

It seems that when it comes to the murky world of America’s war in Afghanistan, Mr Cameron has a lot to learn. If the US was aware of the ISI's continuing support for the Taliban, why did it continue to pour billions of dollars into Pakistan to strengthen a military dictator who, as Pakistan's army chief, must have been aware of what the ISI was up to? Why did the US seem so pleased at the extension awarded to General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, given that Kayani was heading the ISI through most of the period covered by the war logs?

If the ISI’s dealings with the Taliban are so outrageous that in Mr Cameron’s words they “cannot be tolerated”, why is the US special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, so pleased that the 35 countries due to meet later this year in Rome to discuss the Af-Pak situation includes Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia — a country that has historically been the Taliban's greatest supporter and continues to fund their extremist ideology?

Why is it that the US can change its military leadership at a critical stage of the war but Pakistan fears doing so citing possible adverse impact on its war effort? Why is it that despite the Taliban's vicious war fought with improvised explosive devices that have killed thousands of innocent Afghans in the period covered by the war logs, many Afghans continue to support the Taliban?

If Mr Cameron can find the answers to these questions, maybe he will come to some very simple conclusions that may help him end the war. Maybe he will realise that you cannot fight ideological battles in alien lands and that if you do, these ideologies can rebound ferociously to bite you in the behind. Maybe it will dawn upon him that spending more than three and half billion pounds a year on a war in which his country has no real stake or say is not the best way out of a recession that has robbed thousands of Brits of their jobs.

Maybe he will come to the conclusion that the war in Afghanistan never made sense, not in the 1980s against the Soviets, nor in the 2000s against the Taliban. That was why it couldn't be won by the Soviets, this is why it won't be won by the US, the UK or any coalition of forces they put together. Maybe he will realise that agencies such as the ISI will always have a role for as long as there are senseless wars. And maybe he will understand that it doesn't have to make sense how they chose to fight such wars.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2010.