TheEconomist: Reading the Taliban!

THe secret NATO report on the Taliban is full of fascinating stuff, but it mostly confirms what was already known rather than shedding new light on the conflict in Afghanistan. The report, called "The State of the Taliban" and based on interrogations with more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees is, however, rich in anecdotal evidence about the way that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, controls and sustains the Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan. The semi-comforting belief that only "rogue elements" in the ISI have close connections to the Taliban never had much basis in fact, and it has far less now. A senior al-Qaeda commander in Kunar province, in the wild north-east of the country says: Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't (expletive) on a tree in Kunar without them watching. The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad. The report also states: "Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad, Pakistan."Nasiruddin, a son of the Haqqani clan's leader, Jalaluddin, and its most prominent fund-raiser, was arrested by Pakistani agents in December 2010 as a sop to American pressure to take action against Taliban leaders in Quetta. If Nasiruddin is indeed free and living in the same neighborhood as the ISI, suspicions that his detention was a sham will be confirmed.