There’s an interesting think-piece in The Atlantic by Robert D. Kaplan, exploring some of the possible reasons for the ISI’s involvement (recently reinforced by American intelligence reports) in the recent Indian embassy bombing in Kabul, as well as an assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai.
Kaplan begins with a historical overview, which I won’t recount (but do read the whole article). What seems like the key argument is the following:
The Karzai government has openly and brazenly strengthened its ties with India, and allowed Indian consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif. It has kept alive the possibility of inviting India to help train the new Afghan army, and to help in dam construction in the northeastern Afghan province of Kunar, abutting Pakistan. All this has driven the ISI wild with fear and anger.
[…] In the mind of the ISI, India uses its new consulates in Afghanistan to back rebels in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan, whose capital, Quetta, is only a few hours’ drive from Kandahar. When India talks of building dams in Kunar, the ISI thinks that India wants to help Afghanistan steal Pakistan’s water. Karzai’s open alliance with India is nearly a casus belli for the ISI. So elements of the ISI have responded in kind; they likely helped in the recent assassination attempt against the Afghan president.(link)
Though Kaplan depends a bit too much on the projection of probable motives and regional alignments (rather than actual utterances from the parties involved), the schematic he describes seems convincing to me.
He also offers a “takeaway” for American readers, namely, you can’t just throw troops and money at Afghanistan, and expect to win:
In the midst of all this, both Bush and Barack Obama talk simplistically about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. The India-Pakistan rivalry is just one of several political problems in the region that negate the benefit of more troops. As in the past in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we are in danger of conceiving of war in narrow military terms alone, and thus getting the politics wrong.
In the first place, we need vigorous shuttle diplomacy between Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi to address India’s and Pakistan’s fears about Afghanistan. Only by assuaging the ISI’s fears, while allowing India its rightful place in Kabul, can we get more cooperation from Pakistan in our fight against Islamic extremism. (link)
Thoughts? I like the flavor of this explanation for two reasons. First, while Kaplan’s take does not by any means make the ISI more likeable, in general it makes more sense to see an organization like the ISI as operating on the basis of rational, if short-term, self-interest, not as a mindless agent of violence. Second, it downplays the issue of local religious fundamentalism, which is of course exploited by the ISI, but not the underlying cause for its actions. Pure religious fundamentalism might lead someone to blow up a marketplace full of people. But what motivates someone to blow up an embassy is obviously something much more pointedly political.
Also: see an earlier post relating to the ISI here.
