Five years after she vanished from her parents’ home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia  Siddiqui appeared in a New York court last week accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ. 

Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor’s office in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book “Anarchist’s Arsenal” and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question  the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor’s house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her”. The boy remained in police custody.

 Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT  educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003  human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities strongly denied Siddiqui was in custody, and according to the New York Times,  military and intelligence officials believed her to be in Pakistan until her arrest in Afghanistan last month.

Protests have taken place in Karachi, Lahore and even outside the court in Manhattan where Siddiqui appeared . The anger is directed as much, if not more, at the Pakistani government and its  agencies who are accused of handing over Siddiqui to the United States as at Washington itself.

There are online petitions seeking Siddiqui’s release and others warning this is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many others at risk. Comments on blogs reflect  anger, shame and helplessness. to undo what many see as a terrible wrong done to her,

On Wednesday, the Pakistani Foreign Office said it had protested against the detention of Siddiqui’s three children and demanded their repatriation.
 

Why now? Until this week, the ISI was an acronym for Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, that was little known outside of South Asia. Now it’s all over the American media as the organisation accused of secretly helping Islamist militants in  Afghanistan and Pakistan, while the country it works for is a crucial ally in the U.S. battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The New York Times led the charge by reporting that the CIA had confronted Pakistan over what it called deepening ties between members of the ISI and militant groups responsible for a surge in violence in Afghanistan. It followed it up with a story  quoting U.S. government officials blaming the ISI for an attack last month on the Indian embassy in Kabul. The Washington Post and TIME, amongst others, ran similar stories.

Whenever you see a deluge of stories in the media quoting government or intelligence officials, it’s always worth asking why those unnamed officials have chosen this particular moment to speak out. The accusations against the ISI — denied by Pakistan — are not new.  

India has complained for years about the role of the ISI in supporting the insurgency in Kashmir. It threatened to go to war in 2001/2002 over a December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that it blamed on militants backed by the ISI,  a charge denied by Pakistan. The debate within India at the time was very similar to the one you can find today in the U.S. media — how much do the ruling authorities in Pakistan control the ISI, and to what extent is it a monolithic disciplined organisation, and to what extent does it have renegade members who might follow their own agenda?

More importantly, perhaps, in the current context, is how the Americans viewed the ISI.  The U.S. diplomats I knew in India had no illusions about the ISI, although publicly they refused to take sides as they tried – successfully as it turned out — to persuade Islamabad and Delhi to stand down from a conflict that threatened to undermine America’s post 9/11 efforts to tame Afghanistan.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the CIA worked closely with the ISI to arm, train and fund the mujahideen. Between them they drove the Russians out of Afghanistan and helped bring down the Soviet Union. There can be no closer relationship between two countries’ spy agencies than that.  The CIA knows, and has long known, the ISI — perhaps better than any other country’s intelligence services.

So I come back to my original question. Why turn on them now?

There are, of course, obvious answers. Pakistan’s new government, elected in February, just made a botched attempt to bring the ISI under civilian control.  Its subsequent retraction served only to highlight the power of the ISI.  The Americans and their allies are suffering heavy losses in Afghanistan, while going into a presidential election where the war in Iraq, and the U.S. failure to hunt down al Qaeda and the Taliban, have become a major issue.

But I can’t help but wonder whether those unnamed officials now so keen to talk to the media are spinning a line.  There have long been arguments within the CIA about how to handle the ISI, with agents based in Kabul generally arguing in favour of confrontation and those in Islamabad backing cooperation.

So is what we are seeing in the U.S. media a reflection of a battle within the CIA over rival views on how to handle Pakistan and the ISI? Maybe.

Or is it a reflection of actual events, including the increase in violence in Afghanistan, the renewed focus on Iraq/al Qaeda created by the U.S. presidential election, the speculation about whether the United States will send its troops into Pakistan to hunt down leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and heightened tensions between India and Pakistan over the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul? Maybe.

I am not asking these questions in the kind of rhetorical way that suggests that I already know the answer. I’m asking because I don’t know.

But I am just a little bit suspicious when I see the media all heading in the same direction. It feels uncannily similar to the way the media quoted unnamed officials about WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. Many countries had been suspicious of Saddam Hussein since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But having ignored that for years,  there was suddenly a groundswell of opinion to remove him. Are we now seeing a similar groundswell against Pakistan?

Once again, I don’t know the answer, but suggest only that there is a need to ask why people have chosen this moment to talk.  Otherwise we prove the old cliche true, that “we learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

(A word on comments. I write this blog because I want to hear what people have to say. Many people have posted excellent comments that have moved the debate forward. But please don’t swear and don’t abuse others. And stick to the subject. We’re in the 21st century here so let’s not go back to 1947.)

It’s probably unusual to link to a report by the RAND Corporation and an op-ed on Foxnews.com in the same blog, but since both address the same subject – tackling al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region – here goes.

The first is a detailed report by RAND called “How Terrorist Groups End”. 

Its analysis of 648 groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 concludes that ”military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame have achieved victory.” Calling for a rethink of U.S. strategy, it argues that policing and intelligence, rather than military force, should form the backbone of U.S. efforts against al Qaeda.”

Pakistan’s leaders have long argued that military force alone can’t work and have sharply rebuffed any suggestion that U.S. troops in Afghanistan might cross its border in pursuit of al Qaeda and the Taliban. “The U.S. military … should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment,” the report says.  It does however say that military forces, but not necessarily U.S. forces, are a necessary component when al Qaeda is involved in an insurgency.

Since the report has been written from a global perspective, its prescriptions do not always fit easily into the Pakistan context. For  example it dismisses the Kashmir conflict as one that may take generations to resolve and  ”not a primary reason” for al Qaeda’s existence or support, without tackling the web of historical, militant and strategic links that bind together the fates of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and India. But it’s packed full of data and analysis and worth reading in full. 

And for those who prefer easier reading and don’t mind the flippant tone, this piece on Foxnews.com caught my eye. The writer, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, is determinedly irreverent, suggesting for example that North and South Waziristan should be renamed North Fubar and South Fubar.

But his conclusion is far from flippant: “The reality is that U.S. forces can’t operate in the region unilaterally unless we somehow suspend disbelief and decide the risk versus gain is worthwhile,” he says. “The next possibility, U.S. and Pakistani troops fighting side by side against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, is also highly unlikely given the backlash the Pakistani government would experience.”

“Over the next year or two we’ll undoubtedly pull troops out of Iraq and add troops to the effort in Afghanistan. That will in all likelihood help to further stabilize that country and allow for continued progress in the development of the infrastructure and government. What it won’t do unfortunately is resolve the problem across the border in Pakistan,” he says.

Much has been made of this week’s New York Times article accusing the Bush administration of allowing al Qaeda to rebuild in Pakistan’s tribal areas after it was chased out of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, not least because the White House took its eye off the ball as it turned its attention to Iraq.

“The United States faces a threat from al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” the newspaper quotes Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation, as saying. ”The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

Unsurprisingly, the article has been seized upon by the Obama campaign as evidence of the wisdom of the policies of  Senator Barack Obama, who has argued that the real threat to the United States lay in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq, and stirred controversy by saying that, “if we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot”.

But what was surprising to me reading the article was how cautious the Bush administration was in its handling of Pakistan, in contrast to its pre-invasion approach to Iraq. The hunt for al Qaeda in Pakistan, the newspaper says, ”was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas”. Rather than send in ground troops, the Counterterrorist Center at C.I.A. headquarters preferred to carry out raids remotely, usiing missile strikes by Predator drones.

Most surprising, perhaps, was a story of how former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, criticised for his hawkishness on Iraq, refused to authorise a Special Operations mission in 2005 to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.  Though the plan to send in more than 100 U.S. commandos — what the newspaper says would have been the most aggressive use of American ground troops inside Pakistan — had the support of the C.I.A. director and the Special Operations commander, “the mission was aborted after Mr. Rumsfeld refused to give his approval for it”.

Did it really just come down to incompetence, in-fighting, indecisiveness, the distractions of Iraq and faith in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf? Or was there a serious understanding in the Bush administration of the risks of sending ground troops into Pakistan, an ally it knew terribly well having worked with it to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? And if a hawk like Rumsfeld thought it was too risky, where does that leave Obama’s insistence that he is determined to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan?

If Obama were to win the U.S. presidency, he would still have the option of authorising missile strikes by unmanned Predators against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. These have enraged Pakistanis in the past, because they have missed their targets and killed civilians, and because even an attack by a drone is an invasion of sovereignty.

Tellingly, the New York Times says those in favour of ground operations argue that the only way to catch bin Laden would be to capture some of his senior lieutenants alive. And that cannot be done by a drone.

Despite the reservations of its principal ally, the United States, Pakistan’s new civilian leaders have gone ahead and sued for peace with militants in the Swat valley this week, and by all indications are about to cut another deal, and this with the head of the Taliban in the country.

While the politicians have repeatedly emphasised their independence of action with regard to militants and vowed to pursue a different course from President Pervez Musharraf, can they really see these deals through without the Americans on board?

Unlikely, if you listen to the comments/analyses not just in the United States but within Pakistan itself, which while more welcoming of attempts to try a different tack, sees dangers ahead.

Rahimullah Yousafzai, the Peshawar-based executive editor of The News, writes that the peace accords are not going  to be easy to implement in the face of U.S. opposition. He points to the U.S. missile strike in the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal agency earlier this month as an indicator of American displeasure over Pakistan’s policy of making deals with militants. 

Eighteen people were killed in that strike aimed at a senior al Qaeda leader, but among the dead were women and children, drawing condemnation from Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza  Gilani.
And within days, the militants struck back, carrying out a suicide bombing at an army base in Mardan in which 13 people were killed. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was to avenge Damadola.

It showed how quickly things could go wrong if the Pakistanis pulled in one direction and the Americans and NATO just over the porous border in Afghanistan pulled in  another.

Pakistan’s peace deal with the militants in the Federally Administered Territorial Areas is actually meaningless if Islamabad cannot ensure the security of FATA against U.S. aerial attacks, Zeenia Satti, a Washington-based consultant and energy geopolitics analyst writes in The News.

Removing its forces from the area, as Pakistan has promised to do in the case of Swat, means nothing if a much larger force (U.S.) is going to strike with far more lethal weapons, she says.

Indeed, Zeenia argues that the peace deal may actually unleash the war on the Pakistan-Afghan border that America, in an election year, is  increasingly under pressure to fight.

“There is an approaching danger on Pakistan’s western front in the form of extensive U.S. bombardment which could unleash social-politico upheaval,” she writes, citing a series of statements from U.S. leaders including President George W. Bush and CIA director Michael Hayden on the threat to America from the tribal belt straddling the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Capturing Al Qaeda through an attack on Pakistan could be viewed by the neocons as a good strategy to gain public applause during an election campaign,” Zeenia writes.

The remote frontier area is doubtless well on the U.S. radar now. Foreign Policy magazine  has a photo-essay entitled Spring Time for the Taliban to show just how brazen the militants have become in the area, and are virtually the governing authority in many parts, enforcing their own brand of frontier justice.