As the US prepares to hand over the lead role in Afghanistan to Pakistan, in exchange for an honourable exit and promise of no terror attacks on US soil, the inexorable mid and long-term consequences of Pakistan’s double game continue to be ignored.

During the Regional Conference on Security in South East Asia held in Bangladesh in August 2001, both Pakistani speakers (Dr. Shirin Mazari, Director General, Institute of Strategic Studies, Pakistan and Lt General Javed Hassan, Commandant, National Defence College, Pakistan) stressed to propagate low intensity conflict, guerrilla warfare and indirect intervention as a more viable option of modern-day war.

Shirin Mazari particularly stressed that low intensity conflict and unconventional means like guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare, including the use of terror, economic warfare and indirect intervention in the territory of a rival state, were more viable options to a conventional war, while also talking of the tool of subversion as a manner of tactics short of direct all out military confrontation; in effect enunciating Pakistan’s state policy controlled by its military in the backdrop of a democratic facade.

So what Admiral Mike Mullen spoke before the US Senate Armed Services Committee on Afghanistan and Iraq on September 22 was mere reiteration. The Haqqani network has been manipulated repeatedly by the ISI (solely answerable to Kayani) in targeting Indians in Afghanistan including the attack on the Indian Embassy. There is no way that Pakistan will abandon the Haqqani network, given Pakistan’s obsession with strategic depth, which in essence implies installing a radical regime in Afghanistan that owes its allegiance to Pakistan and get the Indians out of Afghanistan.

The US is going to find the situation getting much worse (with Pakistan continuing to suggest it does not need US aid) as it thins out NATO and US troops. The US diktat to Pakistan to go after the Haqqani leadership, will meet the same fate as Osama bin Laden – while US hunts in North Waziristan, the Haqqani leadership will be ensconced in ISI safe houses in Pakistani cities, as is already being hinted in the media. There have been assessments that the Haqqani network no longer operates from North Waziristan. It now operates from the Kurram agency of Pakistan.

The cadres and the training camps are in the Kurram agency, but the leaders, who are high-value targets for US drones, are spread out across Pakistan in order to escape drone attacks. The cadres carry out hit and withdraw raids into Afghanistan. Recent terror attacks in Afghanistan led Latifullah Mashal, Afghan intelligence official to state, “Six Afghans were recruited to undertake suicide attacks in Kabul, plan and coordinate bigger international attacks in the US and parts of Europe and at a luxury hotel in Kabul. They also were responsible for recruiting one of the key security guards of President Karzai’s protective services. They had a plan to assassinate President Karzai, maybe during his travels or trips to the provinces... the individuals received explosives and weapons training in Peshawar in Pakistan.”

The latest of course is the BBC Documentary “Secret Pakistan” providing latest proof of Pakistan’s ISI (which is 100 per cent Pakistan Army) training, advising and directing the Taliban. Last December there were reports of Chinese military advisors assisting Taliban on how to fight NATO troops. So like India, Afghanistan too faces a joint China-Pakistan threat, no matter how inadvertent. It took more than a decade for the US to realise the threat from LeT. As the US prepares to hand over the lead role in Afghanistan to Pakistan, in exchange for an honourable exit and promise of no terror attacks on US soil, the inexorable mid- and long-term consequences of Pakistan’s double game continue to be ignored. In the ultimate analysis global war on terror (GWOT) will eventually have to go after Pakistan—the spawn of global terror.

The views expressed herein are the personal views of the author.