Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's principal intelligence and covert action agency, has historically conducted a number of clandestine operations in its western neighbor, Afghanistan. ISI's covert support to militant jihadist insurgent groups in Afghanistan, the Pashtun-dominated former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Kashmir has earned it a reputation as the primary progenitor of many South Asian jihadist groups.
The first publicly-known ISI operation in Afghanistan occurred in 1975, in response to a limited border conflict between the two nations. ISI's operations in Afghanistan grew exponentially in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with backing from Saudi Arabia and the United States' Operation Cyclone. Islamist militant mujahideen groups fighting the communist Afghan government and its later defenders, the Soviet Union, were funded, trained, and equipped by ISI and successfully forced the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Soviet-backed communist government of Afghanistan. The previously allied, ISI-supported mujahideen groups began to compete for power, initiating three successive civil wars (1989–1992, 1992–1996, and 1996–2001). When Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, ISI's preferred mujahideen group, showed little promise of seizing Kabul and lost popular support through a bloody shelling of the city, ISI sought a new group to establish an Afghan government friendly to Pakistan's interests.
After the Taliban demonstrated it could clear routes for Pakistani land trade in the 1994 capture of Spin Boldak through Kandahar City, the ISI dropped support for Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami and shifted its focus to the Taliban. Through ISI, Pakistan armed, equipped, and supplied young fighters to the movement from jihadist Deobandi religious schools (madrassas) in the relatively ungoverned Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. ISI continued to support the Taliban through its 1996 capture of Kabul and declaration of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. From 1996 to late 2001, Pakistan backed the Taliban in its war against the remaining allied mujahideen groups in the country's north, united under the banner of the Northern Alliance (United Front), led by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massoud.
After the September 11th attacks against the United States by Osama bin Laden's Taliban-hosted and Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda, Pakistan publicly declared its support to the United States in their war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and their Taliban hosts. Despite the public pledge of support, Pakistan was believed by international observers and the subsequent Afghan government to maintain its backing of the Taliban and, in the view of some, al-Qaeda.
Pakistan's motivation for covert activities in Afghanistan, since the cessation of hostilities between the two nations in the mid-1970s, has largely focused on supporting (Hezb-i Islami, Taliban) or opposing (PDPA, Soviet, Northern Alliance) various groups in an attempt to influence the Afghan government. This campaign to seat and preserve an Afghan government friendly to Pakistani interests (and opposed to Indian interests) has largely centered on support to groups ideologically aligned with Islamabad, typically Pashtun, socially conservative, political Islamist, and Deobandi (Sunni).
Early interference In his history of the ISI, author Hein Kiessling claims that the Republic of Afghanistan support to anti-Pakistani militants had forced then-Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Naseerullah Khan Babar, then-Inspector General of the Frontier Corps in NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), to adopt a more aggressive approach towards Afghanistan. As a result, ISI, under the command of Major General Ghulam Jilani Khan set up a 5,000-strong Afghan guerrilla troop, which would include future influential leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Masood, to target the Afghan government. Their first large operation was the sponsoring of a 1975 armed rebellion in the Panjshir valley.Hein Kiessling, Faith, Unity, Discipline: The Inter-Service-Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, Oxford University Press (2016), p. 34 In a polemical assessment, Afghan feminist Alia Rawi Akbar writes that Massoud, during this uprising, "by the order of ISI", assassinated the mayor "of his home city", before he "ran to Pakistan."Alia Rawi Akbar, Crises Confronting Afghan Women: Under the Shadow of Terror, Dog Ear Publishing (2010), p. 208
Owen Sirrs, another historian of the ISI, explains how the 1973 coup d'état brought proponent of a Pashtunistan independent state and fiercely anti-Pakistan Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan to presidency, helping both Pashtun and Baloch militants. This convinced Bhutto to use Islamist rebels in order to fight the ethnic Pashtun or Baloch brands of nationalism. He described the ISI plan in multiple phases, saying that phase one was increasing surveillance, phase two was contacting the exiled "Afghan King" to attempt connecting him with the anti-Daoud movement, and phase three was joint operations against Afghanistan with Iran. Phase three also involved recruiting from anti-Daoud Afghan exiles in Pakistan, a group which would include the likes of Ahmed Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Sibghatullah Mojadeddi, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, all future political heavyweights of the country.Owen L. Sirrs, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate: Covert action and internal operations, Routledge (2016), pp. 112-113
In 1974, the then-Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said, "Two can play this game. We know where their weak points are just as they know ours. The Non-Pashtun there hate the Pashtun domination. So we have our ways of persuading Daoud not to aggravate our problems."
Abdullah Anas, a leader and key ideologue of Afghan Arabs, says in his memoirs that ISI supported the Tajik insurgents "with the blessing of Pakistan's President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who hoped to use this uprising as a means to pressure the Afghan government to resolve the border disputes over Balochistan and Pashtunistan." He described their first military insurrection in 1975 as "a fiasco." Hekmatyar, who remained in Peshawar, sent men to attack government outposts in Surkhrud without much success. Meanwhile, a second group led by Massoud in his native Panjshir valley took control of government buildings for a few days before eventually losing them, along with many of his men, to Daud Khan's forces. This incident irritated Massoud and made him wary of Hekmatyar, blaming him for the failed operation.Abdullah Anas, To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan, C. Hurst & Co. (2019), pp.28-30
The Pakistani-backed rebellion, though unsuccessful, shook Daoud Khan. He started softening his stance against Pakistan and considered improving relations with Pakistan. He realized that a friendly Pakistan was in his interest. He also accepted the Shah of Iran's offer to normalize relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In August 1976, Daoud Khan also recognized the Durand Line as the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin
Summary
In 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in the Afghan Civil War. The ISI and the CIA worked together to recruit Muslims throughout the world to take part in the Jihad against the Soviet forces. However, the CIA had little direct contact with the Mujahideen as the ISI was the main contact and handler, and they favored the most radical of the groups, namely the Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
In 1989, after the Soviets had left Afghanistan, the ISI tried to install a government under Hekmatyar with Jalalabad as their provisional capital, but failed.Kaplan, p.178 The Afghan Interim Government, which they wanted to install, had Hekmatyar as Prime Minister and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf as Foreign Minister. The central Pakistani organizer of the offensive was Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, Director-General of the ISI. The Jalalabad operation was seen as a grave mistake by other mujahideen leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Haq.Kaplan, Robert D. (2001); Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan And Pakistan; Vintage Departures; , p.166 Neither Massoud nor Haq had been informed of the offensive beforehand by the ISI, and neither had participated, as both commanders were considered too independent.
After operations by the Shura-e Nazar of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the defection of the communist general Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the subsequent fall of the communist Mohammad Najibullah regime in 1992, the Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accords. The Accords created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period to be followed by general elections. According to Human Rights Watch:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal concludes in Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival:
By 1994, however, Hekmatyar had proved unable to conquer territory from the Islamic State. Australian National University Professor William Maley writes, "in this respect he was a bitter disappointment to his patrons."
During the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan After the Afghan Presidential Elections in 2009, Afghan President Hamid Karzai became increasingly isolated, surrounding himself with members of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami and refusing the advise of others.
Al-Jazeera wrote in early 2012 that the Presidential Chief of Staff, Karim Khoram from Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, besides controlling the Government Media and Information Center, enjoyed a "tight grip" over President Karzai. Former co-workers of Khoram accused him of acting "divisive internally" and of having isolated Hamid Karzai's "non-Pashtun allies". Al-Jazeera observed: "The damage that Khoram has inflicted on President Karzai's image in one year - his enemies could not have done the same." Senior non-Hezb-e Islami Pashtun officials in the Afghan government accused Khoram of acting as a spy for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.
Afghan Taliban
Summary
The Taliban were largely funded by Pakistan's Interior Ministry under Naseerullah Babar and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1994. In 1999, Naseerullah Babar, who was the minister of the interior under Bhutto during the Taliban's ascent to power, said, "we created the Taliban".
William Maley, Professor at the Australian National University and Director of the Asia-Pacific College, writes on the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan:
The ISI used the Taliban to establish a Pakistan-favorable Afghan regime, as they were trying to gain strategic depth. Since the creation of the Taliban, the ISI and the Pakistani military have given financial, logistical, and military support, including direct combat support.
The ISI trained 80,000 fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Peter Tomsen also stated that up until 9/11, Pakistani military and ISI officers, along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel, had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.
Human Rights Watch wrote in 2000:
In 1998, Iran accused Pakistani commandos of "war crimes at Bamiyan". The same year, Russia said that Pakistan was responsible for the "military expansion" of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan by sending large numbers of Pakistani troops, including ISI personnel, some of whom had subsequently been taken as prisoners by the anti-Taliban United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (Northern Alliance).