Word: isi
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...government. (The Americans have dropped to fourth on the enemies list, he adds, after Iraqi security forces and all those who work in the government.) Low-level Sahwa members have been encouraged to return to the jihadis' fold. Indeed, in mid-March, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), al-Qaeda in Iraq's main front group, posted a communique on several jihadist websites announcing an amnesty for "every Muslim in Mesopotamia, even if he acted badly in the past," urging them to return to the insurgency. "This new stage is very serious," said the message, signed by alleged ISI leader...
Although the ISI's association with the Taliban has hardly been a secret, some observers caution against rushing to judgment. Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says "this is a very complicated, very nuanced situation." Grenier, now with the security firm Kroll Associates, explains that the ISI operatives who have links to "people we regard as enemies are not so much trying to aid them against America as preparing for a future when Americans and NATO are no longer in Afghanistan." In such a future, "the Pakistanis would be reluctant to concede the field to people whom...
...review of Afghanistan policy, and Congress is discussing massive new aid - worth $1.5 billion a year for five years - for Pakistan. For U.S. officials - a group that provided a substantial part of the Times's sourcing for its story - to drop their long reticence on the subject of the ISI's duplicity at this particular juncture suggests, to some observers, an effort to put some pressure on Islamabad. "It seems like a prelude to a new strategy, which may include asking Pakistan to do something" in the province of Baluchistan, where the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is hiding...
Shuja Nawaz, a South Asia expert at the Atlantic Council, points out that Pakistan has had a relationship with Hekmatyar and Haqqani for decades, stretching back to the 1970s, before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Nawaz argues that if ISI operatives are indeed helping these warlords and the Afghan Taliban, "it has to be happening with full knowledge of the [Pakistani] authorities - the leadership of the ISI, the military, the government...
Another possibility, Nawaz says, is that the warlords and the Taliban are getting help from contractors hired in the tribal areas by the ISI. "These are people with a history of local relationships, and they are likely to be ambivalent," he says...