Word: islamabad
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...information." So success may depend largely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, a tough outfit that has racked up a formidable reputation as a state within a state. With more than 40,000 officers and staff whose headquarters are in a drab military compound in Islamabad, the ISI puts tentacles deep into Afghanistan through thousands of Pashtu-speaking Pakistanis and hundreds of free-lance Afghan spies lured with money and sanctuary for their families. As a godfather to the Taliban, which it has financed, supplied, advised and fought alongside, the ISI has intimate contacts with the very...
That's the problem. Though Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, offered swift declarations of full intelligence sharing, some U.S. officials tell TIME they aren't sure which side the ISI is really on. The CIA and the Pentagon have long been split on ISI's reliability. Islamabad pleased the CIA by extraditing three key terrorists in recent years. But as TIME reported 18 months ago, a 1999 CIA plot to train 60 Pakistani commandos to snatch bin Laden went nowhere when the ISI dragged its feet. "They didn't do squat," says an American close to the operation...
Pakistan's public promise to help the U.S. has scared off its Afghan sources. The Taliban pressed Islamabad to call its diplomatic officials home for "safety" reasons, and other Pakistani informants are no longer allowed to move freely around Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed satellite phones, and the Afghan ambassador in Pakistan moved down to Quetta for more secure contact with Taliban leaders in Kandahar. Taliban police are checking beneath women's body-length veils for disguised spies and keeping an eye on any tribal elder receiving guests or a sudden flow of money...
Traditionally uneasy with one another, Islamabad and many of the fiercely independent tribal elders along the Afghan frontier are uniting behind Zahir Shah. Islamabad is aghast at the possibility that the Northern Alliance--backed by Iran and Pakistan's enemy, India--might actually topple the Taliban with U.S. military help. The clan chieftains agree for ethnic reasons: except for a few brief and violent intervals, the majority Pashtun tribes have always ruled Afghanistan, and they want to see that happen again. As a Pashtun, Zahir Shah fits the bill. The ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance find him acceptable...
...after the first U.S. air raid on Afghanistan, and I'm stranded at the airport because of riots. A lot of these people in Quetta belong to the same Pushtun tribe as the Taliban, and they're not pleased with America. Even on the flight in from Islamabad, people were glaring at me in open hostility - and that's never happened to me before in Pakistan. I avoided four scowling Taliban clerics, bearded and black turbaned, who were a few rows ahead of me on the flight. The Taliban think the Pakistanis are wimps and bad Muslims for giving...