The Coming Wave of ISI-sponsored Terrorism

ZURICH: The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan must be pleased. The spy agency has patiently waged a 20-year proxy war against a superpower to a favourable outcome. Its earlier success against the Soviets (1979-89) had been gradually fading from memory. Its subsequent foray against the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir did not yield comparable results despite a much longer timeframe. The completeness of American humiliation in Kabul during August 2021 would therefore be a significant morale-booster. Serving ISI spooks can look at their agency’s history and say: we still have what it takes to prevail over a stronger opponent. For its part, the American nation has been exposed before the world’s news media as an exhausted and confused giant, devoid of stamina for continental warfare. ISI planners can revel in the fact that not only was the United States military, the world’s most powerful, outfought by a tribal insurgency (as opposed to a conventional army), but that it withdrew from Afghanistan while still under fire and that it was compelled to plead with the incoming victors to allow evacuations of its own nationals even as its local allies were left to their painful fates. Not even the Soviets were subjected to the latter two indignities when they left in 1989....Read More