Afghanistan Supports Pakistani Taliban

Last we mentioned Afghanistan was in a Wednesday post. The People's Republic of China hosted the Afghan Taliban in Beijing (Edward Wong, "Exploring a New Role: Peacemaker in Afghanistan"). I take this as a sign of the current "all-bets-are-off" atmosphere in Kabul. The combat mission of the U.S. military is officially over. The Ghani-Abdullah amalgam government finally announced the heads of its ministries (Joseph Goldstein, "Strains Show as Afghan Leaders Announce Long-Awaited Cabinet Nominees").

But what caught my eye was yesterday's story by Matthew Rosenberg, "Afghan Spy Chief Defies Labels, Usefully," and the admission in the august pages of The New York Times that the Afghan CIA, the National Directorate of Security, runs the Pakistani Taliban

Among [spy chief, Rahmatullah Nabil's] first tasks was resuming a sensitive project he had begun during his first turn at the N.D.S.: turning the No. 2 official in the Pakistani Taliban, Latif Mehsud, into a source — and possibly a proxy to be used against Pakistan.

Mr. Nabil said Mr. Mehsud had been cultivated primarily as a source of intelligence. But the Afghans also wanted “to send a message to Pakistan that if they can do this, we also can do it.”

No matter what it was, American officials were furious about the relationship when they discovered it in September 2013. They dispatched a Special Operations team to seize Mr. Mehsud from an N.D.S. convoy that was carrying him to Kabul last year. He was held by American forces until December, when he was turned over to the Pakistani authorities.

If Mr. Nabil is still angry about having his prize asset pried away at gunpoint, he betrayed no hint of it during the interview. And though he would not explicitly confirm that the N.D.S. had continued to develop other militant contacts, he strongly suggested that was the case.

For his part, Mr. Nabil said that the Americans “came to me, and I said that just like any other intelligence agency, we have the right to have sources.”

He added, “I think it is very important just to be very frank.”

Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) manages the Afghan Taliban; Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security maintains a close relationship with the Pakistani Taliban. The whole thing is a toxic swamp of death and destruction which will remain as long as the states of Pakistan and Afghanistan remain. The same can be said about the United States.