Inter-Services Intelligence

It's just a little bit outside for me, and I want to read into it a bit more.

And actually it's an either or, or maybe even an and here, because I would love to do a sort of deeper examination and interrogation of the Pakistani interstate intelligence or whatever it's called, inter-services intelligence, like basically the Pakistani CIA, the ISI.

They come up very early in the series.

They've come up more than a few times.

It's not a coincidental.

And so I want to try and examine like, what the Pakistani ISI is, how it understands its function and its relation to the broader Pakistani government and state apparatus, and how the ISI operates and maneuvers strategically.

Because I think it is an absolutely fascinating instance of an effective or essential like vassal state that has some level of consciousness of its importance and significance within certain like geopolitical balances and arrangements and so has for decades now been very adept at sort of saying to its various allies around the world like you yeah sure whatever you want absolutely we're on side and then simultaneously like pursuing its own ends and then sort of kind of turning around and going oh no we were just we thought you would like it if we did this and then it's like no we're very unhappy with you but you're so essential to this whole operation in central and south asia that like we all we can do is sort of like shake our fist at you um so that's one the other one for me I like doing the philosophy episodes because they're challenging for me.

I like testing myself and sort of actually saying, do you actually understand this stuff or have you got a grasp of it? It's fun.

That's a rumor that probably will never die.

And of course, you know, the ISI didn't want him.

Because of his relationship with India.

I mean, what is your own hunch? Because you can see internal dynamics, you can see, you know, the Taliban nose eye dynamic, you can see the ISI dynamic, you can see the Afghan political dynamics.

You know, you can also see the international forces dynamics.

Yeah, it's a good question.

My punch is more of the ISI dynamic.

And that's another, I think, a theme that's deserved some more research is how closely the ISI work with the Taliban.

They gave us basically 72 hours to pack up all of our stuff and leave.

The ISI surrounded our compound.

The ISI is like their intelligence service equivalent to the CIA.

They surrounded our compound with Pakistani military and gave us a 72 hour like vacate notice.

And that's called a permissive evac.

That's where bin Laden was.

And the ISI played an essential role in propping up the Taliban and other Islamist movements, for that matter, like the Haqqani Network.

So those are poor partners in the fight against Islamist terror.

I think the Saudis should choose better and probably make better decisions.

And I think that you have to understand the dynamics in Pakistan if you really want to understand what's going on in Afghanistan to a large degree, because even Pakistan is not a You know, it's a diverse country and the leadership both politically and military are, again, ideologically disparate as well.

So, I mean, they don't, you know, during our war there, I think one of our biggest constraints that we were dealing with was the ISI versus, you know, the main government in Islamabad.

There was very different priorities and trying to navigate through that was very painful for everyone involved.

And you're right about the India angle, because if you understand Pakistan, you know that they frame literally all of their foreign policy.

But their primary goal is Pakistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan's primary intelligence service, the ISI, uses terrorist tactics.

This is something that's so important that people don't understand.

Pakistan's federal intelligence service are using terrorist tactics in India.

Exactly.

With the help of the CIA, the ISI, and Britain's MI6, the rebels began cross-border raids into the Soviet Union in the spring of 1985 and executed scores of guerrilla-style attacks.

Very impressive.

You know that this didn't lead to World War III.

Yeah.

Basically no different than, um, you know, one saw the ISI, for instance, the Pakistani intelligence during when the Russians were in Afghanistan.

You know, being very carefully handled, but going forward with the Mujahideen while they conducted operations in order to make sure that weapons and the right sort of what I call sort of intelligence that that could be afforded was passed on.

So it's that, you know, you saw it in America and Vietnam with the Green Berets and all the rest.