The roots of the present US-Pakistan tensions lie in the alliance which was forged by the Reagan Administration with Gen Zia ul Haq in the 1980s, under which Zia and the ISI received virtually unlimited military and economic assistance to bleed and oust Soviet forces from Afghanistan. With no accounting or accountability, the ISI used the aid thus provided to arm and train rabidly fundamentalist forces both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Gen Zia's strategic aim was to create "a pro-Pakistan Islamic Government in Kabul to be followed by the Islamisation of Central Asia. In military parlance, this was Pakistan's strategy to secure 'strategic depth' in relation to India".
This strategy found use when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and jihadis from groups like the Harkat-ul Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammed were trained in Afghanistan, with its rulers aiding and abetting the hijackers of IC 814 in 1999. Shuja Nawaz has revealed that he was told by the then ISI Chief Lt Gen Ziauddin that when the ISI approached the Taliban 'President' Mullah Mohammad Rabbani in 1999, asking for 20,000 to 30,000 volunteers to wage jihad in Jammu & Kashmir, Rabbani smilingly said he was willing to offer even half-a-million Afghan jihadis for this job.
http://newageislam.com/terrible-price-of-pakistan-s-jihad-/war-on-terror/d/307
Categories : 
3:30 AM
Moderate Islamist here
