The working theory is a cautious one that takes into account the persistent divergence between Pakistani and U.S. interests. But it’s still beneficial for U.S. interests:

A top American military officer in Afghanistan on Wednesday suggested that with the arrests, the ISI could be trying to accelerate the timetable for a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

“I don’t know if they’re pushing anyone to the table, but they are certainly preparing the meal,” the officer said.

The idea is to compel the Afghan Taliban into peace talks that will leave it alive, reduced but intact, and able to represent Pakistani interests in a Karzai government. That carries with it the implication that the Taliban will survive the next 18 months’ worth of NATO/Afghan military efforts. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry and Gen. David Petraeus repeatedly stated they were launching the current and planned offensives in southern Afghanistan in order to break the Taliban’s momentum and compel a peace settlement favorable to the new Afghan government. So, the strategic differences here may be ones of degree. On the other hand, if the military offensive in Afghanistan, if allowed to continue, can degrade the Taliban to a spent force, that — alongside renewed diplomatic ties between Washington, Kabul and Islamabad — might raise questions among the Pakistanis about whether the Taliban is even a viable mechanism for Pakistani interests in Afghanistan.

If the explanation held by this officer is correct, though, then we might be looking at the beginning of an endgame in the Afghanistan war.

Police in northwest Pakistan arrested Mulvi Kabir, one of the top 10 most wanted Taliban leaders and a former Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province, Fox News reported on its website Sunday.

The network, citing two unnamed senior US officials, said that Pakistani police captured Kabir in the Naw Shera district of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier province.

The capture is a “significant detention,” a senior US military official in Afghanistan told Fox.
Information leading to Kabir’s capture was obtained from Mullah Baradar, the Taliban?s second in command, whose arrest was announced on February 18 following a joint US-Pakistani operation, according to Fox.

And to think, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that some U.S. officials are concerned that the Pakistanis aren’t getting Baradar to talk. Meanwhile, Pakistan launched jet strikes on insurgent positions in South Waziristan as well.

The most explicit client relationship ISI maintains with such groups is with the anti-Indian terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. “Just this week, the Pakistanis allowed the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba … [to be] released from the farce of house arrest,” he said. “Tensions between India and Pakistan are going to go up this week because of that.” And while there aren’t indications that ISI operates in such a way with al-Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban, the terrorist groups see little problem cooperating with one another.

Selective counterterrorism is weak counterterrorism, because the bad guys tend to operate together. For example, within the last several weeks, a major terrorist cell was exposed in the city of Karachi. The target was to go after senior officials in the city government. That cell had as its leadership a troika: one member of the Pakistani Taliban, one member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, and one member of al-Qaeda. They are prepared to work together. They’re not prepared, so far at least, to turn on each other. … How long is Pakistan going to try and have it all ways at the same time?

For a while longer at least. Over at U.N. Dispatch, Mark Leon Goldberg interviewed Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, about the release of that Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, Hafiz Saeed. Haroon defended Saeed and denied that he’s a terrorist:

Are you familiar in any way with the work of Hafiz Saeed? He’s not LET. He’s Jamaat-ud-Dawah [a front group for the LET], and it’s a purely social organization. He works not for Islam alone but does charitable work around the world. … They run a very large myriad of institutions that in fact contribute to the social good. Now if you say, ‘ah, they have an ideological belief,’ well, I suppose they do, but that’s not enough to sink anyone.

It’s almost as if Haroon is forgetting that the reason Saeed was under house arrest was because evidence emerged tying him and the JUD to the Mumbai massacres last year. That’s why Riedel said his placement under house arrest was farcical.

“The ISI has clearly been penetrated by some of these extreme jihadist groups,” Riedel continued. “When you have attacks inside fortified compounds” — like the one last week in Lahore by the Pakistani Taliban in response to the Pakistani military’s offensive in Swat — “those are being done by someone who’s working a double game. But that doesn’t mean the agency itself is a rogue organization. It means it’s been penetrated.”

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