... For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability. ...
| I'm not too sure how "unshakable" the conclusion is. They can also be agents of the Pak religious parties, who're busy running their own shenanigans in Pakland, Kashmir, India, Nepal and Bangla, sometimes in concert with ISI and sometimes, I strongly suspect, on their own. See today's festivities at good old P.U. The key point is that they and the bulk of the "Taliban" are Paks. |
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