Note to analysts: Analysts new to this problem need to take this aboard. Pakistani and Indian officers obey or they get cashiered, if not executed. The ability of the Pakistani security authorities to round up and arrest more than half the membership of the Quetta Shura, fled to Karachi, indicates the Shura members always were under positive surveillance and tracking by Pakistani intelligence.
The thesis that rogue officers supported the Afghan Taliban against orders is jejune and ludicrous! The Pakistan and Indian Armies do not promote individual judgment; they are not like the US or NATO armies.
Nightwatch and old hands never credited the argument that rogues in the Pakistani security services were helping the militants – Taliban or al Qaida. That is not how the Pakistan Army works.
The strategic direction in Islamabad has changed and now the Pakistani intelligence and security services are showing they knew where these thugs were all along and could have rounded them up at any time, had they received orders to do so.
Phi Beta Iota: What is truly extraordinary about the above is the reality that no one in the US intelligence community recognized or was willing to speculate that the US policymakers were being “played” by Pakistan. Evidently we do not do offensive countersurveillance on the Pakistani ISI, and NSA evidently does not have a grip on their internal communications in languages we cannot speak, hence Pakistani ISI and military were able to bluff the US for two decades.
Original NitchWatch Report Below the Fold
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Misappropriated without Attrribution–Free Online, March 4, 2010