In an interview with Open an Indian magazine, Author Adrian Levy while talking about his latest book ‘Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI‘ said that it was not the ISI that helped the Taliban to power, but it was rather facilitated by the US.
When asked his thoughts on the role of ISI in the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said,
“What we see here is not so much Pakistan’s manifest destiny or even long-haul planning but the abject failure of US policy to launch an impossible low-intensity war in Afghanistan, and then further dilute it with an illegal invasion of Iraq—and finally abandoning both Iraq and Afghanistan, while neighbors in Pakistan continued to hold on to their ambitions.”
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“ISI did not plan this victory. And what we are seeing is not the fall of Saigon. It is the failure of Kabul to rule all of Afghanistan and for a centralized army to represent an ethnocentric nation.”
‘ISI didn’t plan the Kabul rout. The US facilitated it,’ says Adrian Levy https://t.co/fyVaU0ac9X via @Openthemag
— Adrian M Levy (@AdrianMLevy) August 27, 2021
“Provincial governments voted against Kabul and enabled it to be encircled and occupied today. ISI did not do this. The US facilitated it.”
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He was also asked how influential RAW was in the Panjshir Valley, the seat of anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. His response was
“Talibs are from Afghanistan and have regained power in their country, upturning a meandering American project. They are not a terrorist movement but a group with stringent precepts and beliefs. So, let us wait to see what they have become and what they want to achieve.”
“What is also unknown is what their attitude will be to the foreign radical elements in the country—the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Pakistan Taliban, and Sunni fighters from Iran and China. Will they continue to win shelter? Will they be allowed to recoup and strike from Afghanistan?”