Afghan conflict
Role of Pakistan's ISI

Pakistan's ISI wanted the mujahideen to establish a government in Afghanistan. The director-general of the ISI, Hamid Gul, was interested in an Islamic revolution which would transcend national borders, not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan but also in Central Asia. To set up the proposed mujahideen government, Gul ordered an assault on Jalalabad with the intent on using it as the capital for the new government Pakistan was interested in establishing in Afghanistan. The Taliban were largely funded by ISI in 1994. The ISI used the Taliban to establish a regime in Afghanistan which would be favorable to Pakistan, as they were trying to gain strategic depth. Since the creation of the Taliban, the ISI and the Pakistani military have given financial, logistical and military support.

According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban. Peter Tomsen stated that Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani Armed Forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan. In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000–30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000–15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000–3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000-strong military force. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Massoud. Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of Taliban soldiers are Pakistani." The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan." According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the Pakistani Army providing direct combat support.

In 2000, Human Rights Watch wrote: "Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting, Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and... directly providing combat support.

On 1 August 1997, the Taliban launched an attack on Sheberghan, the main military base of Dostum. Dostum has said the reason the attack was successful was that 1,500 Pakistani commandos took part and that the Pakistani Air Force also gave support. In 1998, Iran accused Pakistani troops of war crimes at Bamiyan and claimed that Pakistani warplanes had, in support of the Taliban, bombarded Afghanistan's last Shia stronghold. The same year Russia said, Pakistan was responsible for the "military expansion" of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan by sending large numbers of Pakistani troops some of whom had subsequently been taken as prisoners by the anti-Taliban United Front.

In 2000, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo against military support to the Taliban, with UN officials explicitly singling out Pakistan. The UN secretary-general implicitly criticized Pakistan for its military support, and the Security Council "expressed deep distress over reports of involvement in the fighting, on the Taliban side, of thousands of non-Afghan nationals, some of whom were below the age of 14." In July 2001, several countries including the United States, accused Pakistan of being "in violation of UN sanctions because of its military aid to the Taliban." The Taliban also obtained financial resources from Pakistan. In 1997 alone, after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, Pakistan gave $30 million in aid and a further $10 million for government wages.

In 2000, British Intelligence reported that the ISI was taking an active role in several Al Qaeda training camps. The ISI helped with the construction of training camps for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab and Central Asian Al-Qaeda militants to join the fight against the United Front, among them his 055 Brigade.
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