ISI’s Role & What US Lobbyists Suggested
At the start, the ISI was uncomfortable with Benazir Bhutto’s Interior Minister Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar reaching out to the Talibs. Their assumption was that this was another lot of jehad stragglers, assembled around a Hotak leader propped up to be a sort of warlord, and that this would be at the expense of their ‘assets’.
Benazir’s government was looking at Pakistan becoming the hub of a trade route to the newly-independent ‘stans’. There was a sort of internal congruence with Islamists, supported by some politicians and some from within the army, looking at a Pakistan-led Islamic alliance stretching from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. Yet another group, mostly military strategists, looked at this grouping as a counter to India.
It is not as if this idea did not appeal to the West. The Soviet Empire had disintegrated and, mission accomplished, the US withdrew. This, by implication, suggested that Pakistan would act as their proxy. There was global interest in Central Asia and companies like UNOCAL got into the picture to pipe Turkmen gas through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. Lobbyists in the US sold the view that the Taliban could be trusted and were essential to opening up Central Asia.