"Saving the Taliban for a rainy day??"

Now, I think that even though India is bleeding us for jobs, even though they developed a Nuclear Weapon outside the purview of the International Community, they're our friends and we kinda need them in the coming fight against Al-Queda. We need them as a counterweight against the possibility of Pakistan (and their 25 nuclear weapons) falling into the hands of the Taliban and other Islamic Extremists.

But it now seems one of the problems we face in Afghanistan, one of the myriad problems that President Bush failed to comprehend, is the fact that Pakistan is afraid that India is going to make Afghanistan a client state.

This is a transcript from the Frontline Program "The War Briefing". (I was trying to find video, but was unsuccessful):

FRONTLINE NARRATOR: In the years after 9/11, the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Service) grew worried that without the Taliban as a counterweight, Afghanistan would fall under the influence of its nemesis, India.

Prof. VALI NASR (Tufts University): The fundamental issue is this. Pakistan owned Afghanistan until 2001. We essentially turned Afghanistan into a neutral territory, and the Pakistanis fear that it's actually going to become an Indian territory. That to them is an absolute strategic loss, and they're going to fight it.

STEVE COLL (The New Yorker): The Pakistan army supports the Taliban out of a fear, and that fear is located in the belief that the United States is collaborating with India in Afghanistan to essentially encircle and weaken the Pakistani state.

FRONTLINE NARRATOR: The ISI viewed Afghan president Hamid Karzai with particular suspicion.

ROBERT D. KAPLAN (Atlantic Monthly): President Karzai has been provocatively pro-Indian. He has allowed the Indians to open consulates in Jalalabad, in Kandahar, in other places around Afghanistan. So the Pakistanis are enraged about Karzai. They see this as a pro-Indian state. And in this very difficult, violent part of the world, bad things happen in this situation.

FRONTLINE NARRATOR: When the Indian embassy in Kabul was blown up by a suicide bomber in July 2008, the evidence pointed to Pakistan's ISI and a long-time Afghan Taliban commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

STEVE COLL (The New Yorker): There's recent evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service apparently facilitated an attack by Haqqani's group against the Indian embassy in Kabul, the capital.

DEXTER FILKINS (The New York Times): A very senior member of the ISI told my newspaper that, "Jalaluddin Haqqani is one of our assets, and we're not ashamed to say that." Now, that's a pretty remarkable thing to hear from a senior Pakistani official. Pakistan claims to be fighting the Taliban and getting a lot of money from the United States to do that, when, in fact, elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence services have kept the Taliban around. You know, they kept them alive as a kind of insurance policy. I mean, as a former Pakistani official said to me, "We're saving the Taliban for a rainy day."