...During a week in Afghanistan, a Maclean's reporter heard from Afghans at every level--ordinary villagers, soldiers, politicians--who are convinced that Pakistan still supports the insurgency that threatens Afghanistan's hopes for long-delayed stability. "Absolutely," Afghan Interior Affairs Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel said in his office in Kabul. "We have clear evidence, including documents and confessions, that they [captured insurgents] were trained by ISI," the Pakistani intelligence service.

Others believe the Pakistani influence in Afghanistan is more mixed. Gen. Dan McNeill, the American commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, said he has seen countless cases, not only of Pakistani army co-operation with NATO, but of genuine courage in confronting Islamist extremists in the wild mountainous border zone between the two countries. "The Pakistanis are in this," McNeill told Maclean's. "They understand what the stakes are, and they are trying to do their part."

If those two viewpoints are contradictory, so, chronically, is much of Pakistan's leadership. That institutional schizophrenia, and the worst instincts behind it, were encouraged by powerful outsiders for years. In his magisterial 2004 book about the Afghan history behind the 9/11 attacks, Ghost Wars, then-Washington Post reporter Steve Coll writes that U.S. policy toward Afghanistan was born almost whole only two days after the Soviets' Christmastime invasion of Kabul in 1979. "It is essential that Afghanistan's resistance continues," Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, wrote in a memo to the president on Dec. 26, 1979. "This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice. To make the above possible, we must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels." ...

For the complete article, please follow this link. Steve Coll is President and CEO of the New America Foundation.