In this shadowy war, the Taliban’s main bases and support networks are hidden in the rugged mountains of Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas, along the border south of here. A US National Intelligence Estimate report said in July that the same tribal districts are “a safe-haven” for al-Qaeda. Those districts are closed to foreigners, except on occasional, army-escorted trips.

In the other main Taliban stronghold, around the southwestern city of Quetta, Pakistani authorities have harassed, arrested or attacked journalists who inquire into Taliban activities. Pakistan’s support for jihadist guerrillas is an old cornerstone of its national security policy, Haqqani and other scholars say. Working largely through the ISI, Pakistan’s army cultivated the Taliban and backed their fight for power in Afghanistan as a way to keep Pakistani influence there.

The ISI sponsored groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba to battle India in the disputed territory of Kashmir, scholars say. The Subidar was one of hundreds of men who served as “handlers” for the ISI’s guerrilla clients. In the 1980s, he helped provide US-supplied weapons and logistical support to Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and other mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, according to residents in Chitral.

After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he oversaw camps over the border in Afghanistan that trained Jaish-e-Muhammad guerrillas, they said.

After September 11, 2001, the United States leaned on Musharraf to shut down the ISI’s guerrilla clients, which also were allied with al-Qaeda. The ISI retired dozens of its guerrilla handlers, most of them junior officers, said Hassan Abbas, a Harvard analyst of the Pakistani military and a former Pakistani police official. The Subidar was among them. But Musharraf’s anti-jihadist purge of the ISI and the army has not been effective, especially among lower-level officers, Abbas and other analysts say. For example, militants linked to al-Qaeda used army connections twice to bomb Musharraf’s highly secured motorcades in 2003, coming close to killing him.

... contd.