Would you mind expanding on this a bit, Sir?
I really should be more informed on HQN with how much of an impact they are having in the region (any good book titles would be appreciated, until then, I shall start to hit up Google). You are way more of a SME on the HQN than I.
I am probably way off base, but I consider HQN to be similar to AQ and aligned with the Taliban, and thus could survive without the help of the ISI, mainly because of religious principles. I understand the that HQN and ISI have been tied together for a long time, and at times feel as though the HQN is the marionette in the relationship, but do you really feel as though the HQN couldn't survive without the ISI?
Thanks for any insight you can provide.
I'm by no means an expert on the HQN, I'm just a grad student with Internet access. ;)
HQN is a tool of ISI. It exists (in its current form, in its current sanctuary inside Pakistan) because ISI
wants it to exist. Pakistan could crush the HQN- or at least make life very difficult for them- if they wanted to. They don't; they don't see it in their national interests.
Pakistan still sees India as an existential threat. That's why Pakistan developed nukes, that's why Pakistan is cozying up to China, and that's why (in part, I'm oversimplifying now) Pakistan maintains various Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations inside its borders. Pakistan uses terrorists as proxies to attack its nemesis, India, and to put pressure on the U.S. to get us to pull out of Afghanistan. Pakistan needs a weak but semi-stable border with Afghanistan in order to have strategic depth against India. It does not want a stable Afghanistan with a strong central pro-Western government. And it definitely doesn't want a large body of U.S. forces inside Afghanistan, within striking distance of all of those nuke sites... Giving those pesky tribal fighters someone to fight also keeps them from acting out against the government of Pakistan. That's win-win as far as they can see, especially if the U.S. is still going to give billions in aid.
HQN is very different from AQ. HQN are indigenous, AQ is mostly foreign. The purported goals of the two groups are also different. AQ has a worldwide plan; a lot of people think the HQN would be happy with "Pashtunistan." AQ is largely dependent upon HQN, for reasons I don't feel like going into right now. HQN voluntarily subordinated themselves to the Taliban, but they still operate mostly autonomously. I'm struggling to find a good comparison to this relationship... maybe if the U.S. national SOF task force commander went to a U.S. conventional ground commander and said, "OK, I work for you now, I'm going to support your overall game plan, but we're still doing our own planning, receive our own funding line and operational direction, and pick our own targets. We'll let you know if we need anything." I'm still not sure that's a good example, maybe someone like Freefalling with more time on the ground there than me can come up with something better. At any rate, almost all of the "spectacular" attacks that take place in Afghanistan are executed by the HQN, operating under the overall Taliban banner. The most recent example of this was the embassy attack in Kabul. Classic HQN operation.
With regard to good reading on the HQN, I'd just Google "Haqqani Network" and start from there. I remember a good piece in the Small Wars Journal, and I'm told that the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point just produced a very good HQN article. I wrote a couple of pages on the HQN last year, if it was unclassified I still have it at the house and can post it up here in a couple of days when I find it.