No place on Earth is there more high level ties to terrorism than in the Pakistan.  The Mecca of terrorism for Jihadist since the Soviet led invasion that began in the late seventies.  If America is ever going to win the war on terrorism it will have to be done not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan.  America can not continue to play only one side of the fence in a war in Afghanistan that it should understand better than anyone as being waged from Pakistan.  In recent weeks we have seen Pakistan a world nuclear power become a failing government after the forced resignation of President Pervez Musharaff.  It was Last year, in 2007, amid growing Islamist violence and massive shortages, Musharraf took the unpopular step of bringing the country briefly under emergency rule and sacked a number of judges for fear they might question the constitutionality of his winning a second term.  Those actions triggered massive public protests against his government and lead to the election in March of an opposition coalition, which pledged to restore the judiciary.

Even prior to the resignation, Pakistan has been embattled in a costly war against Islamic fundamentalists and Taliban insurgents that see this as an opportunity to gain control through endless terrorists attacks and assassination attempts that began the latest round of violence when Benazir Bhutto was murdered on December 27, 2007.  An earlier attempt on her life had failed two months prior, but the late December attack was full proof with a combination of first shooting her from close range followed instantaneously by a bomb explosion.  As of the last days of August in 2008, Pakistan's government looks to be in shambles and is giving the Taliban fighters the opportunity that they have been waiting for to make there moves.  The Pakistani Taliban have "the upper hand" and should be put on the list of banned organizations in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower has said.  Asif Ali Zardari said, in a BBC interview, that the world and Pakistan were losing the war on terror.  "It is an insurgency", he said, "and an ideological war. It is our country and we will defend it. "The world is losing the war. I think at the moment they (the Taliban) definitely have the upper hand. "The issue, which is not just a bad case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further. The whole world is going to be affected by it."

It truly only takes reading a few books to get a grasps on what has occurred in the past and what is occurring now in this volatile region that says all fingers point to Pakistan and it's inability to control it's Islamic fundamentalist groups and it's own Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that is so intertwined with terrorism it is hard to argue that they are not part of the global terror network.

Mr Zardari's strong remarks came shortly after the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) put his name forward as its presidential nominee.  Here is the ridiculous fact that most will not believe, Pakistan's very own Intelligence agency, the ISI created and supported the Taliban that is now overtaking Pakistan.  Regardless if America wins in Iraq, It has failed in dealing with the main culprits of global terrorism by not pressuring Pakistan to allow our troops inside their borders to stop this boiling pot of Islamic fundamentalism.  It would be hard at this point for America ever to retrace it's steps since the Iraq war and to fight the war that should have been fought.  Afghanistan is only the battlefield, not where the foreign Mujihadeen fighters are coming from or using as a safe place as long as America can not chase them back to their holes inside Pakistan they will continue indefinitely.  Most believe that Osama bin Laden,  Ayman al Zawahiri,  and Mullah Mohammed Omar  are located inside of Pakistan.  The war in Iraq, as horrible of a person that Saddam Hussein was and the world should have disposed of him, was the reason that America did not fight the right fight at the right time.  This mistake will continue to cost not only America but the rest of the world.

How Did The Pakistan ISI and Terrorist Connection Develop?

The Pakistan intelligence service, ISI, was used heavily during the Soviet-Afghan War that began in in the late seventies and lasted well into the late eighties when the the former Soviet Union cut their huge losses and pulled out prior to the collapse of the once world super power. In the West it is believed that it was the constant cost of the cold war arms race that brought the Soviet Union to collapse. In the world of Islamic fundamentalists it is believed that it was their actions in response to the Soviet invasion of Muslim world that led to their defeat in Afghanistan and demise as a world power. While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good headlines, they don't make accurate history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

Through the strong connection that the ISI formed through the war, the fundamental Islamic sympathizing ISI can take credit for their self defeating creation " The Taliban " which is currently clashing with Pakistan troops and government and is winning the war of the minds inside of the country.  The ISI mingle among some of the biggest terrorists threats to the world daily, but rarely unless under extreme pressure make an arrest.

The ISI created the Taliban by recruiting religious students and scholars, which is why the brand of justice the Taliban used while in rule was so ancient and barbaric in nature in Afghanistan.  They have their own brash interpretation of the Sharia.  Sharia is the Muslim book of law and punishment.  The ISI created the Taliban in an effort to have control over it's neighbor Afghanistan's internal affairs but there was a lack of government in Kabul as the country was being controlled by warring warlords across the country.  They armed, trained and provided intelligence for the Taliban to unite their neighbor under one stable government.   By 1996,  95% of the country was under Taliban rule and remained so until the U.S. invasion that destroyed the Taliban government. Top leaders slipped back across the border to Pakistan to run their war after reorganizing.  The U.S. invasion has put pressure on Pakistan but it appears on the surface has created a riff between the Taliban and the Pakistani government.  Caught in the middle is the ISI, where many of it's agents are aligned with the Taliban. The following are ISI involvement in connection with support of terrorism.

In 2001 the ISI expels Hamid Karzai from his residence in exile in Pakistan for opposing the Taliban

The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan mujahideen between 1983 and 1997, and dispatched them to Afghanistan

2008, the New York Times quoted anonymous intelligence officials in the United States alleging that the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan was behind the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul, which killed 58 people and wounded 141.

In 2001 According to allegations within the New York Times, ISI "has had an indirect but longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to American officials...ISI created Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in a war of terror against India...and also maintained direct links to guerrillas fighting in the disputed territory of Kashmir on Pakistan's border with India, the officials said.

In July of 2008, there were media reports that CIA officials approached Pakistani officials with hints of ties between Inter-Services Intelligence and Jalaluddin Haqqani.  Haqqani is a Pashtun military leader known for his involvement in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's as well as for being invited by President Hamid Karzai to become Prime Minister of Afghanistan. Operating against the Soviets and the Afghan government from a safe haven in North Waziristan[2], Haqqani is reputed to have once had strong ties with the CIA and the Pakistani ISI.  More recently, he has led pro-Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has also been credited with introducing suicide bombing to the region
The ISI firmly refuted these claims, however it admitted to the presence of elements within the ISI that were sympathetic to the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ISI supported the 1999 release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who was subsequently convicted of the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl as well as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.

1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years, and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests.

September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban had reached "unprecedented" levels, including reports that Islamabad had possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations.

In autumn 2006, a leaked report by a British Defense Ministry think tank charged, "Indirectly Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism—whether in London on 7/7, or in Afghanistan, or Iraq."

In June 2008, Afghan officials accused Pakistan's intelligence service of plotting a failed assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai; shortly thereafter, they implied the ISI's involvement in a July 2008 attack on the Indian embassy. In an October 2006 interview, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said some retired ISI operatives could be abetting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan

In May 2006, the British chief of staff for southern Afghanistan told the Guardian, "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan.

In Conclusion

The new government that had pushed for Musharaff's resignation is faltering fast.  Unable to deal with a huge population of Islamic fundamentalist that are tied to such groups as al Qaeda, the Taliban and various other high level terrorist groups that threaten not only neighbors like India, Afghanistan, and China, but the rest of the world.  It is essential that the U.S. government as well as other concerned neighbors in the region convince the new Pakistan government that it is in their best interest to allow foreign troops inside of their borders to weaken the grasp that insurgent Islamic fundamentalist have within a country where they operate freely in lawless tribal regions. They choose when to strike within Pakistan, Afghanistan, and many attacks in the West.  It is a mistake for the countries affected by the wrath of Radical Islam to continue to operate so easily and openly while the rest of the world waits for the next terrorist act hoping that it is not on their soil.  George W. Bush had it right when he said that the War on Terror would be fought on many fronts, however Pakistan from here on out is the throat that delivers air to the rest of the terrorism body.  It is time to choke them out of their hiding place.

It is crucial that not only America, but China, Great Britain, Australia, and any other country that is dealing with threats from extremism cooperate and create a joint coalition of the determined to end the menace that will not only destroy Pakistan and Afghanistan but is capable of continuing it's silent and deadly crawl to other locations across the globe wherever and whenever it can gain a footing.