Pakistan: Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) - a collection

[carl]

Counterintuitively, the US may gain more leverage over Pakistan, and thus over the Taliban, by reducing its presence.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

I personally wonder if it wouldn't be possible to scale back the overall presence substantially without reducing combat capability, by adjusting the teeth-to-tail ratio in favor of teeth. Of course I'm not in a position to know, but it does seem like there's a whole bunch of tail on the ground there. Would appreciate informed commentary on that question...

My uninformed commentary is physically. absolutely. Culturally, impossible.