Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
Folks in the building understand the situation Pakistan faces, the balance the Pak military strives to achieve in the frontier between eradicating radicalism and insurgency while not creating more radicals. I don't know enough about the connections between the conventional military and the ISI to lump them together, but I do appreciate the claim that things turned upside down on 9/11 for both countries.
After the May, 2011, raid on the Mehran naval station there was some talk that there was an inside job element to the attack. That seemed a little out there to me. I asked a Pakistani friend of mine, a Political Science professor, what she thought. I was expecting she would tell me something about the nature of rumors and paranoia in the Pakistani media, so I was quite surprised when she told me she thought it was perfectly plausible and that it was her impression that there was more than a little factionalization in the Pakistani military and paramilitary forces.

Now, as far as I know there ended up being no evidence that the Mehran attack was an inside job in any way. And my friend was not claiming to have any inside track information on that event in particular or the situation in general.* But I did come away from the conversation with the notion that it is probably worth considering that while the Pakistani security professionals might all be on the same team that they might not all be reading from the same playbook. (Of course there are a variety of opinions within any institution, but I mean something beyond minor differences of opinion.)

*She does have family members who have served as officers in the Pakistani military, though of course many Pakistanis of her class and status do.