The double game syndrome

Dr. Jassim Taqui

DG Al-Bab Institute for Strategic Studies

Islamabad, September 4, 2021: In the textbook of intelligence agencies, playing a double game with “tough states” is a requirement of national security. Almost all-powerful states play double games with others to promote their foreign policy objectives.

In January 2018 the former President Donald Trump cut all economic and military assistance to Pakistan on the pretext that Islamabad played a double game with America by being “selective” in the war against terror.

Trump was concealing the fact that successive US administrations played double games with Pakistan by first secretly making a military alliance with India even as Pakistan was its ally in CENTO and SEATO. Later, Trump himself proclaimed “strategic partnership with India” as a containment to China and a taming tool to Pakistan.

Somehow, the US deep state was shocked in the core then Pakistan defied all US dictates and signed in 2015 the CEPEC deal with China. Did Pakistan deep state play a double game with America? Certainly, it did. However, Pakistan was showing the US that it has other options to ensure its survival.

Another surprise came when the ISI played well-perceived deception games with the CIA,  the RAW, the MI6, and the Qatar intelligence that installed the Taliban in Afghanistan despite the schemes of the Five.