Will spies who know, tell the US?

Pakistan's security agency is asked to give information on its protégé, the Taliban.

Pakistani spies may be America's most critical eyes and ears in the manhunt for Osama bin Laden - and any military campaign in Afghanistan.

But will they deliver?

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which has an estimated 3,000 personnel inside Afghanistan, is likely offering the United States as much intelligence as possible on the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden, his camps, the terrain of Afghanistan, and other vital logistical questions.

But turning on the Taliban - the fundamentalist Islamic militia that the ISI helped create and nurture - is a far more delicate matter, sources say.

"There is no way the ISI can ask its rank and file to suddenly turn on the Taliban," says one well-placed Islamabad source.

"It isn't quite the same thing, but can you ask a father to give up his child?"

On Sept. 11, the head of Pakistan's powerful secret service, Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, was in Washington. When he came back to Pakistan several days later, sources say, General Ahmed was "a changed man."

Yet, Pakistan's spy chief faces a monumentally difficult task in giving a carte blanche to the American military and the CIA. It is a complete 180-degree turn in the aims and purposes of an agency that sees the Taliban as bringing some semblance of law and order to Pakistan's border.

Sources say ISI intelligence to the US is likely to be a careful mixture of fresh and old material - designed to keep Pakistan's hand in the operations, and outcome, of any US-led coalition. The ISI is considered to know more about the Taliban leaders and commanders than any other group in the region - and rumors of splits in the Taliban reported in US press last week may have come from ISI sources.

Yet the aim of Pakistan and the ISI at this point, sources say, is to support the creation of a moderate Taliban leadership and avoid a wrenching war in the region. In recent days, the name of former Afghan Foreign Minister Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, No. 2 in the Taliban movement, has been described as a leading candidate.

(In Kabul, Taliban officials shrugged off the idea of a split in their ranks, and said only Mullah Mohammad Omar would lead the Taliban. "We have foiled such conspiracies in the past and are ready to defeat fresh attempts to divide our movement," said Mullah Amir Khan Mutaqqi, a senior leader.)

Pakistani officials agree Afghan rule may have to change from the Arab-militant influenced Taliban leadership now based in Kandahar, sources say. But they are quick to add that the Taliban are too predominant and powerful inside the country to effect a whole-scale removal of them, as envisioned by some US policymakers.

Islamabad sources say that as an institution, the ISI must operate within a current atmosphere of public opinion in Pakistan. Many mid-level officials feel that the US has spent much of the past half decade isolating Pakistan. The US is now seen as suddenly coming in with demands that could seriously destabilize the region.

"As an institution, the ISI has to operate in the atmosphere of Pakistan, which for now is very wary of the US," says one source.

Former ISI leader Hamid Gul has a far more pragmatic criticism of the US request for help. General Gul says the ISI has always tended to cooperate with the US, but has done so in very private ways. He argues that by going public with a request for ISI help, the US has undercut the ability of the ISI to perform in Afghanistan.

"When [the US] made it a public demand, it hurt us," says Gul. "Why would the Taliban let the ISI anywhere near them now? The politicians simply have no idea how to do this work; they are deceiving their taxpayers."

"The Taliban know what the ISI knows," says a Pakistani journalist. "That may mean a lot of the information flow will be stale."

The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s was largely an ISI-sponsored operation. Pakistan has long wanted a "friendly" northern neighbor - and until 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the government in Kabul was considered "hostile" to Pakistan.

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