A tie long alleged by a number of officials, a new report claims that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Pakistan’s leading spy agency, has such a strong role in backing the Afghan Taliban that they have actually been given a seat on the group’s leadership council, the Quetta Shura.
The report, by the London School of Economics, said its research suggests that the ISI has maintained support for the Taliban as an “official policy” throughout the nine year US occupation of Afghanistan.
Perhaps even more shocking was the claim of complicity by the civilian government in the policy, including President Asif Ali Zardari, who is said to have secretly met with the “captured” Taliban officials to assure them that their detention was only temporary and that they would continue to be supported.
Pakistani officials have dismissed the report as “naive,” but a long history of the Pakistani government supporting militant groups as a hedge against rival India gives the report an air of legitimacy. What, if anything, will come of it remains to be seen.
"Naive" is the right word.
These reports will continue till the end of war on terror or Pakistan is totally destroyed by US and UK as these NGO,s has only one aim to utter only allegations one after the other. Even if ISI does why not? as it is in the interest of Pakistan and the spy agencies like CIA, MI5 Raw and other western secret services are training and financing the youg youths and playing with tean agers. This is so called friendship with Muslim countries.
The day before 9/11 the the ISI sent a $100,000 to the hijackers. This perceived subterfuge by the ISI, which is funded by the CIA, is nothing new. In essence the USG partially funded the 9/11 terrorists by its funding of the ISI, however indirectly, which in turn was funding the 9/11 hijackers. Sort of makes me wonder about the Bush/Cheney criminal conspiracy for its involvement in 9/11. !st, Cheney was in charge of the eastern USA air defenses that day, which were grounded for "security reasons" and the CIA funding of ISI which in turn was funding the 9/11 terrorists.
The CIA totally did not finance the ISI. The ISI is way too smart for the CIA, which is a bureucratic mess and lacks a good network out in the field.
Gawd our people are slow …. we knew this in 2001.
This is very basic stuff. The Taliban are the Pashtun's who's tribal area spans Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Pakistan had long supported them against the warlords we called the "Northern Alliance" who we armed and used to take out the Taliban. Basic Pakistani strategy to keep a freindly government on their long border instead of one with ties to Russia.
And since we've supported gawd knows how many coups in Pakistan over the years, its no real surprise that the civilian government is weak and goes along with what the military and intel types want to do in foreign policy.
For their next exciting and up to date report, the London School of Economics will next report on the speculative bubble in the US housing market.
I think, its again this beating up the bush and looking if something hides underneath.
The US learned that from the British and its useful to save an empire.
So, Pakistan should be aware, that they could not expect ANYTHING GOOD from the US, and
the best thing would be if they keep some minimum of power themselves.
They should be aware, if they make one bad move, some special unit of the US will try to
get their hands on their last guarantee of freedom, their nuclear arms.
If that goes, they will be next for encircling China. Russia already gave up.
W.