This article was posted to e-Ariana, October 15, 2009.
A Pakistani spy agency is helping anti-Western militants mount attacks including suicide bombings in Afghanistan, a reality the West lacks the resolve to confront, an advisor to the Afghan government said on Thursday.
Davood Moradian, senior policy advisor to Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, told Reuters the motive of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was to arouse Western concern for stability in neighbouring nuclear-armed Pakistan and use it to obtain financial support for Islamabad.
Asked in an interview to provide concrete evidence of ISI involvement, he replied that the agency had been involved in a suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 that killed dozens of people including two Indian diplomats.
Pakistan strongly condemned the Kabul bombings at the time and said it had nothing to do with it.
"We produced such proof in respect of the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul last year. There were telephone records of the ISI officers directing, and we shared that information with the intelligence community," Moradian said.
"The intelligence community in Washington and London agree (with the allegations) but they are not in a position to make policy," said Moradian, speaking on the sidelines of a seminar at Britain's International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"They have passed that (information) to their political masters to make decisions, but their political masters do not have that courage. When it comes to the ISI we do not see that bravery on the part of the international community."
Pakistan used Islamist fighters to oppose Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later backed the Taliban government in Kabul. India has long accused Pakistan of nurturing jihadi groups to fight in the disputed Kashmir region.
"Strategic Direction"
But Pakistan, which has the most anti-Indian, anti-Western and best-organised militant groups in South Asia, denies it backs militant violence anywhere.
Indeed, Islamabad faces a direct challenge from the related Pakistani Taliban.
More than 100 people have been killed there in a week of attacks by Pakistani Taliban. The army is expected to launch an offensive soon against the militants in the South Waziristan area, near the Afghan border.
Moradian said the ISI's involvement had gone far beyond providing hospitality to the Afghan Taliban. "They (Taliban) are functioning, working and organising their activity in Pakistan in the full knowledge and engagement of the ISI," he said.
Asked if the ISI simply turned a blind eye to attacks, he said: "No. It is a strategic direction in choosing the targets, and in briefing the Taliban leadership about public opinion.
Suggesting it was hard for outsiders to deal with different power centres in Pakistan, Moradian said the Pakistani interior and foreign ministries were not involved in Afghan violence because the ISI had a monopoly on national security policy.
Asked what other evidence there was of ISI involvement, Moradian said an assessment written in August this year by top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal had "publicly and openly stated the ISI role."
An unclassified passage in the report states that senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups "are reportedly aided by some elements in Pakistan's ISI."
In an address to the institute, Moradian said the ISI's involvement in Afghanistan violence was part of a "triangle of terror" that also included the Taliban and al Qaeda.
He said part of the reason reconciliation was failing in Afghanistan was Pakistani support of the Taliban. He urged "engagement with Pakistan to convince its military leadership to sever its ties with the leadership of the Taliban."
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