Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2010: Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency not only funds and trains Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, but also maintains its own representation on the insurgency’s leadership council, claims a new report issued by the London School of Economics.
Assertions that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, continues to nurture links with the Afghan Taliban are not new. But the scope of that relationship claimed by the report’s author, Matt Waldman, is startling and could prove damaging to the fragile alliance Washington is trying to foster with Pakistan, its military establishment, and its weak civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari. . . . .
Report finds Taliban commanders believe they are managed by Pakistani intelligence service (London School of Economics)
REPORT: THE SUN IN THE SKY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAKISTAN’S ISI AND AFGHAN INSURGENTS (.pdf)
Huffington Post, 26 April 2010: Book Review: My life with the Taliban, by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Scribe Publications
Like genies of the tales of the Arabian Nights they sprang forth from the wasteland of the post-Russian Afghan civil war. Early one morning in the autumn of 1994 about forty long-bearded mullahs gathered in a tiny mosque in Sangisar of Kandahar known as the White Mosque to found a new religious movement. They had no car or money. An old and noisy Russian motorbike with no exhaust-pipe was their only means of transport. The bike was nicknamed ‘Tank of Islam’ as a reward for its service. Then an unknown man barged into their checkpoint and donated a sack filled with 90 million Afghanis (about A$2 million). “I have donated this money for the sake of God alone. I don’t need anyone to know about it,” this man insisted, “there is no need for a receipt, or for my name to be known.” The following evening the BBC spread the word around the world about the birth of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
With the rise of the Taliban in deeply conservative rural Afghanistan the world’s political map suddenly has changed. The fire-brand religious movement soon began roaming about in swarms, flogging women in bazaars, burning schools, killing musicians, destroying TV sets, cameras and tape recorders. They unleashed a reign of fear in most of the country. The Taliban regime fell in a few weeks, when in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001. But in less than one year, the Taliban re-incarnated into an insurgency that is now tenaciously fighting Western and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
This messianic religious movement blended a puritanical spiritual belief with fanatical devotion and thus turned religion into a violent ideology closed in on itself, which has so far failed to find a normal and acceptable presence in the world today. But Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef sets out to present a counter-narrative about the Taliban in his autobiographical book, My Life with the Taliban. The ex-Taliban ambassador in Pakistan remains unrepentant for working with the Taliban after spending four years in Guantánamo Bay, even though he now is living in Kabul far from Taliban. “I was a Talib (singular of plural Taliban), I am a Talib and I will always be a Talib”.
Zaeef (Arabic word meaning weak and humble) trawls through his past, picking up stories from his childhood, his life in the Islamic maddrassas (Islamic schools), his schooling in the Pakistani spy agency ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence), his participation in anti-Russian Jihad, his life during the rise and fall of the Taliban and beyond. . . . .
. . . . The Pakistani double-game in Afghanistan is of much interest to the author. All along the war in Afghanistan, as I said above, the ISI would say one thing to the Americans and the opposite to the Taliban. A few example: When the US wanted to pursue the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, Pakistan emboldened the Taliban by giving them assurance that, in any circumstances, Pakistan would stand by the Taliban out of Islamic fraternity. Meanwhile, Pakistan deliberately kept secretive Mullah Omar in darkness about the US aims to attack Afghanistan by convincing him that the Americans were merely frightening the Taliban and they actually had no intention of attacking Afghanistan. A barrage of cruise missile into the Afghan soil would be the worst thing that might ever happen to the Taliban.
One day a few officers led by the ex-ISI director General Mahmud Ahmad, paid a visit to Zaeef where the general made clear to him, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in the Jihad against America. We will be with you.” . . .
ABC News, 9 March 2010: Pakistan’s top spy can remain in his position for another year, Pakistan’s army announced today, keeping in place a three-star general who United States officials have become convinced is committed to flushing militants out of his country. Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director-general of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, would have had to take mandatory retirement later this month without the one year extension, which was officially declared today but informally granted weeks ago. United States officials, many of whom are deeply suspicious of the ISI’s relationship with the Taliban, have come to believe that keeping Pasha in place will facilitate efforts to flush out Taliban safehavens from Pakistan. . . . .
The Nation, Pakistan, 19 Dec 09: In a major policy decision, the government has made it mandatory for the Pakistani missions abroad to issue visas to foreigners intending to visit Pakistan only after their clearance from the country’s top intelligence agency ISI.
Well-placed government sources told TheNation on Friday that the move had come after thorough deliberations and in view of the security situation in the country. Sources privy to these developments maintained that the decision had been taken after reports of undesired activities of some foreigners especially, the Americans and foreign journalists. . . . .
Economic Times, 17 Dec 09: David Coleman Headley, the NIA investigations have found, was thoroughly trained in espionage tactics by his Pakistani masters and successfully used women escorts as a cover for his surveillance missions across several Indian cities.
On one of his trips to Mumbai, he was accompanied by an allegedly Pakistani woman, who he claimed was his wife. They stayed at the Taj for a night, where he also wined and dined her. The NIA has been unable to find the trail of the ‘wife’ thereafter, though the suspicion among investigators is that she may have returned to Pakistan.
Headley’s legal wife is also a Pakistani and lives with their children in the US. Sources indicated that the woman who stayed with Headley in Mumbai was not his Chicago-based wife.
The NIA is now keen to ascertain whether Headley’s mystery wife was an LeT agent or messenger sent to help out Headley in his reconnaissance missions. The possibility of her working independently for LeT is also not being ruled out.
Besides this ‘wife’, Headley dated several other women while in Mumbai. He spent huge money, including fake currency notes, on them, taking them out and giving them expensive gifts.
The investigators are now probing whether some of the starlets he had befriended while working out together at the gymnasium had also gone out with him, including to places targeted during 26/11.
According to sources privy to the Headley probe, there are certain gaps in the leads gathered so far. Though the agencies have been able to track his travel and stay, the actual purpose of his trips is yet to be established through evidence. This is an indication of his good espionage skills — thanks to his likely training by ISI and Pakistani Army operatives — which included his good command over Hindi.
Headley is said to have spent lakhs, using credit cards and fake Indian currency, during his travel to various cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Ajmer, Pune, Goa and Ahmedabad. The fake notes story was discovered after the management of some of the hotels where Headley stayed complained of having been paid in fake currency. He is believed to have sourced the notes from Pakistan.
Given that Headley also ran up huge credit card bills, NIA is also ascertaining as to who was depositing money in his account to help him pay his bills. NIA has sought the US help to keep track of his bank accounts.
