ISLAMABAD - Guantanamo Bay prison authorities named Pakistan's main intelligence agency a terrorist organization along with Hamas and other international militant networks, according to leaked documents.
The 2007 documents from the prison were part of a batch of classified material released by the Wikileaks website and included in interrogation summaries from more than 700 detainees.
The revelations are likely to damage already rocky relations between the Inter-Services Intelligence agency and the CIA.
The publicity about the documents in Pakistan coincided with a visit here Monday by Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
The ISI, which falls under the control of the country's powerful military, declined to comment, but it has consistently denied any ongoing links with Islamist militants.
The ISI is included in a list of more than 60 international militant networks, as well as Iran's intelligence services, that appear in guidelines for interrogators at Guantanamo. It says the groups are "terrorist" entities or associations and say detainees linked to them "may have provided support to al-Qaida and the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against U.S. and coalition forces."
The CIA and the ISI have worked closely together since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to hunt down al-Qaida operatives sheltering in Pakistan. But U.S. officials have often voiced suspicions that elements of the ISI were either linked to or supporting militants even as the two countries publicly talked of their alliance in the campaign against extremism.
Those suspicions appear to be bolstered in part by documents about some individual detainees that were first reported by the Guardian newspaper of London.
For instance, the profile of Harun Shirzad al-Afghani says the U.S. believes the detainee attended an August 2006 meeting that included a variety of militants as well as representatives of Pakistan's military and intelligence service. Those gathered decided to increase attacks in certain provinces of Afghanistan, the profile states, citing an unidentified letter.
The profile also states that al-Afghani claimed that an unnamed ISI officer paid $12,000 (1 million Pakistani rupees) to a militant involved in transporting ammunition to a weapons depot in eastern Afghanistan.
Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan hit a new low this year after an American CIA contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis he claimed were robbing him. Since then, the ISI has complained about American drones strikes along the Afghan border and the alleged existence of scores of CIA agents in the country without its knowledge.
In a rare public accusation last week, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, said the ISI had continued links to the powerful network of an Afghan warlord that has bases in a northwestern tribal region of Pakistan. Hours later, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, rejected what he called "negative propaganda" by the United States.
Petraeus met with Kayani during his trip Monday, a U.S. Embassy statement said. It gave few details other than to say the two "discussed topics of mutual interest and ways to improve regional security."
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told parliament late Monday that the country's civilian, military and intelligence leaders had taken steps to end any "trust deficit" with the Afghan government, which has also accused the ISI of meddling in its affairs in the past. Gilani made no direct reference to the classified documents.
Allegations of links between the ISI and Islamist militants date back to the 1980s, when Pakistan — along with the United States — was supporting the "Afghan jihad" against the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan. These days, many analysts say the country wants to keep the militant commanders as potential allies in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw.
From: Imtiaz Gul <imtgul@gmail.com>
Friends, for your information
The U.S.-Pakistan stalemate
By Imtiaz Gul, April 23, 2011 ![]()
Saturday, April 23, 2011 - 12:26 PM ![]()
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It looks like the proverbial marriage of convenience; although international obligations and strategic considerations continue to serve as the glue for an increasingly volatile partnership between the United States and Pakistan, deep-seated mutual mistrust and conflicting geo-strategic objectives prevent Pakistan and the United States from partnering in a friction-free way. This is how one could characterize the bilateral relationship following Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen's terse meetings last week with the Pakistan Army high command during his trip to Pakistan, and the unusually blunt remarks by Mullen to several Pakistani media outlets just before the meeting left little doubt that both sides remain divided on some of the most fundamental issues related to Pakistan's fight against militants.
The interviews Adm. Mullen gave before his talks with his counterpart General Khalid Shameem Wynne, as well as with General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, reflected the American frustration with the Pakistani reluctance in dealing with groups such as the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) the way Washington (and New Delhi) would want.
"It is fairly well known that ISI had a relationship with the Haqqani network and addressing the Haqqani network from my per spective is critical to the solution set in Afghanistan. ... that's at the core -- it's not the only thing -- but that's at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship," Admiral Mullen said in an interview with Dawn TV late Wednesday.
This essentially reflected what Mullen said in January this year, when he called Pakistan the "epicenter" of terrorism in the world, and called on the Pakistani safe havens where the Haqqanis, LeT, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban reside. Speaking to reporters the day before his trip to Pakistan, Mullen also said that, "We're working our way through the relationships that [Pakistani intelligence] has with the Haqqani network and the strain that that creates... and these are issues I address with him (Gen.Kayani) every single time we engage."
And if the brief press release put out by the U.S. embassy or the stern response from the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi south of Islamabad were any indicator, Mullen's "engagement with Kayani" was not a smooth affair at all.
"U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Pakistan today to consult with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff," was how Kayani figured at all in the 124- word statement issued after Mullen's 22nd visit to Pakistan since October 2007. As for Kayani, he ""strongly rejected negative propaganda of Pakistan not doing enough and Pakistan army's lack of clarity on the way forward" according to the statement released by the Pakistani Army.
Let us now consider why Mullen's patience has worn thin with Pakistan, after long being known as a defender of the Pakistani military; only a few months away from the scheduled beginning of the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been racked by the controversy surrounding CIA operative Raymond Davis after he killed two armed men in Lahore in January. This episode not only exposed the CIA operations in Pakistan that for the most part until Davis's release had been suspected but not paraded about in broad daylight. It also certainly delivered a serious jolt to the relationship, and provided Pakistan with a wand to wave at the United States in order to extract some concessions on covert CIA activities in Pakistan.
And this has turned it into an ISI-CIA turf-war over their mutually conflicting interests and objectives in the region - namely that the Americans want Pakistan to conclusively move against the Haqqani Network and LeT, while Pakistan wants to secure its future interest in a post-American Afghanistan, while also wanting to maintain some order in North Waziristan, dominated by the Zadran tribe, who are also spread across Afghanistan's Paktia province and to which the Haqqanis belong.
It would seem that Mullen failed to extract a commitment from Kayani on this front, while Mullen, on the other hand, seems to have failed in committing himself to addressing the Pakistani establishment's paranoia with the expanding Indian role in Afghanistan, a concern that a senior Pakistani general told me the military has raised on various occasions with their American partners. This failure to openly address Pakistani concerns also reinforces the Pakistani preoccupation with the perceived U.S. tilt towards India.
The generals at army headquarters in Rwalpindi also believe that the Indo-American partnership, with the active support and connivance of a Tajik-dominated Afghan security establishment, wants to deny Pakistan a dominant role in Afghanistan, and believe the United States thinks that the only way to achieve this is to accord India key security responsibilities in that country once the bulk of foreign troops leave. Unless addressed by an increasingly strident American defense establishment upset by the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, these Pakistani concerns will likely continue to disrupt the bilateral U.S.-Pakistan ties, as well as the keep the regional multi-lateral relations on the boil. The perceived American deference to India works to the detriment of Pakistani interests, the senior general told me, and would hardly provide them with the comfort level that a "strategic partner needs to get fully involved in a war that has cost [Pakistan] a lot."
Pakistani intelligence, says the military commander, "cannot afford to relent and allow the United States or its security institutions a free hand in shaping the geo-political agenda in the region in league with the Indian and Afghan security establishments."
The challenge for both the U.S. and Pakistan remains the problem of trying to marry their divergent geo-strategic objectives. As for now, the relationship has soured significantly, with no indication of Pakistan giving in on the issue of support for the Haqqanis or LeT. Nor does the U.S. appear ready to accommodate Pakistani concerns flowing from the surging Indian influence in Afghanistan. And in such an environment, stalemate and tension seem ready to endure.
Imtiaz Gul heads the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies -- CRSS-Islamabad -- and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place.
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