US listed ISI as terrrorist organization in Guantanamo cables
WASHINGTON: One of the world's worst kept secrets is now out in the open. American authorities listed Pakistan's notorious spy outfit, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, as a terrorist organization alongside 36 groups including al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence, according to a new set of WikiLeaks cables pertaining to detainees in Guantanamo.
The disclosure, coming on the heels of the in-your-face charges by the highest ranking American military official Mike Mullen in Islamabad last week, where he openly accused ISI of ties with terrorist outfits like the Haqqani group, confirms what has long been the scuttlebutt in world capitals: Pakistan's spy agency has earned a terrorist tag in all but formal designation.
According to the Guantonamo cables, US interrogators were told to regard detainees' links to any of these 36 organizations, including the ISI, as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity. The WikiLeaks revelation also comes on the heels of admissions by David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, Pakistani expats who helped scout targets before the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist carnage, that they undertook the mission at the behest of the ISI.
The American mainstream media largely ignored the US red-flagging of ISI, but it was highlighted by the British newspaper Guardian. "The inclusion of association with the ISI as a 'threat indicator' in this document is likely to pour fuel on the flames of Washington's already strained relationship with its key regional ally," the paper observed, adding that "a number of the detainee files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting al-Qaida."
The US annotation on ISI was quickly noted by analysts, some of whom have long felt Washington has given a free pass to the Pakistani military, which oversees ISI, because of tactical and logistical American dependence on the outfit. "As with so many documents released by WikiLeaks, this is hardly a surprise in one sense. Still, it's one thing to 'know' something and quite another to see it officially documented in a classified file," Kevin Drum, a political blogger on Mother Jones, noted.
The directive puts a new public twist on the storied association between the CIA and ISI going back to the Cold War: they are now adversaries, a fact that became evident during the Raymond Davis episode. Although the suspicion and confrontation has been brewing for some years now, both US and Pakistani officials tried to gloss over it by suggesting that perhaps there may be few rogue ISI officials who are in cahoots with terrorists.
Even Mullen qualified his charges against ISI's association with terrorism in one interview in Islamabad last week, saying "That doesn't mean everyone in the ISI, but it's there." But the Guantanamo cables make no such distinction.
One file pertaining to Harun Shirzad al-Afghani, a veteran militant who was brought to Guantanamo in June 2007, refers to him telling his interrogators that an unidentified Pakistani ISI officer paid Rs 1 million to a militant in 2006 to transport ammunition to a depot within Afghanistan jointly run by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Hekmatyar's faction.
Al-Afghani is said to have attended a meeting in August 2006 at which Pakistani military and intelligence officials joined senior figures in the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Taiba group responsible for the 2008 attack in Mumbai and the Hezb-e-Islami group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. "Detainee has provided information on ISI(D) assistance to extremist groups operation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and may have additional information on their associations and activities," the file, reviewed by ToI, notes.
A separate document about a 42-year-old Afghan detainee cited by Guardian quotes intelligence reports claiming that in early 2007 Pakistani officials were present at a meeting chaired by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme chief of the Taliban, of an array of senior insurgents in Quetta, the Pakistani city where it has long been believed the Taliban leadership are based. "The meeting included high-level Taliban leaders... (and) representatives from the Pakistani government and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate," the document said.
At the meeting "Mullah Omar told the attendees that they should not co-operate with the new infidel government (in Afghanistan) and should keep attacking coalition forces."
US listed ISI as terrrorist organization in Guantanamo cables - The Times of India
Bloody jokers!
