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| India-Pakistan |
| US wary of ISI links to al-Qa'ida |
| 2002-07-21 |
| The FBI is becoming almost as distrustful of its Pakistani counterpart as the CIA is of the warlords across the border in Afghanistan. During the trial of journalist Daniel Pearl's murderers – which ended with the conviction of the British public schoolboy Omar Sheikh – one small but disturbing fact never made its way into the headlines: that one of the co-accused was a former Pakistani police officer. The final testimony of the trial must owe something to his evidence. It revealed, for example, that Mr Pearl made two escape attempts from his captors and that it was this which prompted them to murder him. Three Yemenis were brought in to perform his throat-cutting. But all we know of the ex-cop is that – even at the time of his arrest – he was still working for the Pakistan Special Branch. Only one of myriad reasons they didn't want to extradite Omar Sheikh... Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful state institution which helped arm Afghan fighters against the Soviets and then supported the Taliban, was supposedly reformed once the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, joined President George Bush's "war on terrorism". Of course things have changed. But these things have to be done in stages. First you change the letterhead, then you can worry about changing the signature blocs — one of these days. Few in Pakistan believe it. There are rumours, for example, that intelligence officers helped to hide three al-Qa'ida members after a gun battle in a village in Waziristan, in the border tribal territories on 25 June in which 10 soldiers were killed. US agents in Pakistan suspect that several of their raids on remote villages in Waziristan were betrayed to al-Qa'ida operatives in advance. Since then, both the FBI and the Pakistan army have preferred not to inform local police officers of their activities. Good move on their part... Although authorities in Islamabad insist that US forces cannot operate alone inside Pakistani territory, recent reports suggest the contrary. Last week, for example, three Pakistani tribesmen were apparently picked up by US troops from the border town of Angoor Adda and flown across the frontier to the US base at Birmal in Afghanistan. It also appears that American forces have been using their old Afghan device of handing out wads of cash in return for local tribal loyalty. Just hope they remember the other half of the equation: "Give 'em money when they cooperate, kill 'em when they don't." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |