Allegations that Pakistan is backing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan were lent further strength on Sunday with the publication of two reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post. This kind of coverage in the mainstream US press has also come to assume the dimensions of a campaign. While the Post report carried extensive excerpts from an interview with Pakistan Army spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, the NYT report was far darker. Carlotte Gall reports from Quetta that while the government “vehemently rejects” the allegations, “Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies - in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence - have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervour but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank”.
Gall bases her report on “more than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border”. The interviews have left her with “little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban,” and she claims to have “found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them”. The evidence, she adds, is provided in “fearful whispers, and it is anecdotal”.