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| Afghanistan |
| Talibs don't trust ISI |
| 2001-10-26 |
America's efforts to divide the Taliban leadership have thus far failed, the Washington Post reports. The problem: "a combination of poor intelligence contacts and powerful religious and cultural bonds between even the most marginal commanders and the Taliban leadership": Part of the problem stems from an abrupt shift last month in the agenda of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which helped to create the Taliban in 1994 and has sustained it since. Under pressure from Washington to purge his government of Taliban sympathizers, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revamped the ISI leadership and ordered the agency to switch almost overnight from overt operations supporting the Taliban to covert attempts to overthrow it. As a result, the Taliban and its supporters developed an immediate distrust of their former patrons. ISI operatives who previously had worked openly in Afghanistan had to be pulled out of Taliban territory for their safety, leaving Washington and Islamabad with a human intelligence vacuum in a place where they had hoped to be active, authorities here said. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |