Posted on 06/06/2013 4:05:59 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Photo: Bruce Reidel said, "The army has provided safe haven, arms, expertise and other help to Taliban. It briefly pretended to abandon Taliban to avoid American anger in 2001 misleading George W Bush." (Reuters)
Washington - As the US prepares to leave Afghanistan, Pakistani spy agency ISI is engaged in helping Taliban, a terrorist outfit which the intelligence agency has been helping for more than two decades now, a top American expert on South Asian affairs has said.
"For twenty years Pakistan's army, the real power broker in the country, has backed the Afghan Taliban. It helped create the Taliban's Islamic Emirate in the 1990s and build the al-Qaeda state within a state," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and now a scholar at the Brookings Institute, said.
"The army has provided safe haven, arms, expertise and other help to Taliban. It briefly pretended to abandon Taliban to avoid American anger in 2001 misleading George W Bush," he said.
"By 2004 under the leadership of its then spy chief and today top general, Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, was deeply engaged in helping the Taliban again. It still is. The senior Taliban leadership including Mullah Omar are protected by the ISI in Quetta and Karachi," he alleged.
Riedel said the Pakistani army is confident America will sooner rather than later abandon Kabul just as it did in the 1990s.
"Pakistan's generals make their country's Afghan policy. Nawaz Sharif told me that in 1998 when I first meet him. The elected civilians just go along for the ride or get
assassinated like Benazir Bhutto. Nawaz once said if he crossed the ISI-Army-Taliban axis, America would next find his successor to be a bearded jihadist in a uniform," he said.
The former CIA official said India has to play a key role in Afghanistan post-2014.
"As America draws down in Afghanistan, India will inevitably play a larger role there. It already is constructing Afghan-Iran-India transportation links designed
to isolate Pakistan," Riedel said.
"Indo-Pakistani rivalry in Afghanistan will make the post 2014 subcontinent even more dangerous. Pakistan will draw on the aid of its allies, China and Saudi Arabia. Sharif wants to reduce tensions with India and improve trade to help Pakistan's weak economy. Kayani has already warned him to go very slowly with India," he said.
As obvious as Gov Christie.
We knew this over 10 years ago. It’s like saying fire is hot.
It’s time to declare the ISI a terrorist organization and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan a terrorist state, and then treat them as such.
21 years ago if America had paid heed to India’s warnings about Pakistan when the latter was creating the Taliban. Instead, America aided and continues to aid Pakistan, economically and militarily.
September 11 was merely the initial price for that ignorance and support of evil (Islam). The payments since, for Iraq and Afghanistan, the freedoms lost to things like the Patriot Act, seem to be in the range of what it takes to undo a (once) great nation.
The founders had prophesied, and warned.
Let’s be serious, Mr. CIA, Afghanistan is the new Golden Triangle.
Who’s coming up with this drivel, Graham Fuller ?
The Taliban were largely founded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1994.[15][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] The ISI used the Taliban to establish a regime in Afghanistan which would be favorable to Pakistan, as they were trying to gain strategic depth.[38][69][70][71] Since the creation of the Taliban, the ISI and the Pakistani military have given financial, logistical and military support.[16][72][73][74]
According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, “between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan” on the side of the Taliban.[75] Peter Tomsen stated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.[76]
It should be obvious Hussein Obama is helping the Taliban.
And Al Qaeda (arms to them in Benghazi and Syria).
$$ and arms to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Anti-American policies as far as you can see.
If you are a Muslim terrorist nation watching Obama, you would have to say he has been wildly successful.
I hate the ISI, it is my belief they helped set up our CIA people when the Dr blew them up and I am also convinced they set up SEAL team 6 and leaked the info to the enemy that shot them down.
Ugh many scores to settle with this group.
Sorry this is personal.
Didn’t Madeleine Albright once say that the U.S. recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan?
I think it’s the opposite. The Taliban works for the ISI. One of the things I never understood about Musharraf was he that he didn’t purge the ISI while their stooges made over 200 attempts to kill him.
LOL, that’s because you think Musharraf is one of the good guys.
You are making a false assumption. My question is why a strong arm dictator allows an arm of the military to support constant assassination attempts against him.
That’s Pakistan for you.
The ISI got the CIA snookered and suckered for over a dozen years, after 9-11, no less.
They’ll do anything to milk a stupid cash cow, including staging false flag operations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.