ISI hand in Kabul blast

NEW YORK: Within days of India’s embassy in Kabul being bombed, Indian officials had accused Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence, or ISI, of masterminding the suicide bombing in Kabul which killed 54 people.

Now even US intelligence agencies have concluded that Pakistan’s military spy agency helped plot the deadly July 7 bombing in Afghanistan.

US government officials told The New York Times that “the conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack”.

The newspaper quoted unidentified US state department officials as saying the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that CIA deputy director Stephen R Kappes  had been ordered to Islamabad even before the attack. However, the intercepts were not  detailed enough to warn  of any specific attack.  

“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one state department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

The US officials cited gave the newspaper no specific details about what kind of support the ISI officers provided to the militants. But the report said the ISI officers had not been renegades, so their actions in the deadly bombing might have been authorised by superiors.

Pakistan’s ISI is the main intelligence arm of the military which directs its operations. However, according to the law of the land, it reports to the Pakistani prime minister.
American officials say they believe that the Indian embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaida and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the lawless tribal areas.

“The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power,” said The New York Times while adding that in recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been feeling threatened by India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan and New Delhi’s close ties to President Hamid Karzai’s government.

Pakistan defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar who accompanied Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on his first visit to the US also told a television channel in Washington that the US has accused the ISI of tipping off Al Qaida militants before US missile attacks on targets in federally-administered tribal lands.

These growing US concerns about the ISI have put a visible strain on relations between the Bush administration and its longtime ally Pakistan. American and Pakistani officials now acknowledge that President Bush on Monday confronted prime minister Gilani about the “divided loyalties” of the ISI and its duplicit role in the American-led war on terror.

Meanwhile, members of the US Congress urged the Bush administration on Thursday to support India in its fight against Islamic militants.

“I strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against the Indian people and their interests both inside their country and, recently in Kabul. The Congress and the US government must work with and support the government and the people of India in their efforts to keep their nation safe,” Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking member on the house foreign affairs committee, aid in a statement released here.