White House attacks Pakistan over Taliban aidMore than 180 files detail accusations that the ISI spy agency has supplied, armed and trained insurgents since 2004• Clandestine aid for Taliban bears Pakistan's fingerprintsBy Declan Walsh
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26017.htmJuly 25, 2010 "The Guardian" -- Allegations in the war logs that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has been covertly supporting the Taliban kicked off a political storm tonight as the White House said the situation was "unacceptable" and described militant safe havens in Pakistan as "intolerable".
More than 180 intelligence files in the war logs, most of which cannot be confirmed, detail accusations that Pakistan's premier spy agency has been supplying, arming and training the insurgency since at least 2004.
The Obama administration, which gives $1bn a year in military aid to Pakistan, did not challenge the veracity of the files, but said that while Islamabad was making progress against extremism, "the status quo is not acceptable".
"The safe havens for violent extremist groups within Pakistan continue to pose an intolerable threat to the United States, to Afghanistan, and to the Pakistani people," a spokesman said in response to questions about the ISI files.
He urged Pakistan's military and intelligence services to "continue their strategic shift against violent extremists groups within their borders, and stay on the offensive against them".
An ISI spokesman said the agency could not comment in detail until it had examined the files, but described the general allegations as "far-fetched and unsubstantiated".
The accusations against the ISI in the war logs range from spectacular to lurid. Reports describe covert ISI plots to train legions of suicide bombers, smuggle surface-to-air missiles into Afghanistan, assassinate President Hamid Karzai and poison western beer supplies.
But despite the startling allegations the files yield little convincing evidence behind Afghan accusations that the ISI is the hidden hand behind the Taliban.
Much of the intelligence is unverifiable, inconsistent or obviously fabricated, and the most shocking allegations, such as the Karzai plot, are sourced to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's premier spy agency, which has a history of hostility towards the ISI.
"The vast majority of this is useless," a retired US officer with long experience in the region told the Guardian."There's an Afghan prejudice that wants to see an ISI agent under every rock."
But he said the allegations chime with other US reporting, collected by other agencies and at a higher classification, that pointed to ISI complicity with the Taliban. "People wouldn't be making up these stories if there wasn't something to it. There's always a nugget of truth to every conspiracy theory," he said.
The storm over the ISI files comes at a sensitive time. In recent months Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha, have drawn closer to Karzai, their former rival, with a view to negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban.
The ISI has rejected suggestions that it is playing a "double game", pointing to the arrest of the deputy Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi last February as proof of its good intent. In issuing such a strongly worded statement with implicit criticism of the ISI, the White House may be trying to keep ahead of a tide of US opinion that is hostile towards Pakistan. But the Obama administration has little choice but to stick with its Pakistani allies, whose co-operation they need in hunting al-Qaida fugitives along the Afghan border. The ISI and the CIA are co-operating closely on drone strikes that have hit 47 targets and killed up to 440 people this year.
The war logs are likely to stoke passions in Pakistan where the rightwing press has long accused the US of seeking an excuse to invade and seize the country's nuclear weapons.
A hint of this reaction came from the ISI official. "It's very strange such a huge cache of information can be leaked to the media so conveniently," he said. "Is it something deliberate? What is its purpose? We'll be looking into that."
