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Telegraph
Pakistan spy agency accused of arming Taliban in secret
By David Wastell in Washington
(Filed: 09/12/2001)
PAKISTAN'S military intelligence agency channelled arms and ammunition
secretly to the Taliban for at least a month after President Musharraf
declared support for Washington in the war on terrorism, it was reported
yesterday.
Military advisers and officers from the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence
agency also helped to strengthen Taliban defences around Kandahar, the
regime's southern stronghold, and gave tactical advice, according to Western
and Pakistani officials quoted in the New York Times.
On at least two occasions known to Western officials, Pakistani border
guards at a checkpoint on the Khyber Pass waved on lorry convoys bound for
Afghanistan.
Beneath their tarpaulins were consignments of assault rifles, ammunition and
rocket-propelled grenade launchers for Taliban fighters, the newspaper
reported.
The convoys, on October 8 and 12, were the last officially sanctioned
deliveries, said a senior Pakistani intelligence official.
The report confirms suspicions that Pakistan's largely independent ISI,
which backed the Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan, still had many
officers sympathetic to the defeated regime.
Christina Lamb, The Telegraph's award-winning foreign correspondent, was
arrested and deported from Pakistan last month while investigating similar
claims.
The ISI and Pakistan's interior ministry claimed at the time that she posed
a risk to national security but refused to elaborate.
General Musharraf, who became president of Pakistan after a military coup
last year, bowed to an ultimatum from Washington to withdraw support for the
Taliban after the September 11 attack.
Although he has been widely praised for his decision, and took steps to
replace some suspect officials, it took at least a month for the ISI to
begin to come to heel, according to the New York Times.
The paper quotes a Western diplomat as saying that it was only when
Pakistani military advisers were withdrawn from Afghanistan during the
second half of October that Taliban forces began to collapse.
"We did not fully understand the significance of Pakistan's role in propping
up the Taliban until their guys withdrew and things went to hell for the
Talibs," he said.
The change came after Gen Musharraf took the risky step of replacing the
ISI's pro- Taliban director with a more moderate figure. Later, other
intelligence officials were being questioned and their positions reviewed.
Pakistan's government reacted furiously to yesterday's report. Maj-Gen
Rashid Qureshi, a military spokesman, said the report was "absolutely false
and incorrect".
In fact, he said, Afghanistan was littered with "huge, enormous arms dumps"
from previous Soviet and American interventions. The country was more likely
to be exporting weapons than importing them.
In Washington, the State Department refused to be drawn into the dispute.
"This is a matter for the Pakistanis," a spokesman said. Officials said the
Bush administration retained full confidence in Gen Musharraf and was
pleased with the steps he had taken since September 11.
The ISI helped channel up to $3 billion of American funds into Afghanistan
during the 1980s for the fight against occupying Soviet troops. Many agents
regarded their support for the Taliban as a religious duty.
"It will not be so easy for officers to set aside their beliefs and change
sides," said Lt-Gen Hamid Gul, a former ISI director, who made plain he was
among them.
He told the New York Times: "You Americans will have to support the Taliban
one day. They are not going to go away. They are integral, organic,
historic."
Gen Musharraf won admiration in Washington for his decision to lead Pakistan
in a new direction after the September 11 attack, despite the risk of
domestic trouble from Taliban supporters and other Islamic fundamentalists.
In fact, anti-American demonstrations inside Pakistan have dwindled over the
past few weeks as the Taliban regime has lost its grip on power.
However, the Taliban's collapse poses a fresh problem for his government.
Many Taliban fighters, including Pakistanis, are slipping through the long
and porous border to take refuge in Pathan tribal regions of Pakistan where
the army's control is limited.
Pakistan said yesterday that it had moved helicopter gunships and more
troops to the border to bar Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters. Gen Qureshi
declined to elaborate on the deployments but said: "They are substantial.
They are enough to do the job."
Many are stationed in areas opposite Osama bin Laden's suspected hideouts in
the Tora Bora mountains and near the Chaman crossing in the south.
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