London School of Economics report claims Pakistan playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude; Zardari told Taliban prisoners they were arrested because he was under US pressure; Army, presidential spokeswoman, Afghan Taliban reject report

LONDON: The ISI intelligence agency provides funding, training and sanctuary to the Taliban in Afghanistan on a scale far greater than previously believed, a study claimed on Sunday.However, the Pakistani military dismissed the report for the London School of Economics (LSE) as “malicious and baseless”.

The LSE study, based on interviews with nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan between February and May this year, claims the relationship between the ISI and the militants goes far beyond current estimates.

“Although, the Taliban have a strong endogenous impetus, according to Taliban commanders the ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement,” wrote author Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

“They say it gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In their words, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.”

Waldman said the ISI appears to exert ‘significant influence’ on strategic decision-making and field operations of the Taliban and controls the most violent insurgent units, some of which appear to be based in Pakistan.

Insurgent commanders claimed the ISI was even officially represented, as participants or observers, on the Taliban supreme leadership council, he said. The report alleges that President Asif Ali Zardari himself had assured captive senior Taliban leaders that they were ‘our people’ and had his backing. He had apparently authorised some to be released from prison.

The study drew an angry reaction from the Pakistani military. “It is a part of a malicious campaign against the Pakistan Army and the ISI,” Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

“It is baseless. The sacrifices by Pakistan’s army and the ISI and the casualties in the war on terror speak for themselves,” he said. “We have a series of questions on the credibility of the report.”

Most interviewees explained the ISI’s involvement in terms of Pakistan’s rivalry with India, as the regional powers vie for influence ahead of the start of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan next year.

Waldman’s report argues that resolving this is key to bringing Islamabad onside efforts to defeat the insurgency. “Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency,” he concluded.

The ISI is accused along with the CIA of helping create the Taliban militia, which ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, by channelling funding to Afghan fighters battling the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

For his report, Waldman interviewed nine insurgent field commanders, three operating in the south of Afghanistan, three in the centre and three in the southeast, as well as one high-level Taliban intermediary.

He also talked with 10 former senior Taliban officials, a number of Afghan elders, politicians and analysts, as well as foreign diplomats and security officials. A research assistant interviewed six further insurgents.

Reuters adds: The research strongly suggested support for the Taliban was the ‘official policy’ of the ISI.

Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants have been widely suspected for a long time, the report’s findings, which it said were corroborated by two senior Western security officials, could raise more concerns in the West over Pakistan’s commitment to help end the war in Afghanistan.

The report also said President Asif Ali Zardari was reported to have visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan earlier this year, where he is believed to have promised their release and help for militant operations, suggesting support for the Taliban ‘is approved at the highest level of Pakistan’s civilian government’.

Presidential spokeswoman Farah Ispahani dismissed the allegations in the report as ‘absolutely spurious’. She said there ‘seems to be a concentrated effort to try to damage the new Pakistan-American strategic dialogue’.

Militants were feeling the pressure, she added, because “we will rout them from every area of Pakistan we find them in.”

“Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude,” said the report. In March 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, said they had indications elements in the ISI supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda and said the agency must end such activities.

Western officials have been reluctant to talk publicly on the subject for fear of damaging cooperation from Pakistan. “The Pakistan government’s apparent duplicity — and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment — could have enormous geopolitical implications,” said the report’s author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

More than 1,800 foreign troops, including some 1,100 Americans, have died in Afghanistan since US-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. The war has already cost the United States around $300 billion and now costs more than $70 billion a year, the report said, citing 2009 US Congressional research figures.

The report said interviews with Taliban commanders in some of the most violent regions in Afghanistan ‘suggest that Pakistan continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies’.

“These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior UN official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries,” the report said.

Almost all of the Taliban commanders interviewed in the report believed the ISI was represented on the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s supreme leadership council based in Pakistan.

“Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the Quetta Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement,” the report said.

The report also said Zardari, and a senior ISI official, allegedly visited some 50 senior Taliban prisoners at a secret location in Pakistan where he told them they had been arrested only because he was under pressure from the United States.

“(This) suggests that the policy is approved at the highest level of Pakistan’s civilian government,” the report said.

Afghanistan has also been highly critical of ISI involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Last week, the former director of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, resigned saying he had become an obstacle to President Hamid Karzai’s plans to negotiate with the insurgents.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters at his home a day after he resigned, Saleh said the ISI was ‘part of the landscape of destruction in this country’.

“It will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it. The Pakistani army of which ISI is a part, they know where the Taliban leaders are — in their safe houses,” he told Reuters.

Mushtaq Yusufzai adds from Peshawar: The Afghan Taliban on Sunday rejected the report of the London School of Economics. “The report is a pack of lies aimed at damaging our image among the Muslims supporting mujahideen all over the world,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

He called ‘The News’ from an undisclosed location to record the Taliban reaction to the LSE report. He said it was not the first time the Western powers and organisations had associated Taliban with the ISI.

Zabihullah Mujahid opined that the Western powers led by the US were ready to defame Taliban whenever they accelerate attacks and inflict losses on the occupation forces in Afghanistan.

The report even alleged that ISI officials attend meetings of the Taliban’s supreme council and extend them financial assistance. The Taliban spokesman said there was no question that people other than senior Afghan Taliban commanders would attend their meetings.

“Our movement is indigenous and has been launched for the liberation of our country from the clutches of the occupying forces,” he said, adding: “There is no doubt we are receiving financial assistance from kind-hearted Muslims from across the world, but we never got any help from the ISI.”

He argued as to why the Afghan Taliban would expect any help from Pakistan or the ISI when Taliban fighters were arrested in Pakistan whenever they went there for treatment or other personal needs.

Zabihullah Mujahid argued that the Afghan Taliban started their resistance against the US-led occupying forces the day their country was invaded and Pakistan was a key ally of coalition forces in this war.

Also, he said, there was no chance the LSE would have interviewed Afghan Taliban commanders for the research report that appeared on Sunday. “If they are talking about former Taliban ministers, we have categorically stated that they are not part of our movement,” the Taliban spokesman said.

He said the Taliban movement had entered the decisive phase and had forced the US and its allies to offer them talks. “It is our firm belief that the sacrifices of our Mujahideen will bear fruit one day,” he said.