ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency not only funds and trains Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan but also maintains its own representation on the insurgency’s leadership council, according to a new report issued by the London School of Economics.
Assertions that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, continues to nurture links with the Afghan Taliban are not new. But the scope of that relationship claimed by the report’s author, Matt Waldman, is startling and could prove damaging to the fragile alliance Washington is trying to foster with Pakistan, its military establishment and its weak civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari.
Waldman, a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, based his assertions on interviews with nine Afghan Taliban commanders as well as with Afghan and Western security officials.
The report claims it is official Pakistan governmental policy to support the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan and that the ISI has a strong voice on the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban’s leadership council, named after the southern Pakistani city thought to serve as the council’s haven.
The report states, based on the interviews, “The ISI has representatives on the Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement.”
The report also alleges Zardari, long regarded as a close ally of the Obama administration in the war on terrorism, had met with captured senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan and vowed to ensure their release as well as support for their efforts in Afghanistan.
The report’s claims drew vehement denials from Islamabad, which characterized the research as speculative and unsubstantiated.
“I consider this a highly speculative and provocative report,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman. “I question the authenticity and credibility of this so-called research. . . . It’s not worthy of any response.”
