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, claims 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.
..... The report claims that 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 believed to serve as the council's haven.....
The report also alleges that 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 had vowed to ensure their release as well as to support their efforts in Afghanistan.
The report's claims drew vehement denials from Islamabad....."
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