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Pakistan Said Still to Aid al Qaeda
Monday, March 25, 2002
By Indira A. R. Lakshmanan
Globe Staff

Sources in the Pakistani armed forces acknowledge that some elements of the ISI remain sympathetic to the Taliban and believe that the government that replaced it is the least friendly to Islamabad in years -- and they are quietly mobilizing to undermine it. Because of its volatile relationship with India to the east, Pakistan has long believed it needs an unquestioned ally to the west.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- TBG
Afghanistan's minister for border security and a top intelligence official last night accused Pakistan of sheltering fleeing Qaeda and Taliban fighters -- and helping them to cross the border back into Afghanistan, where they can attack US forces and destabilize the new government in Kabul.

In separate interviews, Minister of Frontiers Amanullah Zadran and a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Afghan government has evidence that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, and fundamentalist Pakistani clerics -- both of whom have historical ties to the Taliban -- have given haven to Taliban and Qaeda fighters who fled US military offensives in eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan has consistently denied funding the Taliban, both at the height of the fundamentalist regime, when the links between Pakistan's intelligence services and the Taliban were well documented and widely accepted, and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when Pakistan's president swiftly sided with the United States against his former allies in Kabul.

“The Pakistanis are not any longer sending their own troops [to help the Taliban], because they are under pressure from the US,” Zadran said. Instead, he said, Pakistani intelligence agents who remain sympathetic to the Taliban are helping Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar “to destabilize Afghanistan. These people have offices in Pakistan.”
(More: The Boston Globe News Source)
2002 © Boston Globe Electronic Publishing, Inc.

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