'ISI has links with Al-Qaeda'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, OCT. 29. In what would be music to many ears in India and at the same time not coming as a major revelation to some, U.S. administration officials are saying that the ISI of Pakistan has had an indirect but longstanding relationship with the Al- Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and in the process was turning a blind eye to the growing nexus between the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In a front page story, The New York Times argues that Pakistan's ISI even used the Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train terrorists for covert operations in India. The American fears over the ISI's dealings with the Kashmiri militant groups and the Taliban were such that the U.S. Secret Service opposed a plan by the then President, Mr. Bill Clinton, to visit Pakistan in 2000.

``The fear was that Pakistan security forces were so badly penetrated by terrorists that extremist groups possibly including the Al-Qaeda would learn of the President's travel route from sympathisers within the ISI and try to shoot down his plane,'' The New York Times says. Mr. Clinton overruled his Secret Service and visited Islamabad but not before many elaborate and evasive measures were put in place for that brief trip.

Much of what the report says is something the Indian officials have been telling successive U.S. administrations. And in the recent past - in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks - New Delhi has been telling the Bush administration that the Al- Qaeda's and Osama's handwritings are all over Jammu and Kashmir. That being the case, many in India are simply appalled that the Bush administration had taken the Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as a lead player in a campaign against terrorism.

In fact, even now the point is being made here that Gen Musharraf's idea to go along with the U.S. does not have the solid backing of the ISI and that U.S. officials are sufficiently convinced - and concerned - that the depth of support for the American war against the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda remained uncertain at the best.

That said, if Islamabad has now joined ranks with Washington it is because of the belated realisation that the Taliban had been completely coopted by Osama. ``I think the Pakistanis realised as time went on they had made a bad deal. But they couldn't find an easy way out of it,'' a State Department official has told The Times.

What The Times report has done is to nail Islamabad to not only the Al-Qaeda - direct or indirect - but also a firsthand link between the Pakistani ISI and the terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has repeatedly denied that any such link exists and has often tried to pass off the terrorist goings-on in Jammu and Kashmir as a local phenomenon.

Equally telling is the fact that the proposal of a senior Clinton administration official to step up efforts to isolate Afghanistan from countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates not only fell on deaf ears but some like Islamabad managed to come up with stalling tactics which agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency ``fell for''.

That tactic has to do with the CIA equipping and financing a special commando force in Pakistan to go after and capture Osama. ``But this was going nowhere. The ISI never intended to go after Osama. We got completely snookered,'' the former official said.

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Section  : International
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