[iwar] [fc:Pakistan's.'godfathers.of.the.Taliban'.hold.the.key.to.hunt.for.bin.Laden]

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Date: 2001-09-24 12:27:07


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Pakistan's.'godfathers.of.the.Taliban'.hold.the.key.to.hunt.for.bin.Laden]
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The Electronic Telegraph (UK) - Sept 23, 2001

<a href="http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=?news?2001?09?23?w">http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=?news?2001?09?23?w> pak23.xml

Pakistan's 'godfathers of the Taliban' hold the key to hunt for bin Laden
By Julian West in Islamabad (Filed: 23/09/2001) 

THE key to the success or failure of America's hunt for Osama bin Laden
lies largely in the hands of Pakistan's powerful and feared intelligence
service, an organisation referred to by many Pakistanis as "the
invisible government". 

At first glance, the headquarters of Pakistan's Inter Services
Intelligence Agency (ISI), set behind high stone walls on Khayban e
Suhawardy Avenue in Islamabad, might be mistaken for yet another drab
military building.  Most Pakistanis do not even know what is behind its
nondescript gates. 

It is this organisation, staffed by about 100 officers who run an
internal and external intelligence network of many thousand agents and
freelance spies, that America will have to lean on heavily to track and
find bin Laden in the barren mountains of Afghanistan. 

Pakistan's many-tentacled ISI - equivalent to Britain's MI5 and MI6
combined - has long possessed the world's finest and most accurate human
intelligence within Afghanistan.  It also functions as the predominant
power-broker in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

American officials are publicly enthusiastic about the offer of
co-operation from Pakistan's intelligence agencies.  "This is a crucial
development that will change everything," one said.  "Pakistan has
better links to the Taliban, and knows more about them, than anyone else
in the world.  Its agents walk the streets and talk the talk."

Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, the head of ISI, was co-incidentally in Washington
as the terrorist attack in New York took place, having arranged to visit
senior administration officials several weeks earlier.  After talks with
CIA chiefs, he met Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State. 

An administration official said: "There was an extremely candid exchange
from our side, one that left little room for misunderstanding.  It is
safe to say the rules have changed." Porter Goss and Bob Graham, who
respectively chair the House and Senate intelligence committees, met
government officials in Islamabad in August to promote better ties with
Pakistani intelligence. 

American officials are aware of the great care that must be taken in
evaluating information from the ISI, an organisation that has spent much
of the past 10 years supporting and encouraging the Taliban.  "These
guys are the only people we can use," said one administration ally, "but
that doesn't mean we can rely on them."

Employing a vast spy network of Pakistanis who speak Pashto and Farsi,
the local languages, the ISI has also recruited many hundreds of
Afghans, luring them with money and promises of sanctuary for their
families in Pakistan. 

"It's easy to recruit Pakistanis, a hotel doorman here earns only $4 a
month," said a Western intelligence officer in Islamabad.  "They also
use Afghans who are afraid for their families.  They tell them 'work for
us, we'll look after your family here and you can come and see them'."

Described as "the Taliban's godfathers and parents", the ISI is credited
with fostering and nurturing the Taliban movement in the mid 1990s.  It
is also believed to have had access to bin Laden himself in the past. 

It was an ISI delegation, led by its deputy chief, Gen Faiz Gilani, that
flew to Kandahar and Kabul early last week in a failed attempt to
pressurise Mullah Omar, the Taliban's secretive, one-eyed leader, to
give up bin Laden. 

ISI military "consultants" are to be found on the Taliban's frontlines
alongside several thousand Arabs loyal to bin Laden.  The agency has
covertly armed and funded the movement for many years. 

A Western diplomat said: "The ISI has its fingers in every pie.  That's
why America had to get their co-operation.  America has no worthwhile
agents on the ground in Afghanistan.  If anyone can catch bin Laden it's
the ISI."

Gen Hamid Gul, the head of ISI from 1987-1989, remains bitter at the way
that he was treated by America which, he claims, had him sacked from his
position because of his ideological commitment to the fundamentalist
cause. 

Gen Gul turned the organisation into a state within a state with its own
Islamic agenda.  Although it failed in trying to install a
fundamentalist government in Afghanistan during his leadership, his
influence over the organisation remained crucial when in 1994 it became
responsible for turning the Taliban into a force capable of taking over
Kabul. 

Gen Gul said: "The Americans thought they could use the fundamentalists
to fight the Russians and drop them.  This is what they do, they build
something up and then destroy it.  They did the same with ISI. 

"When George Bush senior felt we were becoming too independent and
ideologically-motivated he said 'clip the wings of ISI' and had me
sacked.  Now they want the same institution to share information with
them."

The Pakistani intelligence organisation has long been viewed by most of
its countrymen as a sinister and shadowy force.  Conceived in the 1950s
by Gen Ayub Khan as a means of keeping watch on politicians, its power
grew after he took over the country in 1958, effectively becoming the
army's political wing. 

In the 1970s, the Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, began using the
agency against his political enemies and it became known as a "dirty
tricks" brigade.  It ran smear campaigns against politicians, prominent
figures and journalists.  Visitors to Pakistan can expect to be tailed
by mysterious men, or find their telephone conversations and e-mails are
tapped. 

The ISI only became seriously active in Afghanistan during the
Soviet-Afghan war when it helped the CIA to arm, train and fund the
mujahideen.  During the power vacuum created by the Soviet withdrawal in
1989 when Afghanistan was torn apart by warring mujahideen groups, the
ISI grasped the chance to wield power in the region by fostering a
previously unknown Kandahari student movement, the Taliban. 

A former CIA official said: "If you want to do anything in the region,
you have to have the ISI on your side.  These guys speak the languages,
wear the clothes and walk the streets.  He added: "No one knows
Afghanistan like the ISI."

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