Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 30, 2001
The U.S. has at long last directly
implicated Pakistan for terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir. Washington
now says Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, has "even used Al Qaida
camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in a war of terror
against India".
American officials have made this
landmark admission (as far as India is concerned) of a fact that was widely
known but seldom acknowledged in administration circles. The ISI maintained
direct links to guerrillas fighting in Kashmir, unnamed officials told
The New York Times.
In confirming charges the Indian
government has repeatedly made in the past several months, American officials
also told the newspaper that the ISI had turned a blind eye for years to
the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
The remarks by U.S. officials came
even as Pakistan's military leader Gen Pervez Musharraf told visiting German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that India's allegations of cross-border terrorism
were self-serving.
The immediate provocation for the
embarrassing disclosures about its ally and frontline state appeared to
stem from the unhappy and distrustful relationship between the CIA and
the ISI. Both sides now blame each other for the botched covert mission
last week resulting in the death of Pashtun leader Abdul Haq at the hands
of the Taliban. Washington believes renegade Pakistani intelligence officials
may have betrayed Abdul Haq's mission to the Taliban. Islamabad believes
the CIA did not keep it fully informed.
Within the U.S. establishment, a
few officials and lawmakers have voiced their concern about Pakistan's
use of terrorism as a state policy in the guise of backing the so-called
freedom-fighters in Kashmir.
Even the Indian-American Caucus
of lawmakers has been silenced by the administration's expediency of buying
Pakistan's support with aid and a blind eye to its record on terrorism.
One rare exception is California
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who has repeatedly cautioned successive administrations
about ISI activities and Pakistan's role in exporting terrorism.
But now U.S. officials themselves
have begun to talk about Pakistan's role in fomenting terrorism. While
they had previously maintained that Islamabad had kept up a veneer of "plausible
deniability", even that has become difficult after U.S. forces-for the
second time in three years bombed a terrorist camp in Afghanistan and found
the so called guerrillas of the ISI-backed Harkat-ul Mujahideen instead
of Al Qaida terrorists.
