Claim ISI backs Afghan Taliban is false, Pakistani secret services say
For the report’s Harvard-based author, there is real evidence of extensive co-operation between the two that “goes far beyond just limited or occasional support.”
For ISI spokesman Major Athar Abbas, the LSE report lacks credibility. “It is baseless. The sacrifices by Pakistan's army and the ISI and the casualties in the war on terror speak for themselves,” he said.
Matt Waldman, who wrote the report, is a fellow at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He interviewed nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan who confirm receiving funds, training and protection from the ISI.
For him, ISI involvement goes beyond sporadic aid, so much so that it is “official policy of that agency,” he told the BBC. There is “very significant levels of support being provided by the ISI.
Some allege that ISI agents have even attended meetings of the Taliban's top leadership council, the so-called Quetta shura.
The report also points the finger at Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari who reportedly visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan earlier this year.
The report stated that during the meeting Zardari told the captive extremist leaders that Islamabad was under tremendous pressure from the United States to dismantle the Taliban's terror sanctuary within Pakistan.
Five days after Zardari's visit, a handful of Taliban prisoners were taken to Quetta (Baluchistan) and set free.
Presidential spokeswoman Farah Ispahani, dismissed the report’s allegations as "absolutely spurious." For him, “There seems to be a concentrated effort to try to damage the new Pakistan-American strategic dialogue”.
In recent years, Washington has provided billions of dollars in assistance to Pakistan to fight terrorism and al-Qaeda, but if the report is right, Islamabad “appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude”.
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