Pakistani president never met Taliban, officials say

Pakistani president never met Taliban, officials sayReport that President Asif Ali Zardari met insurgents in a secret prison are 'nonsensical', president's office says
(3)Tweet this Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 June 2010 19.41 BST Article history

Pakistani officials have denounced claims by a British researcher that President Asif Ali Zardari secretly met with Taliban insurgents two months ago to assure them of his support and "friendship".

"This is a nonsensical report; it's absolutely wrong," said presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar. "There has been no secret contact, no secret meeting. That would go against everything we stand for."

The claim is part of a report by Matt Waldman, a former Oxfam official, which claims that Pakistani intelligence is arming, training and funding Taliban insurgents to a far greater degree than previously alleged.

"Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude," said the report published by the London School of Economics today.

Based on interviews with unnamed Taliban commanders and western officials, Waldman says the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) spy agency's influence over the insurgents is so pervasive that it enjoys representation on the Quetta shura, the leadership council directing the fighting. The ISI rejected the report as "a piece of rubbish". "It's speculative at best and downright degrading at worst," said an intelligence official with permission to speak to the press.

Equally striking is the report's claim of civilian collusion. Citing a Taliban source, Waldman says that in late March or early April, Zardari met 50 top-ranking Taliban members at a secret prison in Pakistan.

"You are our people, we are friends, and after your release we will of course support you to do your operations," he is quoted as saying. Three days later a dozen Taliban prisoners were released from the jail, the report says, adding that the incident demonstrates the policy of Taliban support "is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government".

However, analysts in Pakistan were more sceptical. "It doesn't make any sense to me. The last person the Taliban would want to see is Asif Zardari," said Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban.

"There's deep suspicion, if not hatred, between the ISI and Zardari. They're not even remotely on the same page," said Cyril Almeida, an editorial writer with Dawn newspaper. "I'm sure there are back channel talks [with militants] but it would be extraordinary to expose Zardari to them."

Others said the report failed to understand a key principle of Pakistan's power dynamics: that the civilian government has ceded effective control of key foreign policy issues to the military in the last year.

"Everyone knows Zardari's no policy maker as far as the Taliban are concerned," said Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst. "He's too shrewd to be caught in such a compromise."

Waldman said his source did not directly witness the Zardari visit, but was "extremely well connected and extremely reliable". He said: "It could have been to reinforce the efforts of the ISI, to demonstrate the commitment of the state to their activities."

The controversial report comes at a sensitive point in the Afghan war, as the summer fighting season gets into full swing amid speculation of possible peace talks with the Taliban.

Since 2001, thousands of Afghans and 1,800 foreign troops - 295 of them British - have died. The war is costing the US government $70bn a year, according to latest congressional figures.

Claims that Pakistan's military is operating a "good Taliban/bad Taliban" policy, secretly colluding with the Afghan insurgents, are nothing new, but none has gone as far as the LSE report, which is based on interviews in several provinces.

One Taliban commander alleges that his fighters receive $120 per month from Pakistan; another details how an ISI trainer taught him to make suicide vests and car bombs in Waziristan in 2005. Others say the ISI has up to seven representatives on the Quetta shura. The ISI influence was "as clear as the sun in the sky", says one commander.

Waldman said the militant spoke frankly because they see themselves as nationalists and were ashamed of their reliance on the ISI.

Pakistani officials point to the price their country has paid in fighting militancy. Several thousand soldiers and civilians have died in recent years at the hands of the "Pakistani Taliban" – local militants who target the state. In February, the ISI arrested the Taliban deputy commander Mullah Barader in Karachi, although Afghan officials said it was part of a ploy to scupper nascent peace talks.

The ISI official admitted its agents fostered contacts with militant groups. But, he said, "to say that we are sitting in their council, directing them and playing a double game, hurts me a lot, given the price we have paid".

If proven, ISI collusion with the Taliban would be a major embarrassment for Pakistan's western allies. The US has given Pakistan $12bn in military aid since 2001; Britain's intelligence services work closely with the ISI. Last December the US secretary of state Hilary Clinton spoke codedly of a "trust deficit" between the two countries.

One American official said he was surprised at the report's depiction of such strong ties.

"That's not something I see in my world," he said. "The ISI makes life difficult for us in many ways. But this would be a step too far."


Inter-Services Intelligence agency: Long links to insurgents
Sometimes described as a "state within a state", the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is in fact a tightly-disciplined arm of the Pakistani military, involved in civilian politics, Islamist militancy and foreign affairs.

The ISI was created by a British army officer in 1948, but came to prominence in the 1980s when it was the conduit for at least $6bn in US and Saudi covert funds for mujahideen guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

In the 1990s, the ISI turned Islamist fighters into an effective weapon against Indian forces in Kashmir, and interfered heavily in electoral politics, mostly against Benazir Bhutto. It also helped to push the Taliban to power in Afghanistan.

Since 2001, the agency has officially renounced its ties with Islamist militants, but has quietly retained some favourites, including, controversially, Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose militants carried out the 2008 bombings in Mumbai.

But the ISI has also been targeted by some Islamists in recent years, and the spy agency's offices in Lahore and Peshawar have suffered major suicide attacks.

The ISI's current chief, Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha, was due to retire last March, but received a one-year extension – a reflection of his close relationship with the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, who is himself a former head of the spy agency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/13/pakistan-taliban-secret-meeting-claim