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Thursday March 28, 2024

CIA’s misadventures

The CIA contingent in Afghanistan has a clear role in grooming and supporting terrorism and insurgen

By Ahmed Quraishi
May 30, 2012
The CIA contingent in Afghanistan has a clear role in grooming and supporting terrorism and insurgency inside Pakistan. This role started immediately after seizing Afghanistan in 2002. The idea was to create Islamic groups that attack and kill enough Pakistanis to build domestic pressure to act against neutral groups such as Afghan Taliban and the pro-Kashmir activists.
It was one way of nudging the Pakistani military into full acquiescence beyond a simple cooperation in America’s war, including boots on the ground.
The CIA wanted to decide Pakistan’s foreign policy, how the international dispute on Kashmir should be resolved, India’s regional role, and the roles of Pakistani military and intelligence. It wanted a say in Pakistani politics and recruit enablers in Pakistani media. At some point, the lines blurred between the US military and CIA as the two pursued an agenda in Pakistan similar to what they did in South America in the eighties. This was a clear violation of the post-9/11 UN mandate in Afghanistan.
Dr Shakil Afridi is not the only agent the CIA cultivated in Pakistan (who, by the way, deserves a second harsh sentence for giving fake polio vaccines to Pakistani children, knowing he endangered the lives of possibly tens or more of our kids in exchange for a few thousand dollars.)
The CIA brought the Indian intelligence service to Afghanistan to help deal with Pakistan.
The Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, a mass murderer of thousands of Pakistanis, was launched by a Pakistani tribesman recruited by the CIA and the Indian spy service while in US custody for two years. He was an unknown foot soldier for the Afghan Taliban arrested in 2001. But after spending two years with the Americans, he returned to Pakistan as the commander of a new group called Pakistani Taliban, with enough money and weapons to raise a small army, using tribal contacts.
He was released from American custody but was not handed over to Pakistan. His first act of jihad after entering Pakistan and forming the so-called Pakistani Taliban was to kidnap and kill Chinese engineers. Millions of American dollars were pumped into the tribal belt to ensure its rebellion against Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban’s supplies continue to come from Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban denies any link to this group.
The idea behind TTP was simple: If Pakistan can use religious proxies in Afghanistan and Kashmir, so can others. Trained killers in the Pakistani Taliban introduced suicide bombings into Pakistan sometime in 2006, mostly targeting Pakistani cities. In countless instances, young Pakistani boys were told they were going to kill American soldiers inside Pakistan but were surprised to see their targets were ordinary Pakistanis.
In July 2008, in a meeting in Rawalpindi http://bit.ly/KAI5Yg during a secret visit by Admiral Mike Mullen and then CIA deputy director Stephen Kappes, senior Pakistani military officers accused the CIA of protecting Pakistani Taliban.
Again, in November 2009, then ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha confronted his CIA counterpart Leon E Panetta with several pieces of evidence that showed links between the CIA and anti-Pakistan terrorists. A detailed report published by a Pakistani newspaper provided a glimpse into that meeting. Here is an excerpt: On these pages, retired Vice Admiral Taj Khattak has accused the US military of turning an Afghan province into a base for TTP terrorists to plan and launch attacks inside Pakistan. The official American protection accorded to the leaders of BLA terrorist group active in Balochistan is also well documented.
Another evidence of the CIA’s breach of Pakistani borders came on the last day of 2009 when a Jordanian agent working for CIA blew himself up and killed his American handlers. The case confirmed how the CIA had invited spy services from several countries to join its illegal operations inside Pakistan.
Afghanistan today is an intelligence black hole, used by spy services from several countries for multiple strategic purposes. This poses a security challenge not just to Pakistan but also to China and Russia. Pakistan has a solid case against the CIA and US military. No wonder these two are doing everything they can to poison Pakistani-American ties.
The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@paknationalists.com