How Pakistan Became “The Taliban’S Godfather”

The U.S. and the world are still paying the price for Pakistan’s dance with The Devil. How Pakistan Became “The Taliban’s Godfather”By Cliff Montgomery – Aug. 20th, 2007A trove of recently-declassified documents released on Aug. 14th, 2007, reveals the scope of Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban in the seven years leading up to the “9/11” terror attacks.The papers were obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the National Security Archive, an independent watchdog group located at George Washington University. The Archive  is not affiliated with the federal government.This recent release comes on the heels of an admission by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf that, “Afghan militants are [being] supported from Pakistan soil.”Though Musharraf acknowledged the Taliban has found aid in Pakistan’s tribal frontier border with Afghanistan, the newly-declassified U.S. documents clearly show that the Taliban had long been directly funded, advised, and armed by Pakistan itself.Islamabad has long denied its former military support to Taliban forces. But the recently-released documents reveal that just weeks after the 1996 Taliban conquest of Kabul, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate (ISID) began “using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces.”Also among the documents is a November 7th, 1996 report to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) discussing Islamabad’s use of Pakistani soldiers to both train and fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.”Pakistan’s ISI is heavily involved in Afghanistan,” the November 1996 report declared of Islamabad’s intelligence agency. It added that Pakistan employed large numbers from its Pashtun-based Frontier Corps to directly aid the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.”These Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary–combat,” the document stated.”Elements of Pakistan’s regular army force are not used because the army is predominantly Punjabi, who have different features as compared to the Pashtun and other Afghan tribes,” the document clarified.According to the DIA report, the Frontier Corps apparently provided some combat training to Pakistani madrassa (religious school) students, who later went to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban. Their parents seem to know nothing about the children’s military exploits “until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan.”The declassified documents also expand on a newly-released CIA intelligence estimate which proclaims Pakistan’s tribal, border areas with Afghanistan to be an al-Qaeda safe haven.The documents show that Pakistan’s border regions–which are filled with pro-Taliban tribes–have long been of particular concern for the U.S.The American Embassy in Pakistan sent off a January 1997 cable wryly observing that “for Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan.”The cable continued, stating concerns that the “Taliban brand of Islam…might infect Pakistan.” But it noted that Islamabad apparently felt that “the Taliban will eventually become more moderate,” and considered the possibility of a rising extremist movement in Pakistan “a problem for another day.”But among the most disturbing of the newly-released documents are a pair of reports written in 1996 which directly link Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA)–a Pakistan-funded extremist Kashmiri group–to al-Qaeda.One of these documents is an August 1996 CIA report, which described HUA as “as Islamic extremist organization that Pakistan supports in its proxy war against Indian forces in Kashmir.”According to the CIA document, Pakistan’s ISID “provides at least $30,000–and possibly as much as $60,000–per month” to HUA.But, stated the 1996 CIA report, the group recently had expanded its rather limited focus on Indians in Kashmir to include other targets.By this time, HUA also was reaching out to such sponsors of international Islamist terror as Osama bin Laden, who, the report added, “may further encourage the group to attack US interests.””HUA leaders have expressed intense hatred of the West, and additional attacks against Western interests would be consistent with the group’s philosophy of jihad against non-Muslims,” declared the CIA review.The other document is a November 12th, 1996 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, which stated that Osama bin Laden and HUA militants–who apparently were training in “two camps vacated by ‘Afghan Arab’ militants in Afghanistan’s Paktia (Khost) province near the Afghan-Pakistan border”–each were residing in Taliban-controlled sections of Afghanistan.Why this was so may be found in The 9/11 Commission Report:”Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khost, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri [HUA] militants.”President Musharraf–whatever his other faults–was not in political power during the greater part of Pakistan’s long friendship with the Taliban. But his country, not to mention the U.S. and the world, is still paying the price for Islamabad’s dance with The Devil.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!