Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:01:29 GMT PressTv.Ir
 President Bush declared war against Afghanistan right after September 11. The title of this war was “ War on Terror”. |
“All of this suggests that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is no longer certain the coalition forces will prevail in Afghanistan and that it is using militants groups in an attempt to expand its own influence,” the report said.
The report by the bipartisan Pakistan Policy Working Group also cites the Afghan government's allegations that ISI-supported elements that orchestrated an assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and that the ISI had a role in the July 7 car bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul.
The 43-page report notes Pakistan may be the greatest challenge for US President-elect Barrack Obama.
The report came as Pakistani major media outlets said that the ISI had been cleared of any involvement in the Mumbai terrorist attacks by the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). According to Karachi-based Dawn, FBI agents interrogated Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist for nine hours in Mumbai. They concluded that he was a Pakistani national but ISI was not involved.
Political experts say ISI was accused of being involved in the Mumbai attacks due to its past associations with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which received CIA and ISI support to fight the soviet-backed government in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari said the US and its Western allies promoted extremism as a tool to counter the influence of the Soviet Union in the region.
"The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower," Asif Ali Zardari wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times.
The strategy, he said, worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.
Meanwhile, Frontier Post said in an editorial, "The Indians in cahoots with the Americans, and the British to some extent, are using this ruse to get at Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, ISI. Their ultimate aim is, of course, the Pakistan army's pulverization. But their immediate aim is to hobble ISI, the first line of Pakistan's defense apparatus.''
JR/DT
