(To be read in continuation of my September 4, 2008 article, HitAnd Run)
The car bomb explosion outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, has boomeranged on Pakistan. According to reliable Pakistani police sources, the US has been able to collect independent evidence from its own sources that the plan for the explosion was drawnup by serving officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and executedthrough a suicide bomber selected by Serajuddin Haqqani, son of Jalalludin Haqqani, the senior Taliban Commander.
These sources say that while the US has conclusive evidence on the role of some serving officers of the ISI in organising the explosion, it still does not have adequate evidence to show whetherLt Gen.Nadeem Taj, the Director-General of the ISI, who is related to Gen.(retd) Pervez Musharraf, was in the picture and whether clearance had been obtained at the political level.
The US generally does not act upon intelligence against Pakistan provided by India due to the possibility that it may be motivated. It acts only when it is able to collect independent evidence from its own sources. The US has not yet been able to identify all the ISI officers, who had played a role in organising this attack just as it was able to identify in 1992-93 all the ISI officers, including Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then DG of the ISI, who had instigated the Afghan Mujahideen not to sell back the unused Stinger missiles to the US.
It may be recalled that after assuming office in January,1993, the then US President Bill Clinton had placed Pakistan in a list of suspected State-sponsors of international terrorism and pressured Nawaz Sharif, the then PrimeMinister, to sack Lt.Gen.Nasir and other officers identified. Only thereafter was Pakistan's name removed from that list.
If the US succeeds in identifying all the officers involved in the Kabul explosion, it may demand their removal from the ISI. It is reported that the US investigation has not yet reached that stage.
However, the information so far collected by the US investigators on the role of some serving officers of the ISI in the Kabul explosion has confirmed the suspicions which it already had even before the Kabl explosion that some serving officers of the ISI and other wings of the Pakistan Army have been leaking to Al Qaeda and the Taliban intelligence collected by the US agencies through human and technical means. These suspicions arose following the arrest of some Pashtun tribals by the Taliban and their execution on charges of working for the US intelligence.
Previously, the US was aware that some retired senior officers of the Pakistan Army and its ISI such as Nasir, Lt.Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul, another former DG, etc were allegedly helping the Taliban and Al Qaeda through advice and information. The US also had some vague suspicion of the involvement of serving ISI officers at junior level, who had served under Nasir and Gul, when they headed the ISI. The investigation into the Kabul explosion reportedly confirmed the involvement of serving ISI officers even at senior levels.
Alarmed by this discovery, the US is reported to have stopped sharing sensitive intelligence with Pakistani Army and ISI officers. Under the rules of engagement followed till the middle of July, while the US intelligence acted on all information, which called for instant air strikes, it left it to the PakistanArmy to carry out ground operations where instant follow-up was not required. Itwas decided in July, with the approval of President George Bush, that ground-level follow-up would also be done by the US special forces without informing their Pakistani counterparts.
The New York Times and the BBC, quoting American official sources, have reported that Bush signed a classified order in July authorising ground actions inside Pakistani territory in the tribal belt by theUS forces without informing the Pakistan Army beforehand. According to other sources unrelated to the NYT and theBBC, only after the US forces have withdrawn from the Pakistani territory would their action and the justification for it would be conveyed to the Pakistan Army. It is not clear whether the Presidential orders specify the depths up to which US forces can enter into Pakistani territory.