The Pakistani I.S.I. (Inter-Services Intelligence) is loaded with jihadists and America haters. It has been obvious for years that they play a double game with the United States by taking our money, giving us lip service support, all the while financing and arming the same forces that are killing our men in Afghanistan. For some reason (we can only guess), President Obama has a soft spot for Pock-ee-stan even though India is a far better ally to have.
by Ralph Peters
The treasure trove of 91,000 classified AfPak documents posted by WikiLeaks suggests that our government’s been deceiving us about Pakistan’s murderous behavior.
But the situation’s even worse than that: Our government’s been lying to itself.
The documents in question aren’t superclassified. They’re largely low-level field reports at the “confidential” level, bottom-rung stuff, with some secret documents mixed in. Their value lies in their unfiltered quality. This is what the guys on the ground with the guns have been seeing, hearing and sensing.
It ain’t good. Reports covering the five years from 2004 to 2009 cite routine Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban — as the terrorists kill our troops. Pakistan’s infamous Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, also has been working with al Qaeda, according to the reports.
That’s no surprise to Post readers, but our government is “shocked, shocked!” by the revelations. And the excuses for Pakistan’s lethal misconduct have already started flowing.
We’re told that these reports are unverified, that some can be traced back to anti-Pakistani Afghan intelligence operatives, and that American eyewitness accounts are one-offs.
Folks, I’ve done plenty of intelligence analysis, and here’s how it works: A single report of a supposed ally’s wrongdoing gets your attention, but it’s regarded as an outlier until another source confirms it. After that, you actively search for further corroboration — before you get blindsided big time.
One report might be hearsay. But hundreds of reports of Pakistani collaboration with our Taliban and al Qaeda enemies amount to a pattern. And intelligence is about patterns.
Our government’s response to Pakistani complicity in the death of hundreds of our troops and the wounding of thousands? Send additional aid — on top of the $6 billion recently committed — and bills in Congress to grant special trade privileges to Pakistanis in Taliban-infested territories.
It’s like dating someone who’s wildly, flagrantly promiscuous and hoping that patience will lead to his or her sudden reform. But tolerance only encourages more bad behavior.
Gen. David Petraeus, our new commander in Afghanistan, knows that the Pakistanis are corrupt and deceitful. But he, too, continues to hope they’ll see the light.
Read the rest here: America plays the fool in Pakistan’s double game
by Nick Schifrin
Perhaps the single most damming collection of data in a massive trove of secret documents from Afghanistan released by the website WikiLeaks is some 180 files that seem to show Pakistan’s premiere intelligence service, the ISI, helping the Afghan insurgency attack American troops.
The United States provides more than a billion dollars to Pakistan each year for help in fighting terrorism, but the papers seem to link the ISI with major Afghan insurgent commanders; claim its representatives meet directly with the Taliban; accuse the agency of training suicide bombers; and indicts Pakistani intelligence officials on hatching up sensational ways to assassinate Afghan president Hamid Karzai and even poison the beer drunk by Americans in Afghanistan.
The United States has long been wary of the ISI’s role in the Afghan war, and has occasionally accused the ISI of fomenting violence in Afghanistan, especially against Indian targets. And so in some ways, the allegations are not new. But taken as a whole, the documents present a far greater insight into exactly how the American military and Afghan intelligence see the ISI meddling inside Afghanistan than has ever been revealed.
The level of trust between the two countries has improved vastly since a low point in 2006, say American and Pakistani officials. And many of the documents released do reflect the suspicions of a time when the ISI and the countries’ militaries and intelligence agencies viewed each other much more skeptically than they do now.
But some of the skepticism remains, and even after the documents were made public, the U.S. once again said it expects Pakistan to decisively turn against militants that, alongside the CIA, it once trained and funded in Afghanistan.
[….]
The documents detail specific allegations against the ISI: that it sent sent 1,000 motorbikes an insurgent group in Pakistan to launch suicide attacks in Afghanistan; that it launched plans to attack Indian facilities and workers in Afghanistan; that it worked with members of al Qaeda to map out attacks; and that it helped organize Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan, where some of the single worst attacks on American troops occurred.
Read the rest here: WikiLeaks data seem to show Pakistan helped attack American troops
