Monday, April 25, 2011

Terrorism and the ISI Pakistan connection

Terrorism and the ISI | Mother Jones

Here's an interesting tidbit from today's WikiLeaks release of the military's assessment of every prisoner ever held at Guantánamo Bay. Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Timesbothered to mention it, so this passage is from the Guardian:

US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence. Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

....The inclusion of association with the ISI as a "threat indicator" in this document is likely to pour fuel on the flames of Washington's already strained relationship with its key regional ally. A number of the detainee files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting al-Qaida.

As with so many documents released by WikiLeaks, this is hardly a surprise in one sense. Still, it's one thing to "know" something and quite another to see it officially documented in a classified file.

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