The intelligence service of Pakistan, a key American ally in the war on terrorism, has had an indirect but long-standing relationship with al-Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to US officials.
The intelligence service even used al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in terrorism against India, the Americans say.
The intelligence service, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, also maintained direct links to guerrillas fighting in the disputed territory of Kashmir on Pakistan's border with India, the US officials said. American fears over the agency's dealings with Kashmiri militant groups and with the Taliban government of Afghanistan became so great last year that the US Secret Service adamantly opposed a planned trip by then-president Bill Clinton to Pakistan out of concern for his personal safety, former senior American officials said.
The fear was that Pakistani security forces were so badly penetrated by terrorists that extremist groups, possibly including bin Laden's network, al-Qaeda, would learn of the president's travel route from sympathizers within the ISI and try to shoot down his plane.
Clinton overruled the Secret Service and went ahead with the trip in March last year, prompting his security detail to take extraordinary precautions. An empty plane was flown into the country masquerading as Air Force One, and the president made the trip in a small unmarked plane. Later, his motorcade stopped under an overpass and Clinton changed cars, the former officials said.
The Kashmiri fighters, who have been labeled a terrorist group by the State Department, are part of Pakistan's continuing efforts to put pressure on India in the bitter conflict over Kashmir.
The ISI's reliance on bin Laden's camps for training came to light in August 1998, when the US launched a cruise-missile attack against al-Qaeda terrorist camps near Khost, Afghanistan, in response to the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The casualties in Khost included several members of a Kashmiri militant group supported by Pakistan who were believed to be training in al-Qaeda camps, US officials said.
The close personal relationships that had developed between CIA and ISI officials -- Gul among them -- during the Afghan war against the Soviets withered away.
"After the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan," said Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan's ambassador to the UN and a former foreign secretary, "you left us in the lurch with all the problems stemming from the war: an influx of refugees, the drug and gun-running, a Kalashnikov culture."
In recent years, in fact, US officials said, the US offered few incentives to the Pakistanis to end their relationship with the Taliban. Washington gave other issues, including continuing concerns about Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program and its human-rights record, much greater emphasis than the fight against terrorism.
The document called Pakistan the key to containing bin Laden, and it suggested that the administration make terrorism the central issue in relations between Washington and Islamabad. The document also urged the administration to find ways to work with the countries to curb terrorist money laundering, and it recommended that the US go public if any of the governments failed to cooperate. As the terrorist threat from al-Qaeda and bin Laden grew, and the US began to press Pakistan harder to break its ties to the Taliban, the Pakistanis feigned cooperation but did little, current and former American officials say.
One former official said the CIA "fell for" what amounted to a stalling tactic aimed at fending off political pressure. The CIA equipped and financed a special commando unit that Pakistan had offered to create to capture bin Laden. "But this was going nowhere," the former official said. "The ISI never intended to go after bin Laden. We got completely snookered."
When the Soviet army finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA ended its support for the Afghan rebels, and the agency's relationship with the Pakistani agency was neglected. The US no longer needed Pakistan's help with the Afghan war.
By the early 1990s, officials of the Pakistani agency became resentful over the change in American policy. In 1990, just one year after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, Congress imposed sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear program.
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