Pakistan ISI named in assassination attempt on Karzai

NY Times:

The Afghan government for the first time publicly accused the Pakistani intelligence service on Wednesday of organizing the failed plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai at a parade in Kabul in April.

In a news conference in Kabul, Sayeed Ansari, the spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, said Afghan authorities had evidence of the direct involvement of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, in the assassination attempt.

He said the evidence consisted of documents uncovered during the investigation into the assassination attempt, confessions from 16 suspects detained after the attack and cellphone contacts. He gave no further details or names of officials within the Pakistani agency who might have been involved.

“Based on the investigation of the case and documents we found, as well as confessions by suspects we arrested, they show that the real schemers and organizers of the terrorist attack” on the celebratory parade on April 27 “is the intelligence organization of Pakistan, ISI, and its associates, which committed unforgivable crimes.”

There was no immediate public response from Pakistan, and spokesmen for the ISI and the Foreign Ministry did not return telephone calls for comment. The accusation is by far the most serious one leveled by Afghanistan against its neighbor.

Tensions between the countries have been rising. Last week, Mr. Karzai threatened to send soldiers into Pakistan to fight Islamic militant groups operating in the border areas to attack Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai has said that he regards the Pakistani government as a friendly government, but in an escalating war of words he has urged it to join Afghanistan and allied nations to fight those who want to destabilize both countries, and to “cut the hand” that is feeding the militants.

The comments on Wednesday are the first in which Afghan authorities have made specific and public allegations that the ISI was involved in the attack on Mr. Karzai.

The Afghan intelligence service had already said that three of the people involved in the attack were in contact with people outside Afghanistan, including people in Miram Shah, a town in Pakistan’s tribal region of North Waziristan, the main base for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region.

The three, who were killed in a house raid in Kabul in the days after the assassination attempt, included an Afghan named Homayoun, suspected of directing an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in January, and a second Afghan man and a foreign woman who were planning suicide bombings in the city. In the past, Afghan intelligence officials had linked Homayoun through an intermediary to Jalaladdin Haqqani, a mujahedeen commander who is based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and has long had ties to Al Qaeda.

In the news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Ansari said cellphones belonging to the three recovered after their deaths yielded phone numbers with Pakistani codes. The numbers showed “a direct link” between Homayoun and the Pakistani intelligence organization, he said.

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Pakistan's double game appears to be unraveling, but at this point it is difficult to understand the motivation of the ISI. Afghanistan presents no threat to Pakistan and would not unless it continues to be the victims of attacks from Pakistan.

The connections to phone numbers does not give much for Afghanistan to work with beyond suspicions. If Pakistan was acting in good faith it could investigate the numbers and find out who was in contact with the assassins and what their contacts involved.

When this evidence is tied to border incidences in recent weeks, Pakistan should be doing some explaining. Instead we here the sounds of silence punctuated with a strange outburst when its troops were killed while supporting a Taliban incursion into Afghanistan.