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'ISI runs, controls network of suicide bombers in Afghanistan' | Pakistan's military spy agency, the ISI, has been accused of running the networks of suicide bombers that emerged as a sudden, terrible force in Afghanistan in 2006. The documents, made available on Sunday by an organization called WikiLeaks,
found the suspicions harboured by Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan that
the ISI has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, to be true. The detailed
reports indicate that US officials had a relatively clear understanding of how
the suicide networks functioned, even if some of the threats did not materialize.
One report, from Dec. 18, 2006 , describes a cyclical process to develop the suicide
bombers, The New York Times reports. First, the suicide attacker is recruited
and trained in Pakistan . Then, reconnaissance and operational planning gets under
way, including scouting to find a place for "hosting" the suicide bomber near
the target before carrying out the attack. Several of the reports describe current
and former ISI operatives, including Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI from
1987 to 1989, visiting madrasas near the city of Peshawar to get recruits for
suicide bombings. One report describes an ISI plan to use a remote-controlled
bomb disguised as a golden Koran to assassinate Afghan officials. Another report
documents an alleged plot by the ISI and Taliban to ship poisoned alcoholic beverages
to Afghanistan to kill US troops. But the reports also charge that the ISI directly
helped organize Taliban offensives at key junctures of the war. On June 19, 2006
, ISI operatives allegedly met with Taliban leaders in Quetta , the city in southern
Pakistan . At the meeting they pressed the Taliban to mount attacks on Maruf,
a district of Kandahar that lies along the Pakistani border. While the specifics
about the foreign fighters and the ISI are difficult to verify, the Taliban did
indeed mount an offensive to seize control in Maruf in 2006. Afghan government
officials and Taliban fighters have widely acknowledged that the offensive was
led by the Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was then the
Taliban shadow governor of Kandahar. |
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