If you are wondering what prompted US officials, including Secretary of Defense Panetta and Admiral Mullen, Pakistan’s biggest supporter, to make a sudden about face and turn on Pakistan for its support of the Haqqani Network, this report at Reuters will explain why:
The U.S. government has evidence that militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan last week were in telephone contact with people connected to Pakistan’s principal intelligence agency, according to an expert who has advised the White House.
Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst who advised President Barack Obama on Afghan policy, told Reuters administration officials have told him militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on September 13 telephoned individuals connected with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) before and during the attack.
Following the attacks, Riedel said, U.S. security forces collected cell phones which the attackers had used. These are expected to provide further evidence linking militants to ISI.
Keep in mind that since 2008, four other similar attacks where Pakistani surrogates communicated with their ISI-linked handlers in Pakistan have been traced:
- The suicide attack on Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in July 2008.
- The terror assault on Mumbai, India in November 2008.
- The assault on Kabul bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in February 2011.
- The terror assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in June 2011.
To reiterate: There have been four such attacks against Indian and Afghan targets that have been linked to the ISI between July 2008 and August 2011, and yet the US government and military have repeatedly called for cooperation with Pakistan. Suddenly, the US Embassy and the ISAF HQ comes under a similar attack, and US officials are up in arms over Pakistan’s complicity and double dealing. Did senior US officials expect to be insulated from such attacks, particularly given what we know about how the ISI operates in the region, and especially given how Pakistan has been coddled and afforded cover after such attacks?
