MPs slam govt for inaction on Pak

Pakistan’s official ISI documents released without authority by former Afghanistan spy chief Rahmatullah Nabil, who was obliged to resign last December by the Ghani regime here under Islamabad’s pressure, have rocked Afghanistan and Pakistan since Friday, and have obvious implications for India.

The incriminating, and clearly sensitive, documents, which purport to show that the money garnered by Pakistan from the United States to fight terrorism in the region is used to support leading terrorist outfits against Afghanistan and India, were heatedly debated in the Wolesi Jirga, the Lower House of the Afghan Parliament, on Saturday, as MPs denounced Pakistan for attacking their country, and questioned their government for not adequately interrogating Islamabad.

Mr Nabil exposed six ISI documents in all in an interaction with select journalists last Thursday, and these have since been ricocheting internationally.

For his pains, the former Afghan spy master is being trolled as an “Indian stooge” on social media by elements evidently close to the Pakistani authorities.

Sources close to Mr Nabil told this correspondent on Saturday that in a visit to Kabul last year, Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistan government’s foreign affairs adviser, had handed a 10- point white paper to the Afghanistan national security adviser Hanif Atmar which pointedly demanded that the government of President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah take express steps to ensure the elimination of Indian influence in Afghanistan.

Sources said that in document after document, the ISI purports to give the false impression that the Indian external agency RAW is in cahoots with Afghanistan’s spy service, the National Directorate of Security, to counter the ISI- friendly Haqqani network and the Pakistan Taliban. This is done assiduously “in order to manufacture a certain perspective”.