Call 'alerted US to Musharraf deceit'

THE US sent special forces into Pakistan last northern summer after intercepting a call by the Pakistani army chief referring to a notorious Taliban leader as a "strategic asset", a new book has claimed. Washington ordered the intercept to confirm suspicions that the Pakistani military was still actively supporting the Taliban while taking millions of dollars in US military aid to fight them, according to The Inheritance, by New York Times correspondent David Sanger.

In a transcript passed to director of national intelligence Mike McConnell in May last year, General Ashfaq Kayani, the military chief who replaced Pervez Musharraf, was overheard referring to Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani as "a strategic asset".
The remark was the first real evidence of the double game that Washington had long suspected Mr Musharraf was playing as he continued receiving US military aid while aiding the Taliban.
Haqqani, a veteran of the anti-Soviet mujaheddin wars of the 1990s, commands a hardline Taliban group based in Waziristan and is credited with introducing suicide bombing into the militants' arsenal.
Washington later intercepted calls from Pakistani military units to Haqqani, warning him of an impending military operation designed to prove to the US that Islamabad was tackling the militant threat.
"They must have dialled 1-800-HAQQANI" a source told Sanger. "It was something like: 'Hey, we're going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram."'

The intercept was the clue that led the CIA to uncover evidence of collusion between the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency and Haqqani in a plot to carry out a spectacular bombing in Afghanistan. Two weeks later, India's embassy in Kabul was bombed, killing 54 people and prompting a CIA mission to Islamabad to challenge the Government with its evidence.
The first cross-border strike took place in early September without Islamabad's knowledge after Washington concluded that no one could be trusted with the information.
General Kayani, a former ISI chief, became army chief when Mr Musharraf relinquished that post in 2007, a year before he was forced to quit as president.
Worryingly for Washington, General Kayani remains Pakistan's army chief.

Mr Musharraf reacted angrily to the book's allegations of double-dealing, which appeared in the Pakistani press for the first time yesterday.
"Get your facts correct. I have never double-dealt," Mr Musharraf told Pakistani television stations.
"There is a big conspiracy being hatched against Pakistan, to weaken the Pakistan army and the ISI, to weaken Pakistan."
Sanger's book, detailing the foreign policy challenges inherited by the Obama administration, was published in the US last month. In it, US intelligence officials also speak of their fears that Islamist militants might launch a spectacular attack on Indian soil in the hope of heightening tensions on the subcontinent, leading Pakistan to deploy its nuclear weapons.

The claims against the ISI came as Pakistan was accused this week of surrendering a huge swath of territory to the Taliban when Islamabad agreed to the imposition of Sharia law and the suspension of military operations in the Swat Valley.
The decision is troubling for Washington, which believes it will embolden militants who want to impose Islamic law across nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The Times

Catherine Philp | February 18, 2009

Article from:  The Australian