The U.S. has found a scapegoat for its failure in Afghanistan, said S.M. Hali in the Islamabad Nation. It has settled on Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, alleging that “rogue elements” in the agency were “abetting and aiding the Taliban.” Of course, the allegations are just “Indian propaganda” that the “gullible” CIA has swallowed. For months, India has conducted a “whispering campaign” against the ISI. Last month, India took the “extreme measure” of attacking its own embassy in Afghanistan “and pinning the blame on the ISI.” Indian operatives even fabricated evidence, in the form of messages supposedly from the ISI to the militants. India has long been “especially wary of ISI and has left no stone unturned in besmirching its good name and blaming it for all its woes.”
It’s no coincidence that the so-called evidence against the ISI emerged now, said Ahmed Quraishi in the Islamabad Daily Mail. The Americans may not even believe the Indian propaganda; they are just pretending to because they want to discredit the ISI. That’s because the ISI can prove that Washington has been colluding with “Indian intelligence operatives based in major Afghan cities” to support terrorism in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. The Balochistan terrorists have been photographed going to safe houses in Afghanistan with the full knowledge of the U.S. military. The ISI believes that the U.S. may even have ties to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s top terrorist—the man behind numerous bombings, possibly including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. At the very least, the U.S. failed to strike at Mehsud even after the ISI gave the U.S. military his precise coordinates.
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