Pakistan?s intelligence services are refusing to share details of suspects or plots with their American counterparts in protest at the US operation to kill Osama bin Laden, raising the potential threat of attacks on Western cities.
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the ISI, which prides itself on arresting a series of key terrorists including the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has now broken off relations with the Central Intelligence Agency.
?They are furious. They handed over telephone intercepts in 2009 that were crucial in leading to bin Laden?s courier ? the key breakthrough in the hunt,? said a source briefed on relations between the two countries.
?Then four months ago they were told there was nothing in it, it was what the Americans called a ?cold lead?. Since then they have been left out completely out of the loop.?
Senior officials in the US have briefed journalists to say they stopped sharing information because they feared Islamist sympathisers within Pakistani security forces would tip-off bin Laden ? ruining the best lead they had ever had.
Lieutenant General Talat Masood, a military analyst, said the stand-off would raise the threat to American cities and to Nato-led troops from plots hatched in Pakistan?s tribal regions, headquarters of al-Qaeda linked militant groups.
?There are implications for both the US and international forces in Afghanistan, so the Americans will be very interested in getting the relationship back on track,? he said.
However, politicians in Pakistan are intent on making the US pay for an apparently unauthorised raid on its soil.
The past fortnight has been deeply embarrassing for Pakistan?s previously admired military and intelligence apparatus.
The generals face tough questions over how the US was able to launch a raid on its territory without anyone noticing.
They must also explain how the world?s most wanted man could live for at least five years right under their noses, less than a mile from the country?s officer training academy in Abbottabad.
Last week, President Barack Obama said bin Laden had a ?support network? within Pakistan and demanded to know whether government officials or military officers knew of his presence.
US suspicions of collusion have frozen relations between the two countries, which were already frosty following the arrest of CIA agent in Lahore earlier this year after he shot dead two men.
On Friday night, with intelligence officials already suspending intelligence sharing, Pakistan?s parliament also called for a review of the country?s relationship with the US.
During a 10-hour joint session held to debate the American raid, MPs demanded an independent investigation to replace a planned military inquiry.
And they also unanimously passed a resolution urging a ban on Nato transit convoys taking supplies from the port of Karachi to Afghanistan unless the US ends its controversial programme drone attacks.
Politicians who stayed late into the night said the head of the ISI admitted intelligence failures and said he was prepared to resign if he no longer had their support, an offer refused by the head of Army.
However, documents recently released by WikiLeaks will only deepen their embarrassment. Testimony from prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay describes elements of bin Laden?s support network deep inside Pakistan, tasked with helping the fugitive evade justice, and also describe a meeting between the Taliban?s one-eyed leader Mullah Omar and ISI agents.
Shortly before 9/11, bin Laden began his preparations to elude US reprisals and begin his life on the run.
Mohammed Ahmad Rabbani, ?who had the full trust and confidence of al-Qaeda leadership? according to leaked detainee files, told interrogators that he ran a series of al-Qaeda safe houses in Karachi, the economic heart of Pakistan. About two months before airliners crashed into the World Trade Centre, he was ordered to procure supplies and construction materials in Karachi and send them to Afghanistan.
There they were used to extend an existing network of caves and tunnels at Tora Bora deep into the mountains that separate Afghanistan from Pakistan.
Bin Laden and his lieutenants disappeared into the caves in December 2001 ? the last known sighting before Navy Seals shot him dead two weeks ago ? as US warplanes bombed the area.
Other detainees said bin Laden had lived there with three wives, 25 bodyguards and dozens more al-Qaeda operatives including his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The documents also show further evidence of how ISI operatives liaised with and senior Taliban figures. In one example, Pakistani intelligence officers met Mullah Omar, the one-eyed head of the Afghan Taliban, along with other militia commanders in Quetta, south-western Pakistan.
By Rob Crilly in?Islamabad, The Daily Telegraph, May 14, 2011.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8513920/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-angry-Pakistan-drops-intelligence-sharing-with-West.html
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Source: http://morrisonworldnews.com/?p=47842
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