kashmiri terrorists train in afghan

[Guest guest]

'Pak use Taliban link for Kashmir jehad'

 Washington, Oct 4

 

Pakistan, a key ally in the US war on terrorism, has been using

camps in Afghanistan to train Kashmiri separatist fighters,

former UN and CIA officials said Wednesday.

 

Islamabad has used its relationship with the Taliban to set up

the camps for Kashmiris seeking to wrest control of Kashmir.

 

The struggle, which has been the cause of two of the three wars

between the nuclear-tipped South Asian rivals, has left some

35,000 dead since the insurgency broke out in India's only

Muslim-majority state in 1989.

 

Pakistan's long-time support of the Taliban has "enabled

Pakistan to relocate its training camps for Kashmiri separatists

to Afghanistan," said Charles Santos, a former political advisor

to the UN on Afghanistan.

 

In that way, Pakistan has been "benefiting from extremist

networks in Afghanistan and providing Pakistan with plausible

deniability," he said in prepared remarks presented to a House

International Relations Committee hearing into terrorism.

 

Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counterterrorism operations

for the CIA, added that Pakistan's military intelligence service, the

Inter Services Directorate (ISI), was actively involved. "ISI

personnel are present, in mufti, to conduct the training,"

Cannistraro said.

 

"This arrangement allowed Pakistan 'plausible denial' that it is

promoting insurgency in Kashmir."

 

Militant groups operating from Pakistan have been accused of

carrying out a series of attacks on Indian Kashmir, including a

suicide attack that left 38 people dead at the state legislature on

Monday.

 

India has accused Pakistan of arming and training Islamic

insurgents. Islamabad denies the charge saying it extends only

moral and diplomatic backing to what it calls the Kashmiris'

legitimate struggle for self-rule.

 

Santos and Cannistraro also highlighted Pakistan's long-term

relationship with Afghanistan's Taliban, which Washington

accuses of harbouring bin Laden, chief suspect in last month's

suicide attacks that left more than 5,700 dead in the Unites

States.

 

"Throughout, the Taliban have continued to receive support from

the government of Pakistan," said Santos.

 

Islamabad has actively encouraged Islamic militants, both to

counter India's weight in the region and as a means of holding

its diverse society together, he said. "That policy is now out of

control," Santos warned in prepared remarks, "producing a

stronger, more virulent anti-western view and a much less

reliable Pakistan."

 

Responding to overwhelming international pressure, Pakistani

President Pervez Musharraf has pledged to help the United

States with intelligence-sharing and overflight rights but

continues to recognize the Taliban as legitimate rulers of

Afghanistan.

 

Pakistan, with its intelligence links to the Taliban and proximity to

Afghanistan, is important to the success of the US-led

anti-terrorism coalition that seeks to capture Osama bin Laden

and destroy his al-Qaeda network.

 

But Cannistraro said, it is also Pakistan that has allowed bin

Laden to exist in Afghanistan. "They don't have clean hands

here." Santos said, however, that the very nature of the "Pakistani

supported Taliban-bin Laden extremist alliance" could be its

weakest point.

 

Built on religious, cultural and ethnic Pashtun domination in

Afghanistan, the network is vulnerable because its narrow

parameters have antagonized so many, he said.

 

"If Pashtun chauvinism however buckles, bin Laden and his

extremist network, and most importantly, the symbol of a true

and pure Islamic State that serves as an ideological as well as a

physical base for extremism and terror, will collapse," Santos

predicted.