Dangerous flirtation

Documents recovered from the Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad in the May 2011 raid — released last month during the Brooklyn trial of an al-Qaeda terrorist — show that sections of the Pakistani establishment, including the ISI and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, were negotiating with al-Qaeda in 2010. Letters written by Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, then the general manager of al-Qaeda, to bin Laden show that the ISI’s main emissary for engaging al-Qaeda was Fazlur Rehman Khalil, leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, while the emissary used by al-Qaeda was Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior leader of the dreaded Haqqani Network. Former ISI chief Lt General Hamid Gul was part of these negotiations, which also involved the Tehreek-e- Taliban (TTP).

In these negotiations, besides requesting al-Qaeda for two months of quiet to stave off American pressure, the ISI advised the outfit to stop its “communications” in tribal regions, which were being picked up by the US agencies. Shahbaz Sharif made a separate offer to al-Qaeda, that his government was “ready to reestablish normal relations as long as they do not conduct operations in Punjab”. In May 2010, Sharif had publicly requested the TTP to spare Punjab from its attacks as his party, the PML-N, like the TTP, rejected American diktat and had been opposed to the former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf.

From the documents released so far, it is not possible to draw any firm conclusion about the veracity of allegations that the ISI was aware of bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan or that it was collaborating with al-Qaeda. But these documents do suggest that top Pakistani officials were willing to cut a deal with al-Qaeda and the TTP to buy short-term peace, even if these dreaded terrorist organisations used Pakistan as a base to target other countries. This ambivalent stance has meant that terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, under the aliases of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FiF), continue to target India from Pakistani soil despite UN sanctions. The country has failed to ban JuD and FiF, in spite of explicit directions from the Financial Action Task Force last month, asking Pakistan for a full implementation of UN resolutions against these terrorist groups. The time has come for Pakistan to honour its commitment to international organisations to act against terror groups.