Ayesha Tanzeem
ISLAMABAD—A former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency has leaked documents that he claims show Pakistan’s link to groups that carry out attacks inside Afghanistan.
Rahmatullah Nabil, who resigned last December after strongly criticizing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s overtures toward Pakistan on social media, said he leaked the documents because wanted the public to be aware of the situation.
VOA cannot independently verify the authenticity of the documents.
Leaked documents
One of the documents he has leaked is a letter allegedly sent from the headquarters of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence, ISI, ordering payments to the militants or their families involved in an attack on Kabul’s airport.
Another letter, dated August 5, 2014, from an office of Military Intelligence or MI, Pakistan military’s internal intelligence agency, to its headquarters in Rawalpindi near Islamabad, supposedly informed the headquarters that concerned sections were working to arrange safe houses in the city of Peshawar for Afghan Taliban who had to leave North Waziristan due to a military operation launched by the Pakistani military in June 2014.
A similar letter from the same agency seemed to be informing the headquarters of the secure transfer of some Haqqani network commanders to training camps in the Northern tribal areas of the country in an army convoy and in uniforms used by paramilitary forces. The letter was dated March 19, 2015, almost nine months after the start of the military in North Waziristan.
The U.S. State Department has designated Haqqani network a terrorist organization.
Other documents contained similar information, like a letter from ISI to its offices in Nowshera, one of the larger cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, directing “HQ 945 & 935 Sec” to move all Haqqani network militants to the towns of Miran Shah, Tochi and Mir Ali in army convoys, as well as tighten the security for them and their families.
Ghani’s administration has not commented on these allegations and Pakistani officials refused to respond when contacted.
Pakistan’s foreign office, however, repeatedly states that peace and stability in Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s own interest and that the country is doing all it can to help stabilize the volatile situation in Afghanistan.
This story first appeared on Voice of America & is reposted here with permission.