US papers suggest Pak link to attacks on CIA agents

Islamabad must act against all militant groups: US state dept.

A Pakistani intelligence officer paid $200,000 to an extremist network to facilitate a deadly suicide bomb attack on CIA operatives at a base in Afghanistan in 2009, according to a declassified US government document obtained by an independent research group.

The heavily redacted document obtained by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute at George Washington University, suggests that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, and the Haqqani network were involved in facilitating the attack.

The December 30, 2009 attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was working as a double agent for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, was one of the most devastating in the history of the CIA, killing seven and wounding six.

The document, dated February 2010, said an unidentified Pakistani ISI officer provided $200,000 to Haqqani and another man “to enable the attack on Chapman”. An Afghan border commander in Khost was promised $100,000 of the money to facilitate the attack but died in the bombing, it said.

A spokesperson for Pakistan’s embassy in Washington did not have any immediate comment.

US state department spokesperson John Kirby said, “We have been consistently clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must target all militant groups, including the Haqqani Network, Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e Tayyiba.”

“The government of Pakistan itself has repeatedly said it’s not going to discriminate against a terrorist group regardless of their agenda or affiliation,” he said. The US has maintained that the attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan was the handiwork of al Qaeda and not the Haqqani network.

Because the document is heavily censored, it is not clear whether it represents an intelligence agency consensus or fragmentary reporting. One line, which has been crossed out, says: “This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence.” The document is almost entirely redacted — except for two passages discussing the ISI’s alleged involvement in the attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman.

The US in 2012 designated the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation. The year before, US Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, then the top US military officer, caused a stir when he told Congress that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of the ISI.