[Dawn] Afghanistan's attempt to gain leverage over Pakistain by cultivating an alliance with the Pak Taliban was discovered by the United States, which raided a convoy carrying a senior Death Eater leader and captured him, The New York Times...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
reported from Kabul on Tuesday.
"The disrupted plan involved Afghan intelligence trying to work with the Pakistain Taliban, allies of Al Qaeda, in order to find a trump card in a baroque regional power game that is likely to intensify after the American withdrawal next year," the newspaper said, citing US and Afghan officials.
Latif Mehsud was being transported by an Afghan convoy for secret talks last month when US Special Forces, on a tip off, disrupted the plan and took the Pak Death Eater in jug, the report said.
| Mehsud is suspected of having a role in the foiled plot to detonate a boom-mobile in New York's Times Square in 2010, American officials were cited as saying. |
In public statements, the Afghan government has described Mehsud as an Death Eater peace emissary.
Referring to Afghan officials' oft-repeated allegations that Pak military was supporting Taliban's insurgency against the Afghan government,the report said the Afghan government decided to recruit proxies of its own by seeking to aid the Pak Taliban in their fight against Pakistain's security forces.
"And they were beginning to make progress over the past year, they say, before the American raid exposed them," the Times said.
The US raid angered the Afghan government, and the report said it became the latest flash point in the troubled relationship between Afghanistan and the United States.
The thinking, Afghan officials said, was that the Afghans could later gain an advantage in negotiations with the Pak government by offering to back off their support for the Death Eaters.
Aiding the Pakistain Taliban was an "opportunity to bring peace on our terms," one senior Afghan security official said.
Both Afghan and American officials said the Afghan plan to aid the Pakistain Taliban was in its preliminary stages when Mehsud was seized by American forces, the report said, adding but they agreed on little else.
The Times quoted Aimal Faizi, a front man for President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
, as saying that Mehsud had been in contact with officials from the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's intelligence agency, for "a long period of time."
The Pakistain Taliban leader "was part of an NDS project like every other intelligence agency is doing," Faizi said. "He was cooperating. He was engaged with the NDS, this I can confirm."
Faizi did not elaborate on the nature of the cooperation. But two other Afghan officials, when asked by the Times why they were willing to discuss such a potentially provocative plot, said Mehsud's detention by the United States had already been exposed.
"It was first reported by The Washington Post ruining his value as an intelligence asset and sinking their plan," they said.