WikiLeaks: US suspected ISI, military of supporting LeT, JuD

Cable reveals US shared concerns about Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaatud Dawa two years before Mumbai attack.

KARACHI: Precisely two years before Lashkar-e-Taiba linked militants attacked Mumbai, the US had shared concerns about Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) with the Pakistan government.

In a November 27, 2006 cable, the US ambassador to Pakistan wrote that there was a growing concern in the US government about LeT/JuD support towards the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Documents released by WikiLeaks also reveal that the US and the UK were unclear whether the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was directly involved in the attacks. On the other hand, other leaked documents highlight the military and ISI’s willingness to prevent another attack in India.

In a February 2009 memo, issued prior to Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s visit to Washington DC, US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson wrote that the military and ISI, “continue to provide overt or tacit support to proxy forces (including the Haqqani group, Commander Nazir, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and LeT) as a foreign policy tool. The single biggest message Kayani should hear in Washington is that this support must end.”

Former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband is quoted in a memo as having told President Zardari that the LeT needed to “feel the full force of the law”. UK officials feared a military response to the 26/11 attacks from India.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2010.