Word: isis
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...Similarly, the ISI had no interest in catching bin Laden before Sept. 11. According to U.S. officials, in early 1999 the U.S. pressed the Pakistanis to establish a snatch team that could go into Afghanistan to grab the al-Qaeda chief. The Pakistanis did set up a commando unit, under the aegis of the ISI and with training by the cia. But a U.S. official familiar with the operation says that in the end the Pakistanis didn't do "squat...
...Even after Sept. 11, Pakistani loyalties were still divided. According to Western diplomats, at least five key ISI operatives - some retired and some active - actually continued helping their Taliban comrades prepare defenses in Kandahar against the Americans. Even now, with all the ISI's changes, none were punished for their disobedience. Midway into the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis were still allowing military and nonlethal supplies to flow across the border to the Taliban...
...While the ISI appears to have turned its back on the Taliban and its extremist comrades, it hasn't completely abandoned ties to militants. Activity has been suspended in the training camps that once fed the Kashmir rebellion, militants say. But the ISI seems unwilling to make an irrevocable breach with the guerrillas, in the event it later decides to rev up its clandestine support of them, according to foreign diplomats. The seven main suspects still at large in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl last January all had indirect links with the spy agency...
...Even with the ISI helping the U.S. against al-Qaeda, conditions in the tribal territory favor the terrorists. There are few roads into the terrain's soaring mountains. Gripes a Pakistani official: "If we get a lead, it takes four days to send an agent up into the villages, and by then the suspect's gone." That problem should be solved this June after Pakistan takes delivery of a fleet of U.S. helicopters and airplanes for border surveillance. Even still, tribesmen remain hostile to the U.S. presence. After the antiterrorist forces raided a seminary in Miramshah, shops closed and mullahs...
...clothes, plus help in slipping through checkpoints on the roads to major Pakistani cities. "These al-Qaeda are willing to pay a lot - and in dollars," a tribal shopkeeper marveled. The U.S. is offering dollars too - $25 million for bin Laden's capture. But while the ISI may be on board in the battle against al-Qaeda, the tribesmen's natural affinity with the terrorists still remains an obstacle...