Washington: Talk about biting the hand that feeds. Even as
it bilked billions of dollars in aid from the United States, Pakistan is now
revealed to have funded the 2009 attack on a CIA camp on its border with
Afghanistan that killed seven American agents and contractors and three others.
The explosive disclosure comes in a declassified 2010 cable
published by the national security archive, that, despite being redacted in
parts, asserts unequivocally that "some funding for Haqqani attacks are
still provided by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence directorate,
including $200,000 for the December 30, 2009, attack on the CIA facility at
Camp Chapman."
The Camp Chapman attack was carried out by Khalil Abu-Mulal
al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor and double agent, whom the CIA was trying to use
to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan in its hunt for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al
Zawahiri. Instead, he was turned around the Haqqani group, a terrorist proxy
for Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Al-Balawi's suicide attack on December 30, 2009 at the Camp
Chapman forward post, which the CIA used to gather intelligence for drone
attacks in Pakistan, killed ten people, including two female American CIA
agents: Jennifer Lynne Matthews, 45, and a mother of three, who commanded the
base, and Elizabeth Hanson, 30, a targeting analyst. The attack was
memorialized in a movie titled Zero Dark Thirty.
While it has long been known that Pakistan's terrorism sponsorship
has claimed the lives of Indian and American civilians and military personnel,
the revelations about bankrolling the Camp Chapman attack, kept secret from the
public so far, is certain to inflame tensions between the two sides,
particularly their military-intelligence outfits. Successive US administrations
— particularly the state department led by John Kerry — have long ladled out
pabulum that Pakistan is a front-line ally in the war on terror while funneling
billions of dollars of aid, despite multiple terrorist attacks across the world
originating from Pakistan, including in San Bernardino, New York, and London.
The timing of the attack and the sequence of cables
detailing the ISI's role in organizing the attack suggests that the US
administration lied to the American public about Pakistan being a frontline
ally in the way on terror even as it funneled $ 7.5 billion in US taxpayer
money to a country's whose military-intelligence establishment was killing
American soldiers and spooks. Then senator John Kerry, who later became
secretary of state, took the lead in presenting Pakistan as a worthy ally as he
engineering with senator Lugar the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of
2009, which put $ 1.5 billion in US aid into the Pakistani coffers.
The Act, stemming from what is known as the Kerry-Lugar Bill
was introduced to Congress on September 24, 2009, and passed into law on
October 15, 2010. The ISI-sponsored attack on Camp Chapman occurred on December
30, 2009. By February 6, 2010, the date on the explosive cable detailing the
Pakistani role, Washington knew ISI had engineered the attack on the CIA
forward post.
"During discussions at an unknown date between Haqqani,
Salar, and an unidentified ISID officer or officers, Haqqani and Salar were provided
$200,000 to enable the attack on Chapman," the cable relates in an
unredacted portion. "Haqqani then provided the money to Salar who then
communicated the planning details to Mullawi (Sakh). Sakh then contacted
Arghawan Afghan border commander of the Khost Provincial Force.
The cable then goes on to say that Arghawan was promised
$100,000 for facilitating the attack by the then unnamed Jordanian national
(whose identity came to be known only later), but since Arghawan himself was
killed in the attack, Salar kept the $100,000.
Which means, despite knowing Pakistan bankrolled the killing
of its personnel, including two female agents who put their lives on line in a
remote forward post, Washington still went ahead and rewarded Islamabad with
billions of dollars in aid — and has continued to do so to this day with
finance and armaments.
The Camp Chapman attack is counted as the second largest
single-day loss in the CIA's history, after the 1983 United States Embassy
bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed eight CIA officers.
While the cable relating to the Camp Chapman attack does not
identify by name the ISI officer who supplied the $200,000, other cables in the
collection shows, with names, how deeply the ISI is enmeshed in terrorism.
"As of late December 2009, at the end of every month, senior Haqqani
network leadership met with ISID in Islamabad," a January 2010 cable
states. Identifying Colonel Nasib and Major Daoud as the handlers. "An
unknown amount of funding was provided to the Haqqanis for use in unspecified
operations during these meetings," it continues. In a subsequent meeting,
the cable says, the ISI directorate asked the Haqqanis "to expedite attack
preparations and lethality in Afghanistan."
TNN
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