Bridge for sale! Bridge for sale! As long as the ideology that allowed these Taliban sympathizers to gain high office and influence continues to be taught in Pakistan, this “weeding out,” if it happens at all, will be fruitless.
This is just another version of this story, but it highlights the salient quote from the Pakistani official: they need to weed out the Taliban supporters, not that they will weed out the Taliban supporters.
“Pakistan to “˜weed out” Taliban sympathisers in govt,” from the Gulf Times, August 3 :
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government has promised to “weed out” elements in its intelligence service sympathetic to the Taliban, after a US claim of collaboration that includes the service’s involvement in the bomb attack on India’s embassy in Kabul last month which left 58 dead.
Publicly, Pakistan officials deny such a link to the suicide bombing.
The Bush administration, after seven years of praising Pakistan as one of its closest allies, is putting the squeeze on its government to confront the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces based in its border areas. Failing that, the US wants permission for its forces to cross the border from Afghanistan to engage them.
The embassy attack and the claim of Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) involvement, which India has also made, has strained relations between Islamabad and Delhi and threatens to undermine a four-year-old peace initiative between the two former enemies.
The suicide bombing came against a background of concern inside Pakistan that India is trying to build up its presence in Afghanistan, which Islamabad regards as its area of influence.
The CIA”s deputy director, Stephen Kappes, visited Pakistan last month to put before the government what he claimed was evidence of links between the ISI and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
His trip follows one in January by other senior CIA staff demanding that Pakistan does more to clamp down on the Taliban and Al Qaeda and to help track down Osama bin Laden.
The New York Times has reported US intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between ISI officers and militants who attacked the embassy.
A Pakistan government spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, said there was no proof of ISI involvement. But she said “individuals” in the ISI are “probably acting on their own and going against official policy”, adding that the authorities “need to identify these people and weed them out”….