WASHINGTON: There is growing resentment by Pakistani officials who blame the US for not sharing enough intelligence with them.
Push came to shove on this issue after a string of recent terrorist attacks, including a weekend strike on Pakistan's army military headquarters in Rawalpindi - the equivalent of the Pentagon - which led to a 22-hour hostage standoff that ended with at least 19 deaths.
Visiting Pakistani officials have said some of the failure for the inability to capture Osama Bin Laden, former Afghan leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and other members of what is known as the Quetta Shoura, or Council, is due to America's reluctance to share intelligence.
"The CIA has not shared any actionable intelligence with the Pakistan government on Al-Qaeda [in Baluchistan] since 2006 and 2007," a visiting Pakistani defense official told reporters anonymously this weekend.
The surviving militant in the army headquarter attack who was captured early Sunday morning was identified as Muhammad Aqeel. Officials said he was a former soldier that worked in the Army Medical Corps before dropping out about four years ago when he was believed to have hooked up with Lashkar-al-Jhangvi, a militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taleban.
Officials also believe that Aqeel led the commando operation against the Sri Lankan cricket team when it visited Lahore earlier this year, and in the killing of the Pakistani army surgeon general in 2008.
Due to such examples of infiltration, the US says there are continued concerns that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, continues to be breached by sympathizers of the Afghan Taleban, which the ISI helped create in the 1990s during the Afghan civil war.
American officials say that these Pakistani militants - whose groups were supported by the ISI in the past - are helping Al-Qaeda recruit new operatives. Among these groups are Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Laskhar-e-Jhangvi and the Islamic Jihad Movement.
"We have no liking for the Quetta Shura and what it stands for.... Collectively we can do a better job.... We will have to build a relationship of trust and confidence. If you keep doubting our intentions and we keep doubting your intentions, then where is this partnership going?"
Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmoud Qureshi said on Friday during a briefing in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Tim Kennedy, a private defense analyst who travels to Pakistan regularly, doesn't agree.
"As long as the ranks of the Pakistani military are riddled with people who are sympathetic to the enemy, and until the Pakistani military can prove they're more reliable recipients of this intelligence, then I would continue limiting the kind of information we give to them."
Pakistani officials acknowledge that they may have had "rogue agents" within their ranks in 2006 and 2007 that shared US intelligence on Al-Qaeda.
In his recent report to US President Barack Obama, General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, stated that the ISI continues to maintain ties with the Afghan Taleban.
