"Newly declassified intelligence documents reveal the depth of U.S. officials' concern that Pakistan was providing funds, arms — and even combat troops — to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for years before the Sept. 11 attacks," the Associated Press reports. "The documents, released under a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive and posted on its Web site, add detail to what is already generally known about U.S. intelligence on Pakistan's links with the Taliban as it surged to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s."
Excerpts from the National Security Archive press release:
A collection of newly-declassified documents published today [August 14] detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself. The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.
These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan-effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.
