Pakistan's ISI complicit with terrorists, says former US NSA McMaster

Washington: There is an "undeniable complicity" of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with terrorist groups, former US National Security Advisor Lt Gen (retd) H R McMasterhas said, revealing that during his tenure under then President Donald Trump, the White House faced resistance from the state department and Pentagon over providing security aid to Islamabad.

Despite directions from Trump to stop all aid to Pakistan till it stops giving safe havens to terrorists, McMaster in his latest book 'At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House' says that the then Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was planning to deliver a military aid package to Islamabad that included over USD 150 million worth of armoured vehicles.

However, the aid was stopped after his intervention, McMaster writes in the book that hit the bookstores this week.

“It was difficult to get State and Defence even to comply with Trump’s directives to stop certain activities. I discovered that contrary to the South Asia strategy, which called for the suspension of all aid to Pakistan with a few exceptions, when Mattis visited Islamabad in the coming weeks, the Pentagon was going to deliver a military aid package that included more than USD 150 million worth of armoured vehicles,” he writes.

McMaster says soon after he came to know about it, he called for a meeting with Mattis, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, and other senior officials.

“I started by noting that the president (Trump) had been very clear on multiple occasions to suspend aid to the Pakistanis until they halted support for terrorist organisations that were killing Afghans, Americans, and coalition members in Afghanistan...We had all heard Trump say, 'I do not want any money going to Pakistan',” he says.

Mattis, the former NSA writes, noted the possibility that Pakistan might retaliate in certain ways, but others, including Ambassador David Hale, who had joined by video from Islamabad, did not share those concerns.

“Mattis reluctantly halted that shipment of assistance, but other aid would continue, prompting Trump to tweet on New Year’s Day, 'The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan with little help. No more!',” he writes.

“Pakistan was not changing its behaviour, and almost as an insult, the government released Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, on the eve of Mattis’s visit. Moreover, a recent event in Pakistan involving hostages had exposed the undeniable complicity of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence with the terrorists,” McMaster writes.

He notes that news reports that time criticised the president’s tweet as capricious and devoid of a coherent policy. But halting assistance was a critical part of the South Asia strategy that Trump had approved at Camp David in August, he says.

"A lunch that the president hosted with the vice president, Tillerson, Mattis, Kelly, and me on December 14 helped me understand why it was difficult to implement Trump’s guidance on Pakistan or to foster cooperation on contingency plans for North Korea,” says McMaster.