ISI still backs Taliban: US

US officials believe that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) still supports the Taliban despite recent signals that the spy agency had started cracking down on the Islamist group, says the Washington Post.

The recent capture of the Afghan Taliban’s second in command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar seemed to signal a turning point in Pakistan. But US officials now think that even as Pakistan’s security forces worked with their American counterparts to capture Baradar and other insurgents, ISI, quietly freed at least two senior Afghan Taliban figures it had captured on its own, the influential US daily reported Sunday.

The Post cited unnamed US military and intelligence officials as saying the releases, detected by American spy agencies but not publicly disclosed, are evidence that parts of Pakistan’s security establishment continue to support the Afghan Taliban – something that India has always maintained.