Diplomat sees Pakistani spies behind Afghan intel chief’s killing

Bhadrakumar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Indian diplomat has authored an editorial suggesting that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may be behind the recent assassination of an Afghan senior intelligence official. Abdullah Laghmani, who headed Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security (NDS), appears to have been specifically targeted earlier this week in a suicide attack that killed 23 people in the town of Mehtarlam. The Taliban have formally assumed responsibility for the attack. But M.K. Bhadrakumar, a longtime Indian diplomat who has served as India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, suggests that Laghmani may have been targeted by the ISI. The diplomat says that the ISI, whose deep links with the Afghan Taliban have long been established, has been “stalking” Laghmani ever since the late 1990s, when he was active in Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Furthermore, says Bhadrakumar, as a major ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Laghmani was critical of the ISI’s support for the Taliban, and even helped establish investigative links between Pakistani intelligence and militant attacks in India and elsewhere. Laghmani’s assassination marked a rare instance of an Afghan intelligence official being specifically targeted in a suicide attack.