Pakistan not at level to have agreement with Afghanistan: Executive Office

The second deputy of the executive officer, Muhammad Muhaqiq says it is scheduled that the Jihadi leaders gather at the Presidential Citadel on Thursday to discuss on the treaty.

Muhaqiq assured Afghan people that the NDS_ISI accord is not official yet and just has pointed by the two security deputy of both countries.

Muhammad Muhaqiq in a special interview with Ariananews said that Pakistan has failed in two terms; brining Taliban to the negotiation table and avoiding Taliban spring offensive.

“Pakistan did not stand by its commitments; the country is not at the level that Afghanistan wants to have an agreement with it. The condition for reconciliation of Pakistan’s ties and cooperation has not provided so far,” Muhaqiq said. “The Parliament should be concerned; the treaty still is not valid yet.”

A number of Afghan parliamentarians have severely criticized the intelligence cooperation deal. They say that the agreement would give Pakistan an upper hand in the region. The ISI’s alleged role in providing assistance to the Taliban is also looked down upon by most Afghans, and is one of the reasons why many Afghans are unhappy with the intel agreement.

In a path-breaking deal Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Afghan intelligence outfit National Directorate of Security (NDS) have signed an accord for cooperation, which is aimed at bolstering fight against terrorism.

“The agreement indicates a change in Afghanistan’s policies. It is now directly approaching Pakistan to maintain regional peace and stability,” Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, an expert on constitutional law said.

It is unclear when this deal was signed, but observers say it came right after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Kabul last week, where he pledged support to Afghanistan in its fight against Islamic militancy.

Ghani also expects Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban to bring them to peace talks.

The expert, however, admits that President Ghani is taking a huge “political risk” by getting closer to Pakistan knowing that Karzai also tried to build bridges between Kabul and Islamabad but was largely unsuccessful.

“If Ghani’s efforts don’t yield results, and if the war in Afghanistan does not end, it will have policial consequences for the Afghan president,” Liwal warned.

According to a Hezb-e-Islami statement, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been directly involved and has played a key role in “destructive activities” in Afghanistan over the past four decades.

The Hezb-e-Islami statement called on the Afghan government not to conclude such agreements in the future, which are against the national interests.

Earlier, former Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai too called on the Afghan National Unity government leaders to immediately scrap the Memorandum of Understanding on intelligence sharing, and said such agreements “which are against the national interests of the country” should not be signed.

According to the MoU, the ISI will train and equip the NDS personnel in their functioning. In addition, Afghanistan and Pakistan will jointly fight terrorism and both institutions will jointly interrogate those accused of any terror incident within their countries.

While the MoU envisages training of Afghan intelligence operatives by Pakistan’s ISI, the Afghan NDS officials have rejected the clause.

NDS spokesman Haseeb Sediqi said the agreement with Pakistan was not against the national interests of Afghanistan and it was concluded based on previous mutual cooperation between the two nations.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been heavily involved in covertly running the military intelligence programs inAfghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

In the 1980s, the ISI systematically coordinated the distribution of arms and financial means provided by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to some factions of the Afghan mujahideen such as the HeI of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

After the Soviet retreat, the ISI and the Pakistan government led by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto became primary source of supporting the Hekmatyar in his 1992–1994bombardment campaign against the Afghan government and the capital Kabul.

Reported by Farahnaz Forutan