UK also suspects ISI role in Afghanistan

The Pakistani ministers said they had left Washington reeling from what they described as a “grilling” and shocked at “the trust deficit” between Pakistan and its most important backer.

“They were very hot on the ISI,” said a member of the Prime Minister’s delegation. “Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away’.”

“The question is why it’s taken the Americans so long to see what the ISI is doing,” said Khattak. “We’ve been telling them for years but they wouldn’t buy it.”

In a reflection of who really calls the shots, while the government party was in Washington Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, acting commander of Centcom, the US military command, was in Islamabad handing over F-16 fighter planes and holding meetings with the top brass. A British officer who was present at the meeting said Pakistani generals had spoken of their frustration with the civilian government: “They said they were still waiting for a signal to act in the tribal areas. To be honest, none of us could think of a thing they had done in six months.”