Spy chiefs of Pakistan and Afghanistan have met here for the first time in nearly 10 months in a bid to build trust and boost intelligence sharing to combat cross-border terrorism amid efforts to revive the stalled peace process with the Taliban.
Masoud Andrabi, the head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, visited Islamabad on Thursday to meet Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar. The two-hour-long meeting was facilitated by the US, while Chinese officials attended as observers, Dawn reported. “It was a step not a breakthrough,” said a source who closely followed the meeting. He said the very fact that the meeting took place was a major development.
Tension between ISI and NDS is believed to be at the root of most of the problems in the bilateral ties, which for the most part of the past decade and a half have been uneasy.
It was the first high-level interaction between the two agencies since May last when they signed an intelligence cooperation agreement. Afghanistan, though, had to shelve the agreement because of stiff domestic opposition.
The intelligence dialogue also began at a time when a quadrilateral initiative is on to help revive the Afghan reconciliation process that was suspended after the disclosure about the death of reclusive one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar last summer.