India, Israel linked to Pakistan plot

KARACHI - For the past 23 years, Afghanistan has served as a proxy military playing field for different countries, including the former Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan. Now, after a year of the US-led war on terrorism, a new proxy war has begun in Afghanistan, this time aimed at Pakistan and involving the intelligence networks of India and Israel.

It has been learned from highly placed intelligence sources that India's Reasearch and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's Mossad are collaborating to train several hundred militants to be used in an attempt to destabilize the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf.

The sources say that training camps have been established near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, and the eastern city of Jalalabad, which lies close to Pakistan's western tribal areas. It is said that RAW has arranged most of the "human resources", while training is the responsibility of the Special Operations Division (Metsada) of Mossad. Metsada generally conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects.

Once trained, the recruits will infiltrate the border areas of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan Province, where they will attempt to forge links with local tribespeople and militants in an effort to rally support for an uprising against Musharraf, who is widely discredited in these regions for abandoning the Taliban and siding with the US in its war on terror. These provinces have a strong pro-Taliban history.

Musharraf's decision to throw in his lot with the US resulted in pressure from Washington to clamp down on militant organizations and to stem the flow of jihadis from Pakistani soil into Indian-administered Kashmir. And since Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had strong (albeit covert) links with the militant organizations, it was able to bring pressure to bear on the leaders for them to back off for the interim.