Pakistan’s ISI complicit with terrorists: Ex-US NSA McMaster

Washington, August 31

There is an “undeniable complicity” of Pakistan’s ISI with terror groups, former US National Security Adviser Lt Gen (retd) HR McMaster says, revealing that during his tenure under the then President Donald Trump, the White House faced resistance from the State Department and Pentagon over providing security aid to Islamabad.

Despite directions from Trump to stop all aid to Pakistan, McMaster in his book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House says the then Defence Secretary, Jim Mattis, was planning to deliver a military aid package to Islamabad but it was stopped.

Mattis halted the shipment, but other aid would continue, prompting Trump to tweet, ‘The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan with little help. No more!’,” he writes.

“Pakistan was not changing its behaviour, and almost as an insult, the government released Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, on the eve of Mattis’ visit. Moreover, a recent event in Pakistan involving hostages had exposed the undeniable complicity of Pakistan’s ISI with the terrorists,” he writes.