Intel analyst: Pakistan financing ISIS

U.S. Navy vessel on training mission with Pakistanis

WASHINGTON – The security service of a longtime ally of the United States appears to be financing not only the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the region's ISIS activities, too, according to current and former intelligence sources who discussed the situation with Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The influence of the Islamic State is expanding in Afghanistan as increasing numbers of Taliban members are pledging allegiance to the newer and more violent ISIS, and the sources report that the funding is coming from the Pakistani military's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.

The Pakistani ISI created the Taliban more than 20 years ago to act as its proxy in extending Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and into the Kashmir region, which is administratively controlled by India, Pakistan's arch enemy. Both countries claim sovereignty over that predominantly Muslim region.

As the United States seeks to destroy ISIS, the prospect that Pakistan's intelligence service is funding the radical jihadist group could prompt a crisis in already troubled U.S.-Pakistani relations.

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The U.S. continues to insist on launching drones into Pakistan to kill Taliban militants. However, a number of drones have killed civilians in the process, prompting outrage throughout the country.

"ISI apparently is funding all parties over here (in Afghanistan), Taliban and ISIS," a U.S. intelligence analyst in Afghanistan told G2 Bulletin.

"There's a bunch of Taliban leaders in the south and west that are flipping sides to ISIS and there are some in the north doing it too, but to a lesser extent because the Taliban wants to kill them for flipping," said the intelligence analyst who requested anonymity.

"But there have been more than a few reports where guys that we have been getting reporting on as belonging to ISIS are getting funding by the Pakis," he said.

Go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin now for the rest of this report and more.

"Normally, we'd say if a subject is reported multiple times by different sources, then we'd call it corroborated," he said.

U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman Henrietta Levin told G2 Bulletin that "we are not aware of any evidence of such funding."

Such a response, however, isn't unusual since, as the U.S. intelligence source said the prospect of the Pakistani intelligence service aiding ISIS is relatively new, meaning while information may be in the intelligence community it hasn't been turned into intelligence reporting for policymakers yet.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a former intelligence analyst who also appears as a military and intelligence analyst on such media as Fox News, told G2 Bulletin, however, that he doubted ISI was funding ISIS.

Shaffer has contacts within the Pakistani ISI.

"I will be meeting face to face with ISI folks later this year," he told G2 Bulletin. "I don't believe for a moment they would abandon using the Taliban as their proxies after it has worked for them for 20 plus years."

Strategy policy and intelligence expert Clare M. Lopez agreed with the U.S. intelligence analyst in Afghanistan that an increasing number of Taliban are joining ISIS and the Pakistani ISI could be funding ISIS in Afghanistan.

"I have been seeing reporting of ISIS wooing the Afghan Taliban and seeing interest returned, even some pledges of bayat (allegiance), and I think it is not crazy to see some elements of these two making common cause," said Lopez, vice president for research and analysis at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy.

Go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin now for the rest of this report and more.