Diplomatic fury as blame for Kabul attack falls on Pakistan

An AFGHAN policeman picked up a bag of cashew nuts from next to a congealed pool of blood where six insurgents had fought a 20-hour battle with Afghan and Nato Special Forces and threw a handful in his mouth to taste them. “Pakistani,” he declared, with some contempt, before strolling off towards the corpses – and snacking on his spoils of war.

It was, for him, proof that the six men who brought Kabul to a standstill and fired rockets at the American embassy throughout Tuesday were from Afghanistan’s much maligned eastern neighbour.

In the wreckage of the 12-storey building they struck from – parts of which had been ripped open by heavy machine gun fire – the policeman’s colleagues found other, similarly convincing clues. One pointed to the cut of the attackers’ clothes – they all wore the traditional flowing robes ubiquitous on both sides of the border – and swore their tailoring was Pakistani.

Other men pointed to the hand grenades – lurking under at least two of the bodies, in what may have been a final booby trap – and insisted they were made by Pakistani armourers, despite the Russian writing.

Yet despite the speed, and the ease, with which Afghans like to blame their neighbours, senior western officials have reached the same conclusion, and diplomats in Kabul are furious about what some see as a Pakistan’s increasingly brazen assaults on the West.

After the half-built high rise was finally cleared of insurgents, General John Allen, the commander of US and Nato forces, said he thought the Haqqani network was responsible.

“We believe by virtue of the complexity of the attack and the way it was executed, that this probably was a Haqqani instigated attack,” he said. “And many of the attacks, the high-profile attacks that have been inflicted on Kabul in the last year or so, have been perpetrated by the Haqqani network.”

He was referring to assaults on the InterContinental Hotel in June, and the British Council last month. Both were blamed on the terrorist network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former American ally reported to have close relations with al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

In the same breath, Gen Allen said Nato spoke to the Pakistanis “all the time” about insurgents crossing the border. “In particular we seek to have the Pakistani government place greater pressure on the Haqqani network, to keep them on the east side of the border, to keep them in Pakistan so we can prevent these kind of attacks, high-profile attacks,” he said.

The American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, was concilliatory towards Islamabad. “This is not easy for them,” he said. “It’s complicated, it’s difficult but clearly for a long-term solution those safe havens have to be reduced.”

He went on to dismiss the longest gun battle Kabul has seen in a decade as just “minor league stuff”. “Half a dozen RPG rounds from 800 metres away? That isn’t Tet, [the famous Vietcong offensive] that’s harassment,” he said. “If that’s the best they can do, you know, I think it’s actually a statement of [the insurgents’] weakness.”

One military official was more candid about the relationship between the terrorists and theISI. “If it’s Haqqani, by extension there’s an ISI hand,” he said.

ISI agents used to train and equip Haqqani fighters, so they could tackle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Many Afghans believe they never stopped, despite the Russian withdrawal 22 years ago.

Moments after yesterday’s attack finished, President Hamid Karzai issued a statement marking his meeting with India’s foreign secretary, Ranjan Mathai.

“We fully understand that a stable and secure Pakistan is in the interest of [Afghanistan] and of the entire region,” he said.

Officials insisted it was a coincidence that he met an Indian dignitary as an attack blamed on their nemesis Pakistan was drawing to a close, but the symbolism was unlikely to be lost on Islamabad.