US fights another Cold War

Pakistani and American military and intelligence establishments are finding it hard to normalise their ties ever since the May 2 military raid in Abbottabad, because of the growing trust deficit between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) which are at loggerheads with each other.

Pak-US military and intelligence ties have continued to deteriorate since the January arrest of an undercover CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who killed two Pakistanis.

Following that, Mark Carlton, the station chief of the CIA in Islamabad who oversaw the intelligence team that found Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, has been made to leave Pakistan prematurely.

This is allegedly under the pressure of the country’s all-powerful military and intelligence establishment.

It is the second time since January that the CIA’s top-most officer has been compelled to leave Pakistan ahead of time because of the ongoing spy war between the CIA and the ISI.

The station chief, one of the CIA’s most important positions in the world, had been posted to Pakistan only in February.

His unceremonious exit shows that the ISI and the CIA are still far from improving the tense relationship they had last year when the previous station chief also had to leave due to “unavoidable circumstances”.

Well-informed diplomatic circles in Islamabad say Mark Carlton had to leave after it transpired in the aftermath of the May 2 raid that he had been running a clandestine network of American and Pakistani intelligence agents without the knowledge of the ISI.