The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has prodded Pakistan and India to share information on the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is blamed for the terrorist attack on Mumbai, as well as on Taliban commanders who are leading the insurgency against Pakistan’s government, US officials said.
“We have to satisfy the Mumbai question and show India that the threat is abating,” a US official involved in developing Washington’s South Asia strategy told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
The report comes two days after India handed Pakistan the third dossier about its probe into last November’s terror strikes on Mumbai.
The Journal said the CIA is stepping up intelligence-gathering efforts in Pakistani tribal areas, tapping and tracking the location of the cell phones of Taliban commanders as well as taking pictures and collecting information in their training camps.
The US shares this information with Pakistan, and sometimes with India. Of late, the US has been showing Indian officials evidence of progress against militants in the Pakistani battlegrounds of Swat, Bajaur, and Buner.
Washington hopes that when India sees the evidence that Islamabad is seriously fighting the militants in some areas, it will ease its deployments against Pakistan, which, in turn, would prompt Islamabad to focus more on the battle at home.
