Ex-Taliban fighter tells of training, cash, orders from Pakistani military

Here's an interesting look into the shadowy world of Pakistani involvement in training and maintaining Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. This is just anecdotal of course, but it reinforces long standing concerns that the Taliban is the creation of the Pakistani ISI.

FROM KABULPRESS.ORG:

Ex-Taliban fighter tells of training, cash, orders from Pakistani military

Detailed testimony poses deep questions about Pakistan Military’s committment to peace and stability in Afghanistan
Monday 30 June 2008, by Editorial Staff

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A former Taliban fighter has provided a gripping first-hand account of being secretly trained by members of the Pakistani military, paid $500 a month and ordered to kill foreigners in Afghanistan.
Mullah Mohammed Zaher offered a vivid description of a bomb-making apprenticeship at a Pakistani army compound where he says he learned to blow up NATO convoys.
He’s one of three former Taliban fighters introduced to The Canadian Press by an Afghan government agency that works at getting rebels to renounce the insurgency.
Zaher insists he was neither forced to go public with his story nor coached by Afghan officials, whose routine response to terrorism on their soil is to blame neighbouring Pakistan.
Pakistan officially sides with the West against the insurgents and vigorously denies mounting accusations that it is a two-faced participant in the war on terror.

A report produced for the Pentagon and released this month by the Rand Corp., a U.S. think-tank, claims individuals in the Pakistani government are involved in helping the insurgents.
An illiterate, career warrior, Zaher has not seen the 177-page report. But he made a series of claims in a 90-minute interview that supported its broad conclusions - and offered a deluge of new details.
He described how men in khaki army fatigues housed, fed, paid and finally threatened insurgents into carrying out attacks on foreign troops.
Perhaps most startling of all was his description of the repeated warning from Pakistani soldiers about where trainees would be sent if they refused to fight: Guantanamo Bay.

He said there was an inside joke among insurgents whenever the Pakistanis turned over a high-profile rebel to the Americans for detention at the U.S.-run prison camp in Cuba.
"Whenever we heard on the news that Pakistan caught a Taliban commander, we used to say: ’He stopped obeying them’," Zaher said through a Pashto-language interpreter. (emphasis mine. ed.)

Two other former insurgents interviewed by The Canadian Press said they were aware of colleagues being trained in Pakistan, but said such fighters were part of an elite minority.
Mullah Janan said he heard that some of his Taliban comrades had received training in Pakistan, with many more receiving shelter or medical treatment across the border.
When infighting broke out between Taliban factions, Janan said, mediators from Pakistan even came across the border to help settle the dispute.
Zaher said he was among the elite.
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