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Afghan, Pakistani Spies Agree to Share Information, Work Together

Pakistan and Afghanistan's intelligence services have agreed to share information and even cooperate on the ground, according to Pakistani officials.
Afghan security forces are pictured near the main gate of the National Directorate of Security in Kabul in 2013.
Afghan security forces are pictured near the main gate of the National Directorate of Security in Kabul in 2013. AFP / AFP Getty Images file
By Wajahat S. Khan and Fazul Rahim

Pakistan and Afghanistan's intelligence services have agreed to share information and even cooperate on the ground, according to officials, signalling a possible thaw in relations after decades of distrust and recriminations.

The two often-competing spy networks would in the future cooperate on “int[elligence] sharing, complimentary and coordinated int[elligence] op[erations]s," Pakistani military’s spokesperson Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa announced via twitter on Monday.

The news that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) had reached the new security agreement was confirmed Tuesday by the Afghan agency's spokesperson Hassib Sediqi. He rejected reports, however, that the ISI would train and equip Afghan spies.

Kabul and Islamabad have long blamed each other’s spy agencies for supporting insurgent groups, including different factions of the Taliban, who use one country as a safe haven to launch attacks against the other.

Relations between the two countries worsened after U.S.-backed forces toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. NATO and Afghan officials often accused Pakistan of backing and sheltering Afghanistan's militants, a charge that Pakistan leveled against Kabul as it attacked its own insurgencies.

The tense relationship between the two has improved somewhat since Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani was elected in Sept. 2014.

Pakistan's intelligence chief, chief of army staff and prime minister visited Kabul last week, while Afghanistan's military chief went to Islamabad in April. In the past few months, military cooperation between the two countries increased, as Afghan military cadets were enrolled by Kabul in Pakistan's military academy and commanders on both sides of the porous 1,398-mile border set up hotlines to better communicate with each other as they fight insurgents.

IN-DEPTH

Reuters contributed to this report.

Wajahat S. Khan

Wajahat S.Khan is a correspondent and producer for NBC News based in Islamabad, covering South Asia and also assisting the Kabul bureau. Khan is the national security correspondent for Pakistan's largest news network, Geo, and its largest English newspaper, The News. 

He was the first Pakistani Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Previously, Khan reported for CNN, and contributed alternative-media reportage to San Francisco-based Link TV. He anchored a popular investigative series on Pakistan’s local Aaj TV, and also hosted and produced for Pakistan’s first English-medium network, Dawn News. 

He is also the first broadcaster from Pakistan to produce an investigative series from across the “divide” in India. Khan has written for most of the major Pakistani publications — The News, The Dawn, The Express Tribune, The Friday Times and The Herald, and also contributes to India Today, India's most popular weekly.

Fazul Rahim

Rahim joined the NBC News Kabul Bureau team in December 2013. He has extensively covered events in Afghanistan since 2001, and is a former Afghanistan Bureau Chief for CBS News. While with CBS, he co-produced reports for "The CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes."