CLOAK AND DAGGER

'CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban'

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the 'monster' that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
'I warned them that we were creating a monster,' Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia.'
Harrison said: 'The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan.' The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.