Afghanistan's government has accused Pakistani intelligence agents of masterminding the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, on Monday, which killed 41 people and injured 140.

In the latest escalation in a long running war of words between the two countries Humayun Hamidzada, the Afghan President’s official spokesman, told reporters in Kabul yesterday: “The sophistication of this attack, and the kind of material that was used in it and the specific targeting, everything has the hallmark of a particular intelligence agency that has conducted similar terrorist acts inside Afghanistan in the past. We have sufficient evidence to say that.”

Asked to name the agency involved he said the answer was “pretty obvious”. Afghanistan has repeatedly accused Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) of harbouring and supporting the Taliban, leading Afghan President Hamid Karzai to threaten last month to send Afghan forces into Pakistani territory to root out insurgents.

In response the Pakistani president Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said that his country had no wish to destabilise Afghanistan: “We want stability in the region,” he said during a visit to Malaysia. “We ourselves are a victim of terrorism and extremism.”

The role of the ISI in supporting the Taliban insurgency is a highly sensitive issue, which Western officials decline to discuss openly. The British and US governments have both avoided directly accusing Pakistan of aiding insurgent groups. Britain in particular is reliant on the ISI for information connected to domestic terror plots planned in Pakistan.

However, privately there is acknowledgement that a level of complicity is a reality.

“There is an acceptance that elements of the ISI are engaged with the insurgents,” said one source serving in the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) for Afghanistan yesterday. “The issue that remains unresolved is the degree of higher level acceptance of this, and how much they (the ISI) can actually be controlled.”

British officers confirmed to The Times an incident last summer in which a Taliban corpse found on the battlefield in Helmand turned out to be carrying papers identifying the body as that of a serving ISI colonel.

When British officials challenged the Islamabad government on the issue, they received an explanation that the man was ’on leave’ at the time of his death.

A US Department of Defence funded study undertaken by the RAND Corporation and published last month also stated that elements of the ISI were aiding the Taleban.

“Right now, the Taleban and other groups are getting help from individuals within Pakistan’s government, and until that ends, the region’s long-term security is in jeopardy,” concluded the report’s author Seth Jones.

He said support included medical care for wounded fighters, logistical and financial support. He also said ISI trainers were instructing insurgents in camps at Quetta, Mansehra, Shamshattu and Parachinar and other areas of Pakistan.

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