Pakistan unlikely to help probe Rabbani death: analysts

KABUL‘s chief, Professor Rabbani, will yield no results, political experts believe.

At a meeting with the Afghan team in Islamabad on Thursday, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rahman Malik promised that his country would do all it could to help Afghan authorities track down Rabbani’s assassins.

But some Afghan political analysts, taking a skeptical view of Pakistan’s commitment, said the trip would not produce the desired results.

A professor at Kabul University, Jafar Kohistani, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Friday the trip was an exercise in futility. “Pakistan initially refused to cooperate on the issue, but invited the delegation under international pressure. However, the trip is unlikely to yield any breakthrough.”

Another political commentator, Waheed Muzhda, held a similar view. Islamabad has offered cooperation as a result of global and regional pressure.

It remains to be seen how far Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, goes in helping with Afghan investigators, according to the expert, who said the government had sent the team to Islamabad to placate Rabbani’s supporters.

Another Kabul-based political observer, Younus Fakoor, held the government responsible for ensuring security of key leaders. He thought the delegation’s visit to Islamabad was essentially aimed to silence the government’s critics.

How the ISI, would support Afghans on the issue, Fakoor asked, hinting at the possibility of the delegation visiting other places.

Led by deputy spy chief, Hesamuddin, the delegation discussed the chief peace negotiator’s murder with Pakistani officials. Rabbani was killed on Sept. 20 at his home in the Wazir Akbar Khan diplomatic enclave in Kabul by an assassin with a bomb concealed in his turban.

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