PRESS RELEASE
Why Did U.S. Intelligence Expel MI-6 Agents From Afghanistan?
Dec. 30, 2007 (EIRNS)—Senior Afghan government officials have told reporters that two MI6 agents were expelled from the country last week, at the behest of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after they were caught funding Taliban units. The two alleged MI6 agents, Mervyn Patterson and Michael Semple, left Afghanistan on Dec. 27, on charges that they posed a threat to the country's national security. Patterson worked for the United Nations, and Semple worked for the European Union. Both men were Afghan specialists, who had been operating in the country for over 20 years. An unnamed Afghan government official told the London Sunday Telegraph that "this warning," that the men were financing the Taliban for at least ten months, "came from the Americans. They were not happy with the support being provided to the Taliban. They gave the information to our intelligence services, who ordered the arrests." The Afghan government source further added, "The Afghan government would never have acted alone to expel officials of such a senior level. This was information that was given to the NDS [National Directorate of Security] by the Americans." In 2006, U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan had loudly protested the British decision to withdraw troops from Musa Qala, opening the door for a Taliban takeover of the region, in a deal with local tribal leaders.
The London Times today added that, when Patterson and Semple were arrested, they had $150,000 with them, which was to be given to Taliban commanders in the same Musa Qala region. The Times added, "British officials have been careful to distance current MI6 talks with Taliban commanders in Helmand from the expulsions of Michael Semple, the Irish head of the EU mission, and Mervyn Patterson, a British advisor to the UN." The Telegraph had reported that the claims that the CIA was behind the expulsions "will reinforce perceptions of a rift between the U.S. and its international partners in Afghanistan, including Britain."
Not surprisingly, nowhere in the British press coverage has there been any suggestion that the MI6 machinations with Taliban may have any connection to the assassination this week of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. In an article scheduled for publication in the Jan. 4, 2008, issue of Executive Intelligence Review, and in a statement already posted on the LaRouche PAC website, Lyndon LaRouche charges that British intelligence, acting on behalf of Anglo-Dutch financial interests, was behind the Bhutto assassination, as part of a global "Operation Chaos," driven by the onrushing global financial crash, not by any events in South Asia per se. In an accompanying EIR analysis, Ramtanu Maitra documents British plans to break up Pakistan, and create a separate entity in the Northwest Frontier Province and Waziristan regions of Pakistan, which border on Afghanistan and Central Asia.
