The assassination of Abdullah Laghmani, deputy director of Afghan intelligence, on September 1, was described in the NYT as "a severe blow to the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
One feature of Mr. Laghmani's resume leaped from the story: Laghmani was described as having "helped determine the link between the bombers who attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and the Pakistani intelligence service, tracing a cellphone found in the wreckage to a facilitator in Kabul who was in direct contact with a Pakistani intelligence officer in Peshawar."
Needless to say, this did not endear him to the Pakistani Government, and they actually asked Karzai to hand Laghmani over to them, so he could face charges in Pakistan (charges unspecified, other than that of "undermining national security").
One other piece of this puzzle: in the NYT article, the sources cast doubt on the claim that the Taliban performed the assassination, on the grounds that its methods and brutality were more a hallmark of Al Qaeda:
Despite the Taliban's claim of responsibility, Mr. Mashal, the provincial governor, said that the bombing was so brutal that foreign jihadists were probably involved. "I am sure it is extremists, these so-called global jihadists, and Al Qaeda has a definite hand behind this incident," he said at the scene of the explosion.
The obvious speculation was that Pakistan ordered the hit (though of course the Times implied nothing of the kind). Now, several days later, the speculation has surfaced among analysts. Bill Roggio at Threat Matrix cautions that the matter is still one of speculation, but that
The Haqqani Network, which was behind the bombing at the Indian embassy, is close to the ISI and has been behind most of the complex attacks in eastern Afghansitan [see list]. The odds are high that the Haqqanis were also behind the Laghmani assassination. At the very best, Pakistan's refusal to move against the Haqqani Network, which is based in North Waziristan, allows the Haqqanis to continue their campaign in Afghansitan. The worst case scenario, as in the case of the Indian embassy bombing, the ISI ordered the hit.
Presumably, Mr. Roggio is trying to extract information from this incident, regardless of whether it serves the cause of the Long War. It would be an incomplete account without examining what I presume may be disinformation, or at least clutter in the signal-to-noise ratio, to make the story more amenable to the dominant Western, Obama Administration narrative:
It was his sleuthing that ran down links between the Pakistani intelligence services and the bombers of the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008. This success made Laghmani powerful enemies in Pakistan, especially those in the intelligence apparatus who still secretly back the Taliban. The Taliban, too, celebrated the kill. "We were looking for him for a long, long time, but today we succeeded," exulted Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
Did the Taliban perform this assassination, as Time proclaims, or did "foreign jihadists," whether Al Qaeda or not, as the original, less refined story had it, perform it- with the aid of the intelligence services of our supposed ally, Pakistan?