Documents recovered from the Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad in the May 2011 raid — released last month during the Brooklyn trial of an al-Qaeda terrorist — show that sections of the Pakistani establishment, including the ISI and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, were negotiating with al-Qaeda in 2010. Letters written by Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, then the general manager of al-Qaeda, to bin Laden show that the ISI’s main emissary for engaging al-Qaeda was Fazlur Rehman Khalil, leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, while the emissary used by al-Qaeda was Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior leader of the dreaded Haqqani Network. Former ISI chief Lt General Hamid Gul was part of these negotiations, which also involved the Tehreek-e- Taliban (TTP).
In these negotiations, besides requesting al-Qaeda for two months of quiet to stave off American pressure, the ISI advised the outfit to stop its “communications” in tribal regions, which were being picked up by the US agencies. Shahbaz Sharif made a separate offer to al-Qaeda, that his government was “ready to reestablish normal relations as long as they do not conduct operations in Punjab”. In May 2010, Sharif had publicly requested the TTP to spare Punjab from its attacks as his party, the PML-N, like the TTP, rejected American diktat and had been opposed to the former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf.
