Then why are we funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the ISI (roughly a third of their yearly budget)?

(Guardian) — US authorities describe the main Pakistani intelligence service as a terrorist organisation in secret files obtained by the Guardian.

Recommendations to interrogators at Guantánamo Bay rank the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) alongside al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon as threats. Being linked to any of these groups is an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity, the documents say.

“Through associations with these . . . organisations, a detainee may have provided support to al-Qaida or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or coalition forces [in Afghanistan],” says the document, dated September 2007 and called the Joint Task Force Guantánamo Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants. It adds that links to these groups is evidence that an individual poses a future threat.

The revelation that the ISI is considered as much of a threat as al-Qaida and the Taliban will cause fury in Pakistan. It will further damage the already poor relationship between US intelligence services and their Pakistani counterparts, supposedly key allies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants in south Asia.

Relations between America and Pakistan have been tense for years. A series of high-level attempts have been made in recent weeks to improve ties after the American CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis in January.