By Hamid Shalizi
KABUL (Reuters) - Ordinary Afghans' mistrust of thePakistani military and its spies deepened on Tuesday in thewake of a suicide car bomb attack outside the Indian Embassy inKabul which killed 41 people and wounded 139.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani spoke of hiscountry's goodwill towards Afghanistan while visiting Malaysia,but Afghans' suspicions of their interfering neighbour and itsInter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency were running high.
"We know that Pakistan's ISI has orchestrated the attack onthe Indian embassy because good relations between Afghanistanand India are not in Pakistan's interest," said student NadirShah a day after the attack in the centre of the Afghancapital.
"India plays a key role in building Afghanistan'sinfrastructure and is working on many vital projects for thepeople, whereas Pakistan wants to deter India by using Talibanto kill them and end their mission," he added.
The Afghan government has yet to level a direct accusationat Pakistan, though a spokesman on Tuesday said the attack borethe "hallmarks of a particular intelligence agency".
"I am not going to name it. I think it is pretty obvious,"said spokesman Humayun Hamidzada.
Afghan state-run newspapers were less circumspect.
"The enemy is ISI of Pakistan, who fights on differentfronts against Afghans and tries to fish in muddy watersthrough planning subversive attacks in Afghanistan," the KabulTimes said in an editorial.
The Dari-language Anis newspaper said Pakistan had beenbehind past attacks on Indian construction workers, who havebeen killed in bomb blasts or executed after being kidnapped.
Ahmad Fawad, a roadside money changer, said Pakistan washabitually blamed.
"Pakistan has been involved in Afghanistan's politics andsecurity for years," Fawad said.
"So, the government blames Pakistan and its intelligenceagency for any big attacks that happen in Afghanistan."
There is widespread suspicion Pakistan's ISI maintainscontacts with some Taliban factions and other Islamist groupsfighting in Afghanistan, although it at the same time workswith Western forces and the Afghan government to countercross-border militancy.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied the allegations, sayingKabul was trying to smear the ISI to deflect attention from itsown shortcomings, including corruption and a lack of ethnicPashtun representation in the government.
After a Taliban jailbreak in Kandahar last month, AfghanPresident Hamid Karzai lost patience and threatened to launchhot pursuit across the border to hunt down Taliban fighters whofled into Pakistan after carrying out attacks in Afghanistan.
Pakistan had supported the Taliban takeover of Afghanistanin the 1990s, and only abandoned the Islamist militia after theUnited States forced President Pervez Musharraf to reverseforeign policy following al Qaeda's attacks on the UnitedStates on September 11, 2001.
Having helped mujahideen, Islamic warriors, fight aguerrilla war to drive the Soviet army out of Afghanistan inthe 1980s, Pakistani generals came up with the idea of"strategic depth", which meant cultivating influence inAfghanistan.
The Pakistanis wanted a friendly fellow Muslim nation ontheir western border ready to rally to the cause of any jihad,or holy war, against India.
Instead, they were stymied by deployment of Western forcesin Afghanistan, heavy representation of the Taliban's oldenemies in the Northern Alliance in Karzai's government, andIndia's increased diplomatic and economic presence inAfghanistan.
Pakistan frequently accuses Indian consulates in southernand eastern Afghanistan of meddling, and suspects India ofsupporting separatists in the western Pakistani province ofBaluchistan as a payback for Pakistan's own support ofseparatists in Kashmir.
While nuclear-armed India and Pakistan began a peaceprocess in 2004, having gone to the brink of fourth war in2002, the two rivals remain steeped in mistrust and compete forinfluence in the energy-rich Central Asian states to the northof Afghanistan.
(Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Jerry Norton)