US officials believe that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) still supports the Taliban despite recent signals that the spy agency had started cracking down on the Islamist group, says the Washington Post.

The recent capture of the Afghan Taliban's second in command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar seemed to signal a turning point in Pakistan. But US officials now think that even as Pakistan's security forces worked with their American counterparts to capture Baradar and other insurgents, ISI, quietly freed at least two senior Afghan Taliban figures it had captured on its own, the influential US daily reported Sunday.