While Cisco is positioning NDS as a maker of "video software and content security solutions," NDS describes itself on its Web site as a company that allows pay television companies to deliver all kinds of content to all kinds of devices.
The memorandum of understanding was signed by a deputy NDS director general after Nabil refused to sign, said Davood Moradian, a Kabul-based analyst and ex-aide to Afghanistan's former national security adviser.
Leaks to the Afghan media said that the NDS chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, was against the move.
Pakistan has long-pushed for Nabil to be sacked after it emerged the NDS under his watch attempted to recruit Latif Mehsud, then the second most important commander in the Pakistani Taliban, as an intelligence source.
Amrullah Saleh, the NDS director general from 2004 to 2010, said he would have been ashamed to sign such an agreement and predicted staunch opposition to it.
"It has not only heavily damaged morale within NDS but further damaged the credibility of Ghani and the national unity government".
It is an astonishing step for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS), which has long accused its opposite numbers at the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) of practically directing the Taliban insurgency.
"Unfortunately there is a group [in the NDS] who do not want us to move forward," said a Pakistani intelligence official.
On Monday, a senior member of the Afghan parliament ordered the international relations committee to summon NDS officials for a grilling over the intelligence-sharing deal.
"This was an initiative proposed by the British but the NDS chief refused to sign it despite enormous pressure," Moradian said.
See articleCisco, a maker of networking equipment, made its biggest acquisition in two years by agreeing to buy NDS for $5 billion to bolster its business in video software.
