Tag Archive for ‘ISI’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'ISI'

Taking on the Taliban

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on March 3, 2010

in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Books, Pakistan and Terrorism

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Steve Coll in The New Yorker:

The Taliban’s jihad, like rock and roll, has passed from youthful vigor into a maturity marked by the appearance of nostalgic memoirs. Back in the day, Abdul Salam Zaeef belonged to the search committee that recruited Mullah Omar as the movement’s commander; after the rebels took power in Kabul, he served as ambassador to Pakistan. “My Life with the Taliban,” published this winter, announces Zaeef’s début in militant letters. The volume contains many sources of fascination, but none are more timely than the author’s account of his high-level relations with Pakistani intelligence.

While in office, Zaeef found that he “couldn’t entirely avoid” the influence of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Its officers volunteered money and political support. Late in 2001, as the United States prepared to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the I.S.I.’s then commanding general, Mahmud Ahmad, visited Zaeef’s home in Islamabad, wept in solidarity, and promised, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you.” And yet Zaeef never trusted his I.S.I. patrons. He sought to protect the Taliban’s independence: “I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.” More:

CIA says it gets its money’s worth from Pakistani spy agency

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on November 16, 2009

in Pakistan and Terrorism

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Greg Miller in the New York Times:

The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan’s intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency’s annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department, officials said.

The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.

But U.S. officials have continued the funding because the ISI’s assistance is considered crucial: Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where ISI informant networks are a primary source of intelligence. More:

Network of militants is robust after Mumbai siege

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on September 30, 2009

in Terrorism

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Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through India’s financial capital. Lydia Polgreen and Souad Mekhennet in the New York Times:

Hafiz Saeed

Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan. It included four houses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks.

Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others begin their formal trial on Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders.

Indeed, Lashkar’s broader network endures, and can be mobilized quickly for elaborate attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the United States, Europe, India and Pakistan.

In interviews with The Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar’s capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.

Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors. More:

Whither Pakistan? A five-year forecast

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on June 18, 2009

in Pakistan

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Pervez Hoodbhoy at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Hoodbhoy is chairman of the physics department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad:

First, the bottom line: Pakistan will not break up; there will not be another military coup; the Taliban will not seize the presidency; Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will not go astray; and the Islamic sharia will not become the law of the land.

That’s the good news. It conflicts with opinions in the mainstream U.S. press, as well as with some in the Obama administration. For example, in March, David Kilcullen, a top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, declared that state collapse could occur within six months. This is highly improbable.

Now, the bad news: The clouds hanging over the future of Pakistan’s state and society are getting darker. Collapse isn’t impending, but there is a slow-burning fuse. While timescales cannot be mathematically forecast, the speed of societal decline has surprised many who have long warned that religious extremism is devouring Pakistan.

Here is how it all went down the hill: The 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan devastated the Taliban. Many fighters were products of madrassas in Pakistan, and their trauma partly was shared by their erstwhile benefactors in the Pakistan military and intelligence. Recognizing that this force would remain important for maintaining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan–and keep the low-intensity war in Kashmir going–the army secretly welcomed them on Pakistani soil. Rebuilding and rearming was quick, especially as the United States tripped up in Afghanistan after a successful initial victory. Former President Pervez Musharraf’s strategy of running with the hares and hunting with hounds worked initially. But then U.S. demands to dump the Taliban became more insistent, and the Taliban also grew angry at this double game. As the army’s goals and tactics lost coherence, the Taliban advanced. More:

Mumbai attack: Finally, Pakistan admits

Published

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on February 13, 2009

in Conflict, India, Pakistan and Terrorism

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After months of denial, Pakistan has finally admitted that last November’s terrorist attack on Mumbai was planned and launched from its territory. Pakistan’s interior ministy chief said six people, including the mastermind of the attack, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, were in its custody. India’s foreign minister termed Pakistan’s response as a positive development.

Pakistan’s half a confession: Holbrooke’s first success?

C Raja Mohan in The Indian Express:

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind behind the attacks on Mumbai. Reuters

Even the most sceptical of Indian analysts will have to concede that Pakistan has taken an important step forward Thursday in acknowledging that at least part of the planning for the Mumbai outrage took place in Pakistan. Islamabad’s half a confession on Thursday is an important gain for the UPA Government which had chosen the diplomatic route to pressurise Pakistan rather than a military confrontation that many hotheads in New Delhi wanted after the Mumbai aggression. More:

Time for India to think of carrots too, not just sticks

In The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan says now India must shed its distrust of Pakistan

After expecting the worst, New Delhi today finds itself having to fashion a response to a Pakistani investigative effort that the entire world is likely to judge as serious and effective. So far, the Indian side had been thinking only in terms of the coercive diplomatic steps it could take in response to Islamabad’s lack of cooperation. Now that Pakistan has demonstrated more than a modest measure of cooperation, India will have to also evaluate the carrots, if any, it is prepared to offer to ensure the progress that has been made continues, and the planners of Mumbai are brought to book. More:

“Thaw at last”

That’s the headline of the report in Dawn, Karachi: Tension between Islamabad and New Delhi started to dissipate on Thursday and a thaw set in when Pakistan’s Interior Adviser Rehman Malik conceded that last November’s terror attacks in Mumbai were partially planned in Pakistan, and announced the arrest of a number of accused and his government’s intent to prosecute them. Rehman Malik’s unprecedented announcement at a televised news conference was greeted by an immediate change in tone and tenor of key Indian decision makers. Both External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Interior Minister P. Chidambaram described as positive Islamabad’s response to the Delhi-prepared investigation dossier on the terror attacks blamed on Pakistan-based militants. More:

How US leaned heavily on Pakistan

From The Indian Express: This and the fact that the admission comes a day after US President Barack Obama spoke to Pak President Asif Ali Zardari and when US envoy Richard Holbrooke was visiting the country, clearly reflects the pressure being brought on Islamabad. Incidentally, the FBI was on the verge of moving in with visas ready when Pakistan decided to set up an investigation team. More:

How the attack was planned

From The Hindu: Confirming that the engine of the dinghy was bought in Pakistan, Mr. Malik said the investigators had traced the shop and the owner from where a man he identified only as “one Khan” bought the engine. Khan also bought life-jackets and other sea-travel related items from this shop. The owner of the shop had a contact number that Khan had given him. The FIA found the number terminated, but the telephone number from which the termination request was made opened out the investigation further. More

Obama’s worst Pakistan nightmare: If the nuclear arsenal falls into the wrong hands

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on January 11, 2009

in Conflict and Pakistan

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David E. Sanger in The New York Times:

To get to the headquarters of the Strategic Plans Division, the branch of the Pakistani government charged with keeping the country’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons away from insurgents trying to overrun the country, you must drive down a rutted, debris-strewn road at the edge of the Islamabad airport, dodging stray dogs and piles of uncollected garbage. Just past a small traffic circle, a tan stone gateway is manned by a lone, bored-looking guard loosely holding a rusting rifle. The gateway marks the entry to Chaklala Garrison, an old British cantonment from the days when officers of the Raj escaped the heat of Delhi for the cooler hills on the approaches to Afghanistan. Pass under the archway, and the poverty and clamor of modern Pakistan disappear.

Chaklala is a comfortable enclave for the country’s military and intelligence services. Inside the gates, officers in the army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, live in trim houses with well-tended lawns. Business is conducted in long, low office buildings, with a bevy of well-pressed adjutants buzzing around. Deep inside the garrison lies the small compound for Strategic Plans, where Khalid Kidwai keeps the country’s nuclear keys. Now 58, Kidwai is a compact man who hides his arch sense of humor beneath a veil of caution, as if he were previewing each sentence to decide if it revealed too much. In the chaos of Pakistan, where the military, the intelligence services and an unstable collection of civilian leaders uneasily share power, he oversees a security structure intended to protect Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from outsiders – Islamic militants, Qaeda scientists, Indian saboteurs and those American commando teams that Pakistanis imagine, with good reason, are waiting just over the horizon in Afghanistan, ready to seize their nuclear treasure if a national meltdown seems imminent.

Pakistan’s new intelligence chief on India, Taliban, terrorism

Published

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on January 9, 2009

in India and Pakistan

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Siddharth Varadarajan on his blog, ‘Reality, one bite at a time:’

Susanne Koelbl of Der Spiegel has a genuine international scoop, an interview with the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency, Maj Gen. Shujaa Pasha, writes

The ISI chief sticks to a sober script throughout but his answer on the Taliban gives the game away. Old habits die hard, and old assets will hopefully never die.

Read the interview in Der Spiegel:

The 57-year-old general, sitting in his third-floor office in Islamabad, is a short, wiry man with carefully parted hair. He smiles. Instead of a military uniform, the commander of Pakistan’s notorious military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is wearing a gray suit and a stylish pink tie, his elbows resting comfortably on a large, walnut desk.

If anyone in Pakistan knows how close the country currently stands to a military conflict with India, it is Lieutenant General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha. “There will not be a war,” he says confidently. “We are distancing ourselves from conflict with India, both now and in general.”

Can Zardari turn down the heat on Pakistan?

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on January 3, 2009

in Pakistan and Politics

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Rageh Omaar in the National:

I was the last television reporter inside the madrassa at the Red Mosque in Islamabad before the Pakistani army surrounded the compound in July 2007. The 10-day standoff marked a turning point in Pakistan’s struggle with militants – the moment when the Taliban-backed insurgency moved from the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan into the capital city and the heart of government. The confrontation ended with the death of the religious leader Abdul Ghazi and many others – the exact death toll was never divulged – and the destruction of the madrassa.

People in Pakistan, as well as the international community, were shocked by the violence of the assault. The incident sparked a fresh wave of disruption inside Pakistan and witnessed the beginning of President Pervez Musharraf’s demise. Until then, he had appeared unassailable to his western allies. He was the man who, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, had overnight turned Pakistan into Washington’s indispensable ally in the overthrow of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan and in the wider war on terror.

Moment of truth for Pakistan’s transition

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on December 5, 2008

in Conflict, India and Pakistan

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India might now do well to resist the temptation to behave as the U.S. did after 9/11, and show the world how a responsible and confident Asian power carries itself even when in pain. Haris Gazdar in the Hindu:

Who knows if the timing of Mumbai had anything to do with the struggle within the Pakistani state, but it is worth remembering that Mr. Musharraf’s coup followed Kargil, which followed Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus yatra to Lahore. Mumbai is relevant to Pakistan’s transition because regardless of any evidence of Pakistani complicity, the policy of reconciliation with India requires that assistance requested should be rendered. The civilian leadership was right to respond positively to India’s request for high-level representation of Pakistan’s secret agencies, and it was wrong to wriggle out of its commitment. The rethink may have been forced by the military’s displeasure.

Nevertheless, the ball is now in the court of the military. By falling in line with the civilian government’s diplomatic effort they will reveal their intention to be on board in the transition.

Who killed Gen. Zia ul-Haq?

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on August 16, 2008

in Pakistan

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Gen. Zia ul-Haq died with several of his generals and the US Ambassador in a mysterious aircraft crash in 1988. The mystery of his death still captures the imagination. James Bone and Zahid Hussain in The Times, UK:

Gen. Zia ul-Haq

This month, General Hameed Gul, the Islamic hardliner who was head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency at the time, suggested that the United States might be responsible for murdering its Cold War ally – even though the US Ambassador and military attaché were also killed.

General Gul told The Times that the Pakistani President was killed in a conspiracy involving a “foreign power”.

The Times has uncovered a far less complicated explanation. According to US investigators, a mechanical problem, known to be relatively common with the C-130 military transport aircraft, was to blame. “There were a lot of conspiracy theories and there still are, understandably in that part of the world,” Robert Oakley, who took over as US Ambassador after the crash and helped to handle the politically fraught investigation, told The Times. “

Spy games

Published

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on July 25, 2008

in Pakistan

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The CIA and its partner in Islamabad, the ISI, are trapped in a very complicated marriage. From The New York Times:

Washington: As they complete their training at “The Farm,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s base in the Virginia tidewater, young agency recruits are taught a lesson they are expected never to forget during assignments overseas: there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.

Foreign spy services, even those of America’s closest allies, will try to manipulate you. So you had better learn how to manipulate them back.

But most CIA veterans agree that no relationship between the spy agency and a foreign intelligence service is quite as byzantine, or as maddening, as that between the CIA and Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

[Photo: Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, (with Pervez Musharraf, left) used to run the ISI.]

Seven things India should not do in order to help Pakistan

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on February 12, 2008

in Pakistan

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Manoj Joshi in Mail Today:

The general elections may be around the corner, but Pakistan continues to careen dangerously out of control. Specific incidents and events are not the issue, but the totality of developments that have been taking place, beginning last year.
A convenient date would be March 9, 2007, the fateful day on which President Pervez Musharraf began his ill-advised campaign to edge out Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from the country’s Supreme Court. This enraged the community of lawyers, who have since led the civil protest movement against Musharraf.

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The boomerang effect

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on January 22, 2008

in Pakistan

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Editorial in the New York Times on President Pervez Musharraf’s failure to fight extremism, despite $10 billion in American aid since 9/11

For more than a decade, Pakistan’s powerful and secretive intelligence service has fueled a treacherous dynamic in South Asia by supporting Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now comes the distressing, but not surprising, news that the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, has lost control of some of these Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked networks. The militants have turned on their former patrons and helped carry out a record number of suicide attacks inside Pakistan in 2007, including possibly the one that killed Benazir Bhutto.

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The military millionaires who control Pakistan Inc

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on January 17, 2008

in Pakistan

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Pakistan’s economy is dominated by a ruthless business conglomerate that owns everything from factories and bakeries to farmland and golf courses: the army. Elliot Wilson in The Spectator

In itself this wasn’t particularly unusual. With 620,000 soldiers, Pakistan boasts the world’s seventh-largest standing army, but its senior officers long ago realised the perks to be gained from commercial ventures. Since independence in 1947, the army has steadily intertwined itself into Pakistan’s economy: so much so that it’s hard to tell where the military stops and any semblance of free-market capitalism begins.

All too often, there is no dividing line. In her 2007 book Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy Dr Ayesha Siddiqa exposes the rampant commercialism pervading every aspect of the country’s military forces, until recently headed by President Pervaiz Musharraf. Dr Siddiqa, a former researcher with the country’s naval forces, estimates the military’s net worth at more than £10 billion – roughly four times the total foreign direct investment generated by Islamabad in 2007.

Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency

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on January 15, 2008

in Pakistan

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Pakistani militants have turned against their trainers, write Carlotta Gall and David Rohde in the New York Times

Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

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