Vikram Sood - They always refer to it in hushed tones, both in awe and fear, and never by the full name. “The Agency” is how the nationalists in Pakistan or any onewho has earned the wrath of this organisation, call the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, herself a victim of nume-rous murderous ISI conspiracies, described it as “a State within a State,” — which it is and which one of its former chiefs does not hesitate to admit. Other similar honorifics have been bestowed upon this powerful agency over time and not without reason. The most commonly used being “Invisible Government” or Pakistan’s “Secret Godfathers.”

Pakistan’s ISI, created in 1948, came into its own during the US-sponsored Afghan jehad against the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan in 1979. The Pakistan Army and its intelligence had been smarting in the aftermath of 1971 and General Zia-ul-Haq, having hanged ZA Bhutto, was a persona non grata in the West. As Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul that Christmas in 1979, Zia the pariah became Zia the friend along with all the country’s instrumentalities. A tripartite relationship between the Americans, the Saudis and the Pakistanis blossomed as the Afghan jehad began to take shape. This was the beginning of the world’s first State-sponsored global privatised campaign of violence against another State.

The war cry was ‘get the Evil Empire’ and the ISI took full advantage of this. But the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had abdicated its policy on Afghanistan to the ISI and Pakistani agenda in Afghanistan became the CIA’s own. It did not seem to worry too much about the ISI’s or Pakistan’s intentions in the post-jehad phase. The relationship between the two agencies warmed up and the CIA chief, William Casey, regularly briefed General Zia about Indian military deployments and a grateful ISI chief Gen Akhtar Rehman presented a $ 7,000 carpet to Casey. The bonding was mutual and satisfying. The ISI had matured.

The origins of the ISI were fairly mundane. There were the usual reasons — the Pakistan Military Intelligence had failed in the 1947-48 invasion of Kashmir. There was need for a new agency manned by officers from the three wings of the armed forces. The charter was to collect and assess external intelligence, both military and non-military, with India as the main focus of attention. This was well intended but the continued military suzerainty or direct control in Pakistan and suspicions about ethnic minorities gradually gave the ISI an ever-increasing role in Pakistan’s internal politics.

In the early days, the ISI was given an internal role in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. It was a matter of time before the ISI would begin to get a greater role inside Pakistan. There were suspicions about the loyalty and integrity of Bengali officers in the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau operating in distant East Pakistan and Bengali politicians. General Ayub Khan asked the ISI to take over the responsibility of covering internal political intelligence in East Pakistan. There were similar suspicions about the loyalties of politicians in western Pakistan. The Baluch were always suspected and when the revolt in Baluchistan gathered steam in the 70s, Baluch police officers came under the scanner. The Pakistan Army, suspicious of everything not directly controlled by it, worked on ZA Bhutto to hand over the charge of internal intelligence to the ISI. Besides, it needed a ‘victory’ in the post 1971 era to re-establish itself and Baluchistan was the perfect arena.

Pakistan’s brief flirtation with democracy ended in 1977 when Zia took over, locked up Bhutto and had him murdered by a pliant judiciary. Relations between the Bhutto family, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Army soured forever. A paranoid Zia moved the ISI into Sindh to cover not only the Bhuttos, but also Sindhi nationalists and the Shias following the Iranian revolution in 1979. The PPP campaign led by the Bhutto ladies, Nusrat and Benazir, gathered momentum and the Movement for Restoration of Democracy was seen as a threat by Zia. Surveillance of all political parties in Pakistan was therefore considered necessary and the ISI, already the favourites in the Afghan campaign, had become the master. Not above skulduggery of the worst kind, the ISI arranged to have Benazir’s brother, Shah Nawaz, poisoned to death when he was in Cannes in 1985. But the lady was not intimidated; nor again when they had her elder brother, Murtaza, assassinated outside his house in Karachi in September 1996. At that time Benazir was prime minister in her second term.

Earlier, the Bhutto and ISI/Army animosity was one of the reasons that led Benazir to take the unheard of step of sacking her ISI chief, Hameed Gul, in 1989, and appoint a Bhutto loyalist, Lieutenant General Shamsur Rehman Kallue. This was the beginning of an open rift between her and Army chief Aslam Beg. The pms’ ISI bosses were completely ostracised from attending meetings of Pakistan’s super-cabinets — the meetings of the corps commanders. They, thus, had no access to real information. Nawaz’s ISI chief, Ziauddin, had no clue about the Kargil operation being planned by Musharraf. Nominally, the ISI chief was supposed to report to the prime minister, but in reality he was always the Army chief’s man. Pakistan Army chiefs have never hesitated to countermand political instructions. When Nawaz Sharif sent his ISI boss Lieutenant General Ziauddin to Kandahar to request Mullah Omar to call off assistance to the Sunni sectarian militia, the Sipah-e-Sahaba, Musharraf instructed Omar not to follow these instructions. Whenever Pakistan prime ministers tried to have their own man as the ISI chief, the Army ensured that it was the prime minister who lost his job. Nawaz Sharif had tried to mess with the ISI and the Army and he eventually had to go, for he had violated the first commandment.

Domestic political gamesmanship has become a way of life for the ISI. The idea was to keep the political parties divided, the nationalists and religious groups were also manipulated so that opposition and dissent were stifled. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement was split, religious parties were encouraged to weaken nationalist forces, sectarian mafia was encouraged and elections were rigged. This has become a fine art in the ISI where even Sunni organisations are split periodically to prevent any single organisation from becoming too powerful. Assassinations of recalcitrant leaders of these organisations are the favoured method of terminating arrangements. Afzal Beg had no hesitation in accepting that Rs 140 million, had been taken from the Mehran Bank to plot against the PPP in the elections. The Army is to remain supreme domestically and the ISI is the handmaiden.

The ISI has played a crucial role in Pakistan’s quest for the nuclear bomb, in association with the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International, to be in league with many of the well-known arms smugglers like Viktor Bout, and subsequently in the elaborate AQ Khan caper. The Afghan jehad enriched the ISI professionally and personally where narcotics smuggling added to the ISI and personal coffers. Its assistance to India-specific terrorist outfits justified as jehad against the ‘infidel’ is much too well documented and known in India but the ethos of these organisations has rubbed off on their managers in the ISI. There is an internal struggle also being played out in Pakistan. Any attempt by Musharraf to control these jehadi Frankenstein’s at the insistence of the US is proving difficult. The murder of Daniel Pearl, the attempts on Musharraf’s life, the targeted killings of professionals, Shias and Barelvis have trails leading to the ISI’s doorsteps. The message is for the General of Enlightened Moderation.

While on India, the ISI consists of chest-thumping hardliners, internally it is perceived as the essence of Punjabi domination. Pakistan establishment as represented by the ISI is far too much down the radical path for others to be comfortable or for it to turn back. The ISI has acquired this control on the body-politic of Pakistan because the Pakistan Army was not willing to trust its politicians, the elite in the Punjab did not want to lose their stranglehold and were willing to play along with forces of control in the name of a strong Pakistan against enemy India.

A Pakistan rapidly being guided into a vortex of extremist beliefs is the result of this unbridled control by its intelligence agencies.

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