The intelligence community of Pakistan, which was once described by the Frontier Post of Peshawar(May 18,1994) as its "invisible government" and by the Dawn of Karachi (April 25,1994) as"our secret godfathers" consists of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the ISI. While the IBcomes under the Interior Minister, the ISI is part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Each wing of theArmed Forces has also its own intelligence directorate for tactical MI.
The IB is the oldest dating from Pakistan's creation in 1947. It was formed by the division of thepre-partition IB of British India. Its unsatisfactory military intelligence (MI) performance in thefirst Indo-Pak war of 1947-48 over Jammu & Kashmir (J & K) led to the decision in 1948 to create theISI, manned by officers from the three Services, to specialise in the collection, analysis and assessment ofexternal intelligence, military and non-military, with the main focus on India.
Initially, the ISI had no role in the collection of internal political intelligence except inPakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and the Northern Areas (NA--Gilgit and Baltistan). Ayub Khan, suspectingthe loyalty and objectivity of the Bengali police officers in the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of theIB in Dacca, the capital of the then East Pakistan, entrusted the ISI with the responsibility for thecollection of internal political intelligence in East Pakistan.
Similarly, Z.A.Bhutto, when faced with a revolt by Balochi nationalists in Balochistan after the liberationof Bangladesh in 1971, suspected the loyalty of the Balochi police officers of the SIB in Quetta and made themilitary officers of the ISI responsible for internal intelligence in Balochistan.
Zia-ul-Haq expanded the internal intelligence responsibilities of the ISI by making it responsible not onlyfor the collection of intelligence about the activities of the Sindhi nationalist elements in Sindh and formonitoring the activities of Shia organisations all over the country after the success of the IranianRevolution in 1979, but also for keeping surveillance on the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) ofMrs.Benazir Bhutto and its allies which had started the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in theearly 1980s. The ISI's Internal Political Division had Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers ofMrs.Benazir Bhutto, assassinated through poisoning in the French Riviera in the middle of 1985, in an attemptto intimidate her into not returning to Pakistan for directing the movement against Zia, but she refused to beintimidated and returned to Pakistan.
Even in the 1950s, Ayub Khan had created in the ISI a Covert Action Division for assisting the insurgentsin India's North-East and its role was expanded in the late 1960s to assist the Sikh Home Rule Movement ofLondon-based Charan Singh Panchi, which was subsequently transformed into the so-called Khalistan Movement,headed by Jagjit Singh Chauhan. A myriad organisations operating amongst the members of the Sikhdiaspora in Europe, the US and Canada joined the movement at the instigation and with the assistance of theISI.
During the Nixon Administration in the US, when Dr.Henry Kissinger was the National Security Adviser, theintelligence community of the US and the ISI worked in tandem in guiding and assisting the so-called Khalistanmovement in the Punjab. The visits of prominent Sikh Home Rule personalities to the US before the BangladeshLiberation War in December, 1971, to counter Indian allegations of violations of the human rights of theBengalis of East Pakistan through counter-allegations of violations of the human rights of the Sikhs in Punjabwere jointly orchestrated by the ISI, the US intelligence and some officials of the US National SecurityCouncil (NSC) Secretariat, then headed by Dr.Kissinger.
This covert colloboration between the ISI and the US intelligence community was also directed atdiscrediting Mrs.Indira Gandhi's international stature by spreading disinformation about alleged naval basefacilities granted by her to the USSR in Vizag and the Andaman & Nicobar, the alleged attachment of KGBadvisers to the then Lt.Gen.Sunderji during Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984,and so on. This collaboration petered out after her assassination in October,1984.
The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA. A number of officers from the ISI's Covert Action Division received training in the US and many covert actionexperts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by usingthe Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers. Osama bin Laden, MirAimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef andhis accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of theMuslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistanwere the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.
The encouragement of opium cultivation and heroin production and smuggling was also an offshoot of thisco-operation. The CIA, through the ISI, promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order tomake the Soviet troops heroin addicts. Once the Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988, these heroin smugglersstarted smuggling the drugs to the West, with the complicity of the ISI. The heroin dollars have largelycontributed to preventing the Pakistani economy from collapsing and enabling the ISI to divert the jehadihordes from Afghanistan to J & K after 1989 and keeping them well motivated and well-equipped.
Even before India's Pokhran I nuclear test of 1974, the ISI had set up a division for the clandestineprocurement of military nuclear technology from abroad and, subsequently, for the clandestine purchase andshipment of missiles and missile technology from China and North Korea. This division, which was fundedpartly by donations from Saudi Arabia and Libya, partly by concealed allocations in Pakistan's State budgetand partly by heroin dollars, was instrumental in helping Pakistan achieve a military nuclear and deliverycapability despite its lack of adequate human resources with the required expertise.
Thus, the ISI, which was originally started as essentially an agency for the collection of externalintelligence, has developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procurement of deniedtechnologies as well.
The IB, which was patterned after the IB of British India, used to be a largely police organisation, butthe post of Director-General (DG), IB, is no longer tenable only by police officers as it was in the past. Serving and retired military officers are being appointed in increasing numbers to senior posts in the IB,including to the post of DG.
In recent years, there has been a controversy in Pakistan as to who really controls the ISI and when wasits internal Political Division set up. Testifying before the Supreme Court on June 16,1997, in apetition filed by Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan, former chief of the Pakistan Air Force, challenging thelegality of the ISI's Political Division accepting a donation of Rs.140 million from a bank for use againstPPP candidates during elections, Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), claimedthat though the ISI was manned by serving army officers and was part of the MOD, it reported to the PrimeMinister and not to the COAS and that its internal Political Division was actually set up by the lateZ.A.Bhutto in 1975.
Many Pakistani analysts have challenged this and said that the ISI, though de jure under the PrimeMinister, had always been controlled de facto by the COAS and that its internal Political Division had been inexistence at least since the days of Ayub Khan, if not earlier.
The ISI is always headed by an Army officer of the rank of Lt.Gen., who is designated as theDirector-General (DG). The present DG is Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed. He is assisted by three DeputyDirectors-General (DDGs), designated as DDG (Political), DDG-I (External) and DDG-II (Administration). It isdivided into the following Divisions:
- The Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) -- Responsible for all Open Sources Intelligence (OSINT) and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) collection, insidePakistan as well as abroad.
- The Joint Counter-Intelligence (CI) Bureau: Responsible for CI inside Pakistan as well as abroad.
- The Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau (JSIB): Responsible for all communications intelligence inside Pakistan and abroad.
- Joint Intelligence North (JIN): Responsible for the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir and the control of Afghanistan through the Taliban. Controls the Army of Islam, consisting of organisations such as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Al Badr and Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM).Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, presently a Corps Commander at Lahore, is the clandestine Chief of Staff of the Army ofIslam. It also controls all opium cultivation and heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani andAfghan territory.
- Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous (JIM): Responsible for covert actions in other parts of the world and for the clandestine procurement of nuclear andmissile technologies.
Maj Gen (retd) Sultan Habib, an operative of this Division, who had distinguished himself in the clandestineprocurement and theft of nuclear material while posted as the Defence Attache in the Pakistani Embassy inMoscow from 1991 to 93, with concurrent accreditation to the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Poland andCzechoslovakia, has recently been posted as Ambassador to North Korea to oversee the clandestine nuclear andmissile co-operation between North Korea and Pakistan.
After completing his tenure in Moscow, he had co-ordinated the clandestine shipping of missiles from NorthKorea, the training of Pakistani experts in the missile production and testing facilities of North Korea andthe training of North Korean scientists in the nuclear establishments of Pakistan through Capt. (retd)Shafquat Cheema,
Third Secretary and acting head of mission, in the Pakistani Embassy in North Korea, from 1992 to 96. Before Maj.Gen. Sultan Habib's transfer to ISI headquarters from Moscow, the North Korean missile andnuclear co-operation project was handled by Maj.Gen.Shujjat from the Baluch Regiment, who worked in theclandestine procurement division of the ISI for five years.
On Capt.Cheema's return to headquarters in 1996, the ISI discovered that in addition to acting as the liaisonofficer of the ISI with the nuclear and missile establishments in North Korea, he was also earning money fromthe Iranian and the Iraqi intelligence by helping them in their clandestine nuclear and missile technology andmaterial procurement not only from North Korea, but also from Russia and the CARs.
On coming to know of the ISI enquiry into his clandestine assistance to Iran and Iraq, he fled to Xinjiang andsought political asylum there, but the Chinese arrested him and handed him over to the ISI. Whathappened to him subsequently is not known. Capt.Cheema initially got into the ISI and got himself postedto the Pakistani Embassy in North Korea with the help of Col.(retd) Ghulam Sarwar Cheema of the PPP. - Joint Intelligence X (JIX): Responsible for administration and accounts.
- Joint Intelligence Technical (JIT): Responsible for the collection of all Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) other than communications intelligenceand for research and development in gadgetry.
- The Special Wing: Responsible for all intelligence training in the Armed Forces in the Defence Services Intelligence Academy andfor liaison with foreign intelligence and security agencies.
Since 1948, there have been three instances when the DG, ISI, was at daggers drawn with the COAS. Thefirst instance was during the first tenure of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister (1988 to 1990). Toreduce the powers of the ISI, to re-organise the intelligence community and to enhance the powers of thepolice officers in the IB, she discontinued the practice of appointing a serving Lt.Gen, recommended by theCOAS, as the DG, ISI, and, instead appointed Maj.Gen. (retd) Shamsur Rahman Kallue, a retired officer close toher father, as the DG in replacement of Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul in 1989 and entrusted him with the task of winding upthe internal intelligence collection role of the ISI and civilianising the IB and the ISI.
Writing in the Nation of July 31,1997, Brig.A.R.Siddiqui, who had served as the Press RelationsOfficer in the army headquarters in the 1970s, said that this action of hers marked the beginning of hertrouble with Gen.Beg, the then COAS, which ultimately led to her dismissal in August,1990. Gen.Beg madeMaj.Gen.Kallue persona non grata (PNG), stopped inviting him to the Corps Commanders conferences andtransferred the responsibility for the proxy war in J & K and for assisting the Sikh extremists in thePunjab from the ISI to the Army intelligence directorate working under the Chief of the General Staff (CGS).
The second instance was during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1990-93), who appointed as the DG, ISI,Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, a fundamentalist Kashmiri officer, though he was not recommended by the COAS for the post. Lt.Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then COAS, made Lt.Gen.Nasir PNG and stopped inviting him to the CorpsCommanders conferences. Despite this, Lt.Gen.Janjua returned to the ISI the responsibility for the proxywar in J & K and for assisting the Sikh extremists.
During her second tenure (1993-96), Mrs. Bhutto avoided any conflict with Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar and Gen.Jehangir Karamat, the Chiefs of the Army Staff in succession, on the appointment of the DG,ISI. Heraction in transferring part of the responsibility for the operations in Afghanistan, including the creationand the handling of the Taliban, from the ISI to the Interior Ministry headed by Maj.Gen. (retd) NasirullahBabar, who handled Afghan operations in the ISI during the tenure of her father, did not create any frictionwith the army since she had ordered that Lt.Gen. Pervez Musharraf, then Director-General of MilitaryOperations, should be closely associated by Maj.Gen.Babar in the Afghan operations.
However, sections of the ISI, close to Farooq Leghari, the then President of Pakistan, had Murtaza Bhutto,the surviving brother of Mrs.Benazir, assassinated outside his house in Karachi in September,1996, with thecomplicity of some local police officers and started a disinformation campaign in the media blaming her andher husband, Asif Zirdari, for the murder. This campaign paved the way for her dismissal by Leghari inNovember,1996.
The third instance was during the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1997-99) when his action in appointingLt.Gen. Ziauddin, an engineer, as the DG,ISI, over-riding the objection of Gen.Musharraf led to the firstfriction between the two. Gen.Musharraf transferred Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, the then DDG,ISI, on hispromotion as Lt.Gen. to the GHQ as the CGS and transferred the entire Joint Intelligence North (JIN),responsible for covert actions in India and Afghanistan to the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI)to be supervised by Lt.Gen.Aziz.
It is believed that the JIN continues to function under the DGMI even after the appointment ofLt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed as the DG, ISI, after the overthrow of Sharif on October 12,1999. Gen.Musharraf, asthe COAS, made Lt.Gen.Ziauddin PNG and stopped inviting him to the Corps Commanders' conferences. Hekept Lt.Gen.Ziauddin totally out of the picture in the planning and implementation of the Kargil operations.
After the Kargil war, Nawaz Sharif had sent Lt.Gen.Ziauddin to Washington on a secret visit to inform theClinton Administration officials of his concerns over the continued loyalty of Gen.Musharraf. After hisreturn from the US, Lt.Gen.Ziauddin went to Kandahar, as ordered by Sharif, to pressurise Mullah MohammadOmar, the Amir of the Taliban, to stop assisting the anti-Shia Sipah Sahaba Pakistan and to co-operate withthe US in the arrest and deportation of bin Laden. On coming to know of this, Gen. Musharraf sentLt.Gen.Aziz to Kandahar to tell the Amir that he should not carry out the instructions of Lt.Gen.Ziauddin andthat he should follow only his (Lt.Gen.Aziz's) instructions.
These instances would show that whenever an elected leadership was in power, the COAS saw to it that theelected Prime Minister did not have effective control over the ISI and that the ISI was marginalised if itshead showed any loyalty to the elected Prime Minister.
In their efforts to maintain law and order in Pakistan and weaken nationalist and religious elements andpolitical parties disliked by the army, the ISI and the army followed a policy of divide and rule. Afterthe success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, to keep the Shias of Pakistan under control, the ISIencouraged the formation of ant-Shia Sunni extremist organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba .
When the Shias of Gilgit rose in revolt in 1988, Musharraf used bin Laden and his tribal hordes from theNorth-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to suppress thembrutally. When the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM---now called the Muttahida Qaumi Movement) of AltafHussain rose in revolt in the late 1980s in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, the ISI armed sections ofthe Sindhi nationalist elements to kill the Mohajirs. It then created a split between Mohajirs of UttarPradesh origin (in Altaf Hussain's MQM) and those of Bihar origin in the splinter anti-Altaf Hussain groupcalled MQM (Haquiqi--meaning real). In Altaf Hussain's MQM itself, the ISI unsuccessfully tried tocreate a wedge between the Sunni and Shia migrants from Uttar Pradesh.
