Another Boss For ISI

The General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army announced on the night ofSeptember 29, 2008, that Major-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director-Generalof Military Operations (DGMO), has been promoted as Lt General and posted as theDirector-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in place of  LtGen. Nadeem Taj, who has been transferred and posted as the Commander of the XXXCorps based at Gujranwala.

The change at the top of the ISI was part of a reshuffle involving 14 seniorofficers of the Army initiated by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of theArmy Staff (COAS), after meeting Yousef Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister, shortlyafter Kayani's  return from a week-long visit to China. The announcement ofthe changes, which were projected by a spokesman of the army as routine changesnecessitated by the impending retirement of some senior officers, was made whenPresident Asif Ali Zardari had not yet returned from his visit to the US. Underthe changes introduced by Gen.(retired) Pervez Musharraf, when he was thePresident and the COAS, the powers for the approval of all promotions andpostings in the ranks of Major-General and above are with the President. TheCOAS is competent to order all promotions and postings upto the rank ofBrigadier. Even though an impression has been sought to be given that allpromotions and postings announced on September 29, 2008, were made with theapproval of or in consultation with Prime Minister Gilani, it is very likelythat Zardari's approval had been obtained either before he left for New York or while he was there.

Among other important changes, Lt Gen Yousuf, present Vice-Chief of GeneralStaff, has been appointed as Corps Commander Bahawalpur in place of  Lt GenRaza Khan, who  has been shifted as DG Joint Staff Headquarters. Maj-GeneralJaved Iqbal, presently posted as GOC Jhelum, has been appointed asDirector-General Military Operations (DG MO). Commander 10 Corps (Rawalpindi) LtGen Mohsin Kamal has been moved to General Headquarters as Military Secretary(MS) and in his place newly promoted Lt-General Tahir Mehmood has been appointedas Commander Rawalpindi Corps.

Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad has been appointed as the VCGS and the  newlypromoted Lt General Mustafa Khan has been posted as the  Chief of theGeneral Staff (CGS) in place of Lt Gen Salahuddin Satti, who will retire fromthe  Army next week. The reshuffle involved the promotion of  sevenMajors-General  to the rank of Lieutenants-General. They are Major GeneralTahir Mahmood (Infantry - present Commander Special Services Group),Major-General Shahid Iqbal (Infantry - Chief Instructor National DefenceUniversity), Major General Tanvir Tahir (EME - DG C4Is), Major-General ZahidHussain (Artillery - Commandant Pakistan Military Academy), Major General AhmadShuja Pasha (Infantry - DG Military Operations), Major-General Mohammad MustafaKhan (Armoured Corps - ISI), and Major-General Ayyaz Saleem Rana (Armoured Corps- ISI). Major-Generals Nusrat Naeem (ISI), Asif Akhtar (ISI), Khalid Jaffari(Anti-Narcotics Force)), Shoukat Sultan (GOC Lahore) and Mohammad Saddique (GHQ- former acting Chairman National Accountability Bureau ) have been superseded.They will, however, continue to serve as Majors-General.

Of the five  senior officers in the ISI--one of the rank of Lt.Generaland four  of the rank of Maj.Gen--Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj has been moved out,Maj.Gen.Mustafa Khan has been promoted as Lt.Gen. and appointed as the CGS, whoacts as the eyes and ears of the COAS in the GHQ, and Maj.Gen.Ayyaz Saleem hasbeen promoted and posted  as the  Chairman of the heavy industrycomplex at Taxila.Majs.Gen.Nusrat Naeem and Asif Akhtar have been superseded.They have been allowed to continue till their superannuation as Majs.Gen., butit is not known whether they will continue in the ISI or will be shifted out.Among other superseded Majs-Gen  is Mohammad Saddique, who used to be inthe National Accountability Bureau and was handling the corruption cases againstBenazir Bhutto and Zardari.

Gen.Kayani will have in the important posts of the CGS, the DG, ISI, and Corps Commander, Rawalpindi, persons, who owe their promotion as Lts Gen tohim and not to Musharraf. The CGS, the DG ISI and the Corps Commander Rawalpindiconstitute an informal  triumvirate without whom, according to conventionalwisdom, no COAS can stage a coup. The persons appointed to these posts as wellas to the post of the DGMO are generally viewed as confirmed loyalists of theCOAS.

Lt Gen.Nadeen Taj, who is distantly related to Musharraf, served as the DGISI for less than a year. He took over as the DG, ISI, on October 8, 2007,afterhis promotion to the rank of Lt.Gen. Till then, he served as the Commandant,Pakistan Military Academy, with the rank of Maj.Gen.

Lt Gen.Pasha, who was promoted from the rank of  Brigadier to that ofMaj.Gen. by Musharraf in January, 2003, is due to retire on September 29,2012.He has commanded an infantry brigade, a mechanised infantry brigade and aninfantry division  and has served as the Chief Instructor of the Commandand Staff College.In  2001-2002, as a Brigadier, he served as a Contingentand Sector Commander with  the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone. In October,2007, Musharraf agreed to a request from  Ban Ki-moon, the UNSecretary-General, to relieve Pasha from the post of the DGMO so that he couldbe appointed as  the  Military Adviser, Department of PeacekeepingOperations, in the UN headquarters, in place of  General Per Arne Five ofNorway. An announcement on his posting in the UN headquarters was also made bythe office of the UN Secretary-General.

But, this posting did not materialise. In view of the Swat Valley in theNorth-West Frontier Province (NWFP) coming under the control of the Taliban-affiliatedTehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi  (TNSM) headed by Maulana Fazlullah, Musharraf ordered a specialmilitary operation against the TNSM and asked Pasha in his capacity as the DGMOto co-ordinate it. Pasha got Sufi Mohammad, former chief of the TNSM, who was indetention since 2002, released and sought his help in the operation. InJanuary,2008, Pasha announced that his troops had defeated the TNSM and freedthe Swat Valley from the control of the TNSM. His claim came to haunt himshortly thereafter when the TNSM, which had withdrawn into the hills, staged acome-back and re-established its control over large areas of the Swat. Fightingthere is still going on. In August,2008, shortly after the return of Gilani froma visit to Washington DC, Gen.Kayani ordered another special operation againstthe Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al Qaeda in the Bajaur Agency of theFederally-Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and asked Pasha to co-ordinate it too.Despite repeated claims of the Army  having inflicted heavy casualties onthe TTP and Al Qaeda, the two have been putting up a determined fight againstthe Army and the Frontier Corps .

The Dawn of Karachi reported on September 29 as follows:"Military operations against militants have been a mixed bag of successesand setbacks; however no timeframe could be given with regard to the ongoingcampaigns, sources in the military said. ‘It is a continual operation. It isnot going to end in 2008 and it is not going to end in 2009. Don’t beoptimistic, as far as the timeframe is concerned. It is a different ground andit will take some time’, military sources said in a media briefing."Thus, as the DGMO, Pasha has had a colourless record. That, despite this, he hasbeen posted as the DG, ISI, shows his closeness and loyalty to Kayani, who hadtaken him for his secret meeting with Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman, US JointChiefs of Staff, on board a US Aircraft Carrier, on August 26,2008, and not LtGen.Nadeem Taj.

The removal of Nadeem Taj has come in the wake of reports about US concernsand unhappiness over the alleged role of the ISI in the attempt to blow up theIndian Embassy in Kabul on July 7,2008, and over leakage of information sharedby the US intelligence with the ISI to the Taliban. President Bush was reportedto have taken up this matter with Prime Minister Gilani, when he visitedWashington DC in the last week of July as well as with Zardari whom he met inthe margins of the current  UN General Assembly session. While removing Tajfrom the post of DG,ISI, Kayani has taken care not to create a feeling ofhumiliation in him by posting him as the Commander of an important Corps, but asthe Corps Commander at Gujranwala he will not have much to do with Afghanistanor the ongoing military operations in the tribal belt. Kayani has removed himfrom any role in the operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The removal of Taj from the ISI has also come in the wake of reports ofChinese unhappiness as expressed to Kayani during his week-long visit to Chinafrom September 21,2008, over the lack of a sense of urgency  shown by theISI in rescuing the two Chinese engineers kidnapped by the TTP on August 29.They were working for a Chinese cellular company in the Dir area of the NWFP.The TTP kidnapped them while they were travelling and removed them to the Swatvalley. The TTP has been demanding the release  of over 130 Taliban memberspresently in the custody of the Pakistani security agencies in return for theirrelease.

The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad and Chinese engineers working in Pakistanhave also been reportedly expressing their unhappiness over the lack of a senseof urgency shown by the Gilani Government as a whole in getting the Chineseengineers released. They have been pointing out as to how Musharraf always gavethe first priority to requests from China for assistance  and to thecommando action ordered by him on the Lal Masjid of Islamabad when some of thestudents, including Uighurs, in the madrasas of the masjid, kidnapped someChinese women working in Islamabad, and comparing this to the lethargic responseof Gilani and Zardari. They feel that Gilani and Zardari have been giving agreater importance to US interests and concerns  than to  those of theChinese.

In a report on the subject carried by the News  of September 24,2008, Rahimullah Yusufzai, the well-informed Pakistani journalist, said asfollows: " A Chinese journalist, who requested anonymity, said the PakistanGovernment hasn't shown any urgency in getting the two young engineers freed. Herecalled  how the issue of the two Chinese engineers kidnapped by latePakistani Taliban commander Abdullah Mahsud's men in South Waziristan in 2004was resolved within a few days. "The recent case of kidnapping of Chineseengineers hasn't been resolved even after more than three weeks. We were hopingour citizens would have been freed by now, he said."

Before his election as the President, Zardari had stated that his firstofficial visit as the President would be to China to underline the importanceattached by him to Pakistan's relations with China. He did not keep his word andinstead went on a private visit to the United Arab Emirates and the UK and thenon an official visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session.Pakistani officials have been explaining  this away by claiming that hisvisit to New York was not a bilateral visit to the US and that his firstofficial bilateral visit would still be to China.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies.