Rename it if you must

The fact is all agencies such as CIA, RAW, are the same, except for interfering in politics, which only the ISI does.

First off, my deep appreciation to the editors of this newspaper for allowing columnists to differ with/write ripostes to fellow columnists just like all well-respected newspapers of the world. This makes for openness, vigorous debate and gives readers an alternative viewpoint on the same pages which, sadly, no other newspaper in this country allows. Respect.

And now to Air Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry’s “Why a ‘bloody civilian’ cannot be at the ISI” (January 2). He starts off by saying: “It was meant to assist the military — yes, the military, and hence the Inter-Services nomenclature — in providing intelligence about perceived threats to the mission in war.” Disingenuous to say the least but I am glad he has used the past-tense: “was meant to...”.

Many years have passed since the setting up of the ISI and we have seen too many of its shenanigans embarrass the country no end to let this observation pass without comment. For just one, did the running of Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai of the Kashmir American Council (KAC) out of Virginia/Washington DC have anything to do with “providing intelligence about perceived threats to the mission in war”?

Surely, Chaudhry Sahib knows that Fai has confessed to being an ISI asset and while he has been accused of receiving millions of dollars, has admitted only last month to having “concealed the transfer of $3.5 million” from the authorities. He has also forfeited his rights to $142,851.32 which were confiscated from him when he was raided by the FBI. Mission in war, this?

An aside: I needed no further confirmation about who Fai actually was and who he was working for when I read the transcript of an email (I ask you!) sent to Fai from his handler and published in the press. Apparently the boss of the section that was running Fai went by the code-name of ‘Akbar’. The email read: “... and please send that computer (laptop) case as soon as possible; Akbar is eating my head”!

Chaudhry Sahib goes on to say that MI5; the BND; the DGSE; CIA and RAW are “arms of their respective civilian political governments and hence have civilian bosses”. Excuse me, but does the ISI not deal with exactly these very agencies, whether it is the CIA or MI5 or any of the others? Indeed, in the case of RAW, who does the ISI blame for queering the pitch for Pakistan in Afghanistan and Balochistan? RAW, no?

Who is the CIA chief’s chief interlocutor when he visits Pakistan if not the DG ISI? Who is the DG ISI’s chief interlocutor when he visits the United States if not the Director of the CIA? All of these agencies carry out strategic and counter intelligence so how is the ISI any different? The fact of the matter is that the remit of all the agencies named is the same, except for interfering in politics, that is, which right only the ISI arrogates to itself.

Chaudhry Sahib goes on: “Come 1973; along with the birth of a new Constitution came the repositioning of the ISI under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. That is also when its political wing was set up.” Wrong.

In a definitive study The ISI and the War on Terrorism by Professor Shawn Gregory of the University of Bradford in January 2008: “The Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI] was formed in 1948 by the British Army Officer Major General William Cawthorne, then serving as the new state of Pakistan’s Army Deputy Chief of Staff. The ISI was established within the Pakistan Army to supplement the existing Military Intelligence [MI] as a means to address the lack of inter-service intelligence co-operation which had proven so disastrous for Pakistan in the 1947 Indo-Pak war.”

“Trained from its early days by UK’s Military Intelligence, and a little later by the CIA and, for a short spell, by the French SDECE, the ISI originally had no role beyond that of military intelligence-gathering except in relation to the disputed region in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir and the Northern areas of Gilgit and Baltistan.

“The assumption of martial law in Pakistan for this first time in 1958 under General Ayub Khan brought the ISI into the political realm. It was tasked by Ayub with three roles which continue to define it: (a) to safeguard Pakistan’s interests, (b) to monitor political opposition, and (c) to sustain military rule in Pakistan. It is clear from these functions that the ISI from 1958, if not before, viewed its raison d’etre first and foremost in terms of the Pakistan military rather than in relation to any broader concept of the defence and security of the nation-state or of the people of Pakistan.

“Moreover, Ayub Khan’s formulation gave the ISI primacy amongst the other intelligence agencies in Pakistan — the MI and the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB) — because it combined in the one agency the dual roles of internal and external intelligence. Unlike the UK’s MI5 and MI6 or the US’s FBI and CIA, the ISI faces no equivalent turf war with a powerful internal rival, and is thus able to integrate the internal and external facets of its work with profound implications for the way it operates and the power it is able to exercise within Pakistan and outside it”. So there.

Chaudhry Sahib also mentions the planned mutiny in the armed forces (1972-73) and says the “military intelligence agencies acted to save a political government”. I would add ‘and the necks of the senior ranks of the armed forces, principally the army who were for the chop earlier than the ‘bloody civilians’.’

Another aside: As I said at the time too (1973), here was a bunch of officers who could not ensure the proper training of their commands resulting in their pitiful performance in the just-concluded war having pretences of becoming ministers and prime ministers and presidents. Thank God they didn’t succeed. What a disaster THAT would have been!

Rename it if you have to, but let a ‘bloody civilian’ run it. Maybe he/she will civilise it, to boot.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2012.