-Caveat Lector-
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes0110
01_1_n.shtml
Vital intelligence on the Taliban may rest with its prime sponsor -
Pakistan's ISI
By Rahul Bedi
New Delhi
Pakistan's sinister Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) remains the key to
providing accurate information to the US-led alliance in its war against
Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Known as Pakistan's
'secret army' and 'invisible government', its shadowy past is linked to
political assassinations and the smuggling of narcotics as well as nuclear
and missile components.
The ISI also openly backs the Taliban and fuels the 12-year-old insurgency
in northern India's disputed Kashmir province by 'sponsoring' Muslim
militant groups and ministering its policy of 'death by a thousand cuts'
that so effectively drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and led to their
political demise.
The goings on behind the ISI's nondescript headquarters, located behind
high walls on Khayban-e-Suharwady avenue in the heart of the capital
Islamabad and its operational offices in the adjoining garrison town of
Rawalpindi, have dominated Pakistan's domestic, nuclear and foreign
policies - especially those relating to Afghanistan - for over two decades.
The ISI chief, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, who was visiting Washington when New
York and the Pentagon were attacked, agreed to share desperately needed
information about the Taliban with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and other US security officials. The CIA has well-established links with
the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to 'run' Afghan mujahideen (holy
Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab
volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the
Soviet occupation of Kabul.
The ISI is presently the 'eyes and ears' of the US-led covert action to
seize Bin Laden from the Taliban, since hundreds of its agents and their
Pathan 'assets' continue to operate across Afghanistan. Its influence with
the Taliban can be gauged from the inclusion of Gen Ahmed in the Pakistani
military and diplomatic delegation to the militia's religious capital,
Kandhar, in southern Afghanistan in an attempt to defuse the looming
military crisis. The Pakistani delegation appealed to the Taliban, albeit
in vain, to hand over Bin Laden to the US, which holds him responsible for
the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington in which
nearly 7000 people are feared to have died.
Founded soon after independence in 1948 to collect intelligence in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), the
ISI was modelled on Savak, the Iranian security agency, and like Savak was
trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the SDECE, France's
external intelligence service. The 1979 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
led the CIA, smarting from its retreat from Vietnam, into enhancing the
ISI's covert action capabilities by running mujahideen resistance groups
against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Former Pakistani president General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was ultimately
assassinated along with his ISI chief, expanded the agency's internal
charter by tasking it with collecting information on local religious and
political groups opposed to his military regime. Under Gen Zia the ISI's
Internal Political Division reportedly assassinated Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one
of the two brothers of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, by
poisoning him on the French Riviera in 1985. The aim was to intimidate Miss
Bhutto into not returning to Pakistan to direct the multi-party movement
for the restoration of democracy, but Miss Bhutto refused to be cowed down
and returned home, only to be toppled by the ISI soon after becoming prime
minister in 1988.
The ISI is believed to have recently formed a secret task force under Gen
Ahmed comprising Interior Minister Lt Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider and
Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Muzaffar Usmani to 'destroy' major
political parties and the separatist Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) in
southern Sindh province.
This task force has reportedly encouraged not only religious Islamic
organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam
(JuI) but also sectarian organisations such as the fundamentalist Sipah
Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (which are closely linked to the Taliban
and Bin Laden) to extend their activities to Sindh. These organisations are
believed to have 'slipped the ISI collar' and begun recruiting unemployed
Sindhi rural youth for the Taliban, posing a threat to Gen Musharraf's
co-operation with Washington by formenting jihad against the West.
After the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Kabul in 1989 the ISI,
determined to achieve its aim of extending Pakistan's 'strategic depth' and
creating an Islamic Caliphate by controlling Afghanistan and the Central
Asian Republics, began sponsoring a little-known Pathan student movement in
Kandhar that emerged as the Taliban. The ISI used funds from Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto's federal government and from overseas Islamic remittances
to enrol graduates from thousands of madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across
Pakistan to bolster the Taliban (Islamic students), who were led by the
reclusive Mullah Muhammad Omar. Thereafter, through a ruthless combination
of bribing Afghanistan's ruling tribal coalition (which was riven with
internecine rivalry), guerrilla tactics and military support the ISI
installed the Taliban regime in Kabul in 1996. It then helped to extend its
control over 95 per cent of the war-torn country and bolster its military
capabilities. The ISI is believed to have posted additional operatives in
Afghanistan just before the 11 September attacks in the US.
Along with Osama bin Laden, intelligence sources say a number of other
infamous names emerged from the 1980s ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.
These included Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside
their office in Langley, Virginia, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his
accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Center bombing five years
later as well as a host of powerful international narcotics smugglers.
Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan's northern tribal belt
and neighbouring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA
co-operation. It succeeded not only in turning Soviet troops into addicts,
but also in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US through an elaborate
web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks, couriers and
payoffs. This, in turn, offset the cost of the decade-long anti-Soviet
'unholy war' in Afghanistan.
"The heroin dollars contributed largely to bolstering the Pakistani
economy, its nuclear programme and enabled the ISI to sponsor its covert
operations in Afghanistan and northern India's disputed Kashmir state,"
according to an Indian intelligence officer. In the 1970s, the ISI had
established a division to procure military nuclear and missile technology
from abroad, particularly from China and North Korea. They also smuggled in
critical nuclear components and know-how from Europe - activities known to
the US but ones it chose to turn a blind eye to as Washington's objective
of 'humiliating' the Soviet bear remained incomplete.
A Director General, always an army officer of the rank of lieutenant
general, heads the ISI, which is controlled by Pakistan's Ministry of
Defence and reports directly to the chief of army staff. As the current ISI
chief, Gen Ahmed is assisted by three major generals heading the agency's
political, external and administrative divisions, which are divided broadly
into eight sections:
* Joint Intelligence North: responsible for the Taliban in Afghanistan and
the Kashmir insurgency. This section controls the Army of Islam that
comprises Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group and Kashmiri militant groups
like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (banned by the US last week),
Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badr and Jaissh-e-Mohammad. Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz,
presently commanding the Lahore Corps and a former ISI officer, reportedly
heads the Army of Islam, which also controls all opium cultivation and
heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani and Afghan territory
* Joint Intelligence Bureau: responsible for open sources and human
intelligence collection locally and abroad
* Joint Counter-Intelligence Bureau: tasked with counter-intelligence
activities internally and abroad
* Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau: in-charge of all communications
intelligence
* Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous: responsible for covert actions abroad,
particularly those related to the clandestine procurement of nuclear and
missile technologies
* Joint Intelligence X: looks after administration and accounts
* Joint Intelligence Technical: collects all technical intelligence other
than communications intelligence for research and development of equipment
* The Special Wing: runs the Defence Services Intelligence Academy and
liaises with foreign intelligence and security agencies.
"The concern now for General Musharraf is whether the ISI will remain loyal
to him and provide the US with credible information or continue to pursue
its aims of ensuing the Taliban's continuance in Kabul," said one
intelligence officer. The US, he added, will pull out of the region once
its objectives have been achieved, but Afghanistan, with its incessant and
seemingly irresolute turmoil, will remain Pakistan's neighbour for good.
================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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