Opinion Archive
The News International Pakistan
Targeting the ISI
By Anjum Niaz
Prime
Minister Gilani urgently worked the phones to get through his
counterpart in Delhi. Manmohan Singh finally came on the line after two
days. Without diplomatic niceties, Singh curmudgeonly ordered the
director general of the ISI to appear before his premier intelligence
agency RAW in Delhi. India’s wish was Pakistan’s command. Our prime
minister (read President Zardari) agreed to send Lt-General Ahmad Shuja
Pasha without weighing the hurt caused to our national pride and
honour. Pasha reports directly to Gilani, therefore Army Chief Kayani
may merely have received an ‘FYI’ (for your information) from the prime
minister house because of the manner in which the initial announcement
was made.
The chorus against ISI’s role in Mumbai’s killings
rises with every passing minute. The Indian government, India’s media
and the man on the street blames the ISI. And hence Pasha must be put
in the dock in Delhi and read out the Riot Act. The charge-sheet
prepared by the British Scotland Yard and American FBI agents now in
Mumbai to investigate ‘whodunit’ would likely tangle the ISI. The
western print and electronic media and its blogosphere is also tying
the knot between the ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, two
outlawed groups in Pakistan, alleged to have a hand in the carnage and
indirectly tied with Al Qaeda.
Peter Chamberlin, an American
journalist and an expert on terrorism, warns Pakistan against the
Indian ruse to involve ISI in the Mumbai carnage. He calls Al Qaeda an
“imaginary force” created by Pakistan and the US. Other states in the
region use the Al Qaeda card to their advantage. “Whenever any
government wants to kill people, they send in an Al Qaeda cut-out to
start the cycle of violence,” he says. “The leaders and the press in
Pakistan must protest loudly and unveil the truth about Al Qaeda.
Pakistani leaders must tip-toe out of the minefield that they have
allowed themselves to be lured into by the US.”
Today, the ISI
is our first line of defence against foreign and domestic attacks.
Instead of weakening it, our civilian and military establishment should
convert the 4,500 plus strong institution into another Mossad, the
Israeli intelligence outfit, ranked among the most effective
intelligence agencies in the world. While Prime Minister Gilani was on
his way last July to the US, an order was issued to transfer the agency
to the interior division. A furore ensued and very soon the
notification was cancelled. “Rehman Malik wanted to run the political
wing” says General Shujaat Ali Khan, who ran the agency’s political
wing during Benazir Bhutto’s second government. Recently, the ISI
quietly disbanded the controversial political wing which had over the
years become a Frankenstein. Benazir Bhutto had openly blamed it for
pulling their government down in November 1996, weeks before her
brother Murtaza Bhutto was gunned down in Karachi. In her 2000
interview to an English monthly, Benazir Bhutto accused General Shujaat
of “destabilizing” her government. She said that despite her trying to
get the general sacked, the big boss of ISI, General Naseem Rana and
the ministry of defence failed to dislodge Shujaat, perceived by
Benazir Bhutto as her nemesis.
On a late November afternoon, I
drive down to a deserted farmhouse outside Islamabad to meet General
Shujaat Ali Khan. He has just arrived home after a minor surgery at
CMH, Rawalpindi. As I sip my orange juice, freshly squeezed off the
orchard in the general’s backyard, I wonder whether my host was really
that lethal as made out by the two civilian prime ministers whom he
served. “Before I answer Ms Bhutto’s charge, I have seen the Rafi Raza
Report where in 1976, her father ordered the creation of a political
cell in the ISI just by handwriting one line in the margin. The ISI
thus was given a green light to bug politicians’ phones. Even Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto allowed us to listen in to conversations of
politicians, judges and Dr A Q Khan.”
The former spymaster
vouches that during his 2 ? years in the ISI as the DG internal wing
which monitored the counter-terrorism and the political cells, he never
“bugged” the phones of Prime Minister Bhutto or President Farooq
Leghari. His task was to collect intelligence on the “macro-economic
indicators; the stock exchange and the financial deals” affecting the
economy of Pakistan. During the intelligence gathering, the general
naturally came across allegations of corruption by the First Gentleman
Asif Ali Zardari and appointments based on nepotism and favouritism. “I
used to forward my reports to the PM and she would return the files
with handwritten short remarks in green ink. At times she would sound
irritated with repartees like: ‘Since when has the ISI become an
economic expert?’ or ‘Oh, really!’”
General Shujaat met Benazir
Bhutto a month before she died. “I explained to her that I had no hand
in her dismissal and she told me that she understood.” Actually
President Leghari in cahoots with the then army chief Jehangir Karamat
had already decided to sack her long before General Shujaat arrived at
the ISI. But Shujaat would get a pat on his back by Karamat and lustily
cheered each time he wrote a damning report on BB. After Ms Bhutto’s
exit, Karamat and Leghari got a wakeup call when Nawaz Sharif charged
in with a ‘heavy mandate’. “Our (ISI) estimation on 1997 elections went
haywire. Our assessment of the PML-N was totally off the mark!” Very
soon Sharif picked up fights with both the gents and eventually showed
them the door!
Shujaat makes another sweeping statement: Nawaz
Sharif’s reign saw a much higher level of corruption than the two
reigns of Benazir Bhutto. “Whenever I sent him dossiers on the motorway
and other financial wrongdoings, he would get mad!” How did that
happen? I ask the general. Nawaz Sharif made millions by importing two
shiploads of steel and importing 400 BMW cars. He then raised the
import duty thereby earning huge profits by selling the two items in
the open market. Similarly, he bought big tracts of land at Rs5,000 per
square yard and later converted it into the Chunian Industrial estate
flogging it at ten times the price.
ISI head honchos like
generals Hameed Gul, Asad Durrani, Javed Nasir, Mahmud Ahmed and
Ehtisham Zamir have “monkeyed” with political governments and brought
them down, thereby sullying the image of the army. They are on record
saying so themselves. Ex-army chief Aslam Beg is yet another example of
the black sheep that the army is infamous for. General Shujaat was
privy to the sacking of Hameed Gul by the then army chief Asif Nawaz.
Gul had refused his new posting as director-general of heavy industries
Taxila which did not go down well with the chief who was told about it
while on an official visit to Italy. “Gul has anger issues till today,”
says Shujaat. While Zulfiqar Bhutto and Ziaul Haq maintained files on
senior bureaucrats and politicians, “they never blackmailed them” he
tells me. “Instead they’d just wave the files before the chap they
wanted to bring in line. That was enough!”
General (r) Shujaat
gives an elliptical answer when I ask him as to who really controls the
ISI today. It’s under the “policy directive of the man who calls the
shots [Gen Pasha?],” he says. “It may not be the prime minister, it may
not be the president, but the army chief is always kept in the loop.”
As
I get up to leave, dreading a long trek back home in the wilderness of
the cold night, the counter-terrorism expert Shujaat makes a chilling
prediction that gives shivers not cheer to my heart. If there is
change, it will begin in Punjab’s biggest urban centre, Lahore. The
army will only take over if the masses spill into the streets demanding
a change as happened in 1977. “I am of the firm opinion that this time
around issues like hunger and poverty will be sufficient catalysts for
change. But the movement will be hijacked by the religious right who
enjoy widespread support among the grassroots, have sophisticated
weapons, foreign funding and abundant resources.” He talks of the
Iranian revolution which was started by Tudeh (party of the masses)
also called the Communist party, but got hijacked by the cleric
Ayatullah Khomeini.
With the Americans, Indians, Israelis and
God knows who else wanting to down the ISI, Zardari’s last resort and
ours too, is the army and its intelligence agency. The impolitic
Zardari-Gilani leadership should stop showing off to the world that
they and not the establishment control Pakistan. Their false bravura
and reckless statements can spell disaster.
The writer is a
freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national
and international reporting. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
