Pakistan's Shadowy Secret Service

As for the spy bit, good on ISI. Hopefull the Afghani upper echlons are nice and compromised.

 

Originally posted by Giannis Our modern history (Greece), says don't even trust your own army. Trust your people, they are not always right, but at least they make small mistakes.

ISI didnt really do much, the Afghan war neutralized KHAD and it's now second rate. Soviet assistance to KHAD was the only thing that kept it going, though it's possible they've been involved in some not very subtle attacks in Pakistan with Raw's help.

The ISI is Pakistan's intelligence gathering agency, and combines the functions of domestic, international and military intelligence. To put it in western terms, it's a little bit like an amalgamation of the CIA, FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency. ISI was founded in 1948 by a British army officer who served in the Pakistani army during the twilight of colonial rule. They are the kingmakers of Pakistan, enjoy only nominal oversight, and have acted numerous times to displace civilian leaders and install military rule.

Unlike intelligence agencies of other countries, the top and middle rung officers of the ISI are exclusively drawn from the military establishment. Its chief is designated as director general and appointed from amongst the serving lieutenant generals; although there has been one exception when a retired officer was assigned to the post. During Yahya Khan's rule, the DG also headed the newly created National Security Council and that added to his stature and influence. Under the DG there are three deputy director generals (DDGs), one each from the army, the navy and the air force. The ISI mans a Military Liaison Section (MLS) in the Ministry of Interior.

Staffed by hundreds of civilian and military officers, and thousands of other workers, the agency's headquarters is located in Islamabad. ISI is composed of at least seven separate divisions, employing 10-50,000 on a budget of 52 million USD:

Joint Intelligence X (JIX) serves as the secretariat which co-ordinates and provides administrative support to the other ISI wings and field organisations. It also prepares intelligence estimates and threat assessments.

� The Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), responsible for political intelligence, was the most powerful component of the organisation during the late 1980s. The JIB consists of three subsections, with one subsection devoted to operations against India.

� The Joint Counter Intelligence Bureau (JCIB) is responsible for field surveillance of Pakistani diplomats stationed abroad, as well as for conducting intelligence operations in the Middle East, South Asia, China, Afghanistan and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.

� Joint Intelligence / North (JIN) is responsible for Jammu and Kashmir operations, including infiltration, exfilteration, propaganda and other clandestine operations.

� Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous (JIM) conducts espionage in foreign countries, including offensive intelligence operations.

� The Joint Signal Intelligence Bureau (JSIB), which includes Deputy Directors for Wireless, Monitoring and Photos, operates a chain of signals intelligence collection stations along the border with India, and provide communication support to militants operating in Kashmir.

� Joint Intelligence Technical

In addition to these main elements, ISI also includes a separate explosives section and a chemical warfare section. Published reports provide contradictory indications as to the relative size of these organizational elements, suggesting that either JIX is the largest, or that the Joint Intelligence Bureau is the lrgest with some sixty percent of the total staff. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) is the ISI's main international financial vehicle.

Since the mid-1980's, ISI has been predominately occupied with tending to its interests on the eastern border with India and the western border with Afghanistan. In India proper, ISI maintains contact with Muslim communities in Punjab to the west, Tamilnadu in the south and Assam in the northeast. Many in India believe that the purpose of these contacts is to ultimately create secessionist movements and make India a smaller nation. Additionally, involvement in the disputed territory of Kashmir has stepped up since India took control of Siachen glacier in 1984. ISI has sought to bring all Kashmiri Muslim rebel groups under one banner, to help make sure the outcome of the campaign is accession to Pakistan as opposed to outright independence.

The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan Mujahideen between 1983 to 1997 and dispatched them to Afghanistan. Pakistan paid a price for its activities. Afghan and Soviet forces conducted raids against mujahidin bases inside Pakistan, and a campaign of terror bombings and sabotage in Pakistan's cities, guided by Afghan intelligence agents, caused hundreds of casualties. In 1987 some 90 percent of the 777 terrorist incidents recorded worldwide took place in Pakistan.

Since Pakistan does not have the capability to monitor two hostile borders, it cultivated the Taleban, and supported them until recently (some say with American backing). This meant that they did not have to worry about fighting on the Afghan border, and also helped ensure a steady influx of manpower into Kashmir from Taleban training camps as well as Pakistani madrassas. However, since September 11, Pakistan has publicly turned against the Taliban. This caused the ISI to recall its agents working in Afghanistan, and created dissent among native fundamentalists. Some observers have grumbled that Pakistan's value as an ally in the war is compromised by this course of action, and that it would have been preferable for them to feign continued support for the Taliban and keep collecting information on the ground. Others question whether the ISI really is an ally at all.

ISI is currently engaged in covertly supporting the Kashmiri Mujahideen in their fight against the Indian authorities in Kashmir. Reportedly "Operation Tupac" is the designation of the three part action plan for the liberation of Kashmir, initiated by President Zia Ul Haq in 1988 after the failure of "Operation Gibraltar." The designation is derived from Tupac Amru, the 18th century prince who led the war of liberation in Uruguay against the Spanish rule.

According to a report compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of India in 1995, ISI spent about Rs 2.4 crore per month to sponsor its activities in Jammu and Kashmir. Although all groups reportedly receive arms and training from Pakistan, the pro-Pakistani groups are reputed to be favored by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence.

ISI is reported to operate training camps near the border of Bangladesh where members of separatist groups of the northeastern states, known as the "United Liberation Front Of Seven Sisters" [ULFOSS] are trained with military equipment and terrorist activities. These groups include the National Security Council of Nagaland [NSCN], People's Liberation Army [PLA], United Liberation Front of Assam [ULFA], and North East Students Organization [NESO]. ISI is said to have intensified its activities in the southern Indian States of Hyderabad, Bangalore, Cochin, Kojhikode, Bhatkal, and Gulbarga. In Andhra Pradesh the Ittehadul Musalmeen and the Hijbul Mujahideen are claimed to be involved in subversive activities promoted by ISI. And Koyalapattinam, a village in Tamil Nadu, is said to be the common center of operations of ISI and the Liberation Tigers.

Since the start of the War on Terror in September 2001, President Musharraf has been under pressure to effect changes in the ISI. He appointed a new Director General, Lieutenant General Ehsanul Haq, he has banned five militant groups, and he has stopped ISI representatives from attending meetings of the United Jihad Council, an umbrella organization that includes about 12 militant groups. The President is thought to have more control over the ISI than any civilian president could have, because the agency is an extension of the military and Musharraf has held the highest military position in the land.


During the Nixon Administration in the US, when Dr.Henry Kissinger was the National Security Adviser, the intelligence community of the US and the ISI worked in tandem in guiding and assisting the so-called Khalistan movement in the Punjab. The visits of prominent Sikh Home Rule personalities to the US before the Bangladesh Liberation War in December, 1971, to counter Indian allegations of violations of the human rights of the Bengalis of East Pakistan through counter-allegations of violations of the human rights of the Sikhs in Punjab were jointly orchestrated by the ISI, the US intelligence and some officials of the US National Security Council (NSC) Secretariat, then headed by Dr.Kissinger.

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 action experts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers.  Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.

The encouragement of opium cultivation and heroin production and smuggling was also an offshoot of this co-operation.  The CIA, through the ISI, promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts. Once the Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988, these heroin smugglers started smuggling the drugs to the West, with the complicity of the ISI.  The heroin dollars have largely contributed to preventing the Pakistani economy from collapsing and enabling the ISI to divert the jehadi hordes 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 clandestine procurement of military nuclear technology from abroad and, subsequently, for the clandestine purchase and shipment of missiles and missile technology from China and North Korea.  This division, which was funded partly by donations from Saudi Arabia and Libya, partly by concealed allocations in Pakistan's State budget and partly by heroin dollars, was instrumental in helping Pakistan achieve a military nuclear and delivery capability 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 external intelligence, has developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procurement of denied technologies as well.

In recent years, there has been a controversy in Pakistan as to who really controls the ISI and when was its internal Political Division set up.  Testifying before the Supreme Court on June 16,1997, in a petition filed by Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan, former chief of the Pakistan Air Force, challenging the legality of the ISI's Political Division accepting a donation of Rs.140 million from a bank for use against PPP candidates during elections, Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), claimed that though the ISI was manned by serving army officers and was part of the MOD, it reported to the Prime Minister and not to the COAS and that its internal Political Division was actually set up by the late Z.A.Bhutto in 1975.

Many Pakistani analysts have challenged this and said that the ISI, though de jure under the Prime Minister, had always been controlled de facto by the COAS and that its internal Political Division had been in existence at least since the days of Ayub Khan, if not earlier.

In their efforts to maintain law and order in Pakistan and weaken nationalist and religious elements and political parties disliked by the army, the ISI and the army followed a policy of divide and rule.  After the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, to keep the Shias of Pakistan under control, the ISI encouraged 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 the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to suppress them brutally.  When the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM---now called the Muttahida Qaumi Movement) of Altaf Hussain rose in revolt in the late 1980s in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, the ISI armed sections of the Sindhi nationalist elements to kill the Mohajirs.  It then created a split between Mohajirs of Uttar Pradesh origin (in Altaf Hussain's MQM) and those of Bihar origin in the splinter anti-Altaf Hussain group called MQM (Haquiqi--meaning real).  In Altaf Hussain's MQM itself, the ISI unsuccessfully tried to create a wedge between the Sunni and Shia migrants from Uttar Pradesh.





Sources:

http://www.balochvoice.com/information/Directorate_for_ISI.html

http://www.jihadunspun.com/theplayers/isi.html

http://www.acsa.net/isi/index.html

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1161596

Originally posted by maqsad Hmmm I sorta pictured adept ISI planners inflitrating KHAD with double agents and and them planting bugs but I guess there was nothing special that was done. How boring.

So do we. ISI is pretty  good in the SIGNIT departement as well. That  particular telephone call was done on a normal mobile rather han encrypted stuff.