ISI-History and Discussions

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arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman on the ISI:
“Not only Pakistan with its strong intelligence service but even a weak government with a weak intelligence service would have known who was living in that house in such a location”
“If an agency is not aware of the most wanted terrorist of the world living right next to them, how can they protect their strategic weapons?”
Read it all:

Pakistani spies must have known of bin Laden's hideout: Afghanistan
sum
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sum »

^^ Just love the kind of unrestrained verbal jhapads the Afghans always come up with when Pak is the issue...

< Thumbs up icon>
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Hattip to Amdavadi, PG Bhat and Shyam D.

The compound in which Osama Bin laden was taking refuge was owned by the Islamic Terrorist group Hizbul Mujahedeen (HuM) which is linked to the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI / ISID), the Intelligence Agency of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and used principally to target India in Jammu and Kashmir:

Canadian News Paper Globe and Mail.:

Bin Laden given haven by militants linked to Pakistani security forces

Another version of the story from US media giant ABC:

Report: Bin Laden compound once used by ISI
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, specifically the ISI / ISID, is spinning the story that Osama Bin Laden had been sidelined in a presumed ploy to peddle the message that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ‘s failure to take OBL down was not significant as he had played a small role in overseeing Al-Qaida over the past six years and thereby deflect the US wrath currently focussed on the Islamic Republic:
MAY 6, 2011

Split Seen Between bin Laden, Deputy

By ZAHID HUSSAIN in Islamabad and KEITH JOHNSON in Washington

Osama bin Laden and the deputy leader of al Qaeda "parted ways" six years ago, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Thursday

The official said bin Laden had been "marginalized" by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped bin Laden found al Qaeda in 1988 and led its operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He added that bin Laden had been sidelined because he no longer had the funds to support al Qaeda operations and that his popularity in the network was slipping. "They had parted ways some six years ago," he said.

Portraying bin Laden as sidelined within al Qaeda could help Pakistan's reputation in the aftermath of his death by implying that he had little to do with al Qaeda or its recent attacks—suggesting that Pakistan's failure to find him wasn't such a significant lapse. Pakistani officials have expressed embarrassment that the U.S. found bin Laden in Pakistan and are probing the intelligence failure. …………………….

Wall Street Journal
The US is however not buying the snake oil being peddled by Islamic Republic of Pakistan and instead have disclosed that Osama Bin Laden “remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group“:
The following is a key point: the materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group. Though separated from many al Qaeda members who are located in more remote areas of the region, he was far from a figurehead. He was an active player making the recent operation even more essential for our nation’s security.

The materials reviewed thus far reveal that bin Laden continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management and to encourage plotting. The materials show that bin Laden remained focused on inspiring and engineering international terrorism and specifically on attacking the United States. In fact, one previously unreleased video, which we will show momentarily, is a self-styled message to the United States.

Background Briefing with Senior Intelligence Official at the Pentagon on Intelligence Aspects of the U.S. Operation Involving Osama Bin Laden
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by jrjrao »

Worth posting in full, me thinks.

Spy agency no ally in war on terror
Bruce Loudon From: The Australian May 09, 2011 12:00AM
Link

IT was Benazir Bhutto who famously decried it as a "state within a state", an "invisible government" that was a law unto itself and defied her orders as prime minister.

Now, as Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency emerges front and centre in the controversy surrounding Osama bin Laden's killing, the country's civilian government looks as impotent as Bhutto confessed she was in dealing with a shadowy organisation that thwarts attempts to defeat terrorism and make progress in Afghanistan.

Terrorism is the ISI's stock in trade. When last week US official documents emanating from Guantanamo declared it a terrorist organisation alongside the likes of al-Qa'ida, the Taliban and Islamic Jihad, that was hardly surprising. A former ISI head, General Asad Durrani, did after all declare that terrorism "is a technique of war, and therefore an instrument of policy".



The ISI, now headed by General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, named last week at No 17 on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people and accused of direct involvement in the Mumbai terrorist attack, is a rogue organisation and effectively the engine of the army that wields all the real power in Pakistan. Governments and commentators have raised naive questions about what the civilian government in Islamabad knew about bin Laden's presence in the country.

The answer, almost certainly, is nothing. The first that President Asif Ali Zardari knew was when he was woken by a call from President Barack Obama at 1.35am telling him that the raid had happened, bin Laden had been killed, and the American attackers had been and gone. Not a word before that from Zardari's own people.

There lies the reality of what passes for the power structure in the country. It is one that Washington and its allies are going to have to comprehend and deal with if they are ever to understand the country and make real progress against the jihadi militancy that uses Pakistan as its springboard.

Generally, the civilian government in Islamabad is clueless about the ISI and, more broadly, the army. When it was elected in 2008, following the downfall of military dictator Pervez Musharraf, it bravely attempted to assert control over the ISI. It announced the ISI would come under the purview of interior minister Rehman Malik, the top security minister in the cabinet.

That bold assertion of authority lasted less than 12 hours. Army commander General Ashfaq Kayani, Musharraf's successor and a former ISI boss, insisted the spy agency would remain part of the army with no civilian control.

The government backed down and the ISI was left to continue its nefarious and duplicitous dealings. It kept trucking with terrorists while posing as an ally in the war on terrorism

So, what is the ISI and why is it so powerful? Why can no civilian government assert any control over it?

Constitutionally, it is supposed to be run by the prime minister of the day, currently the amiable but almost totally incompetent Yousuf Raza Gilani. Forget it. The real power in the land is with Kayani, Musharraf's chain-smoking, golf-loving former right-hand man, and his successor Pasha.

They run a vast organisation that operates clandestinely with no public supervision or accountability and has a staff of at least 25,000 agents and tens of thousands more paid informers at every level of Pakistani society.

The scope of the ISI's activities is staggering. Anyone who has spent time in Pakistan will have been monitored by it. I have personal experience of its methods. Years ago when I spent months covering the trial and execution of former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, ISI agents trailed me day at night, even, to my embarrassment, making recordings in my hotel bedroom and disclosing details about who I had seen.

A recent outline of the ISI's mission sums it up thus: "The ISI is tasked with the collection of foreign and domestic intelligence; co-ordination of intelligence functions of the three military services; surveillance over its cadre, foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society, diplomats of other countries accredited to Pakistan and Pakistani diplomats serving outside the country; the interception and monitoring of communications; and the conduct of covert offensive and wartime operations. Functions of the ISI include gathering foreign and domestic intelligence and synchronising the intelligence of the military services.

"The agency maintains surveillance of foreign diplomats in Pakistan, Pakistani diplomats abroad, and politically active members of Pakistani society. It monitors its own staff, the media and foreigners. It tracks and intercepts communications and engages in covert operations."

Founded at Partition from India in 1947, the ISI came into its own in 1979 when it became the conduit for billions of dollars from the US and Saudi Arabia to the mujaheddin, including one Osama bin Laden, fighting to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.

Disastrously, with the benefit of hindsight, then military dictator Zia ul-Haq and the ISI became the principal agents for US policy in South Asia. Pakistan's involvement with what is now the Taliban and al-Qa'ida started then, in an alliance fostered by the ISI in its drive to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan.

The bonds established then have remained largely unbroken as Pakistan's army has sought to maintain so-called "strategic reach" in Afghanistan, deploying its agents to operate with the Taliban and other groups in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

It has been, and remains, a fractious relationship. Pakistan has frequently done what was asked of it by Washington and its allies, attacking jihadis and losing many men in battle. But at the same time the ISI has retained extremely close operational relationships with the likes of the powerful Haqqani network in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The ISI's continued close links with terrorism can no longer seriously be doubted, whatever the denials it and the government in Islamabad issue. Pasha stands accused of direct involvement in the planning of the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November, 2008. A US lawsuit by families of Americans killed in the attacks claims ISI agents were in league with Lashkar-e-Toiba, an al-Qa'ida-linked group.

A so-called Kayani Doctrine is said to dominate ISI strategy. Preoccupied by the perceived threat from India, the army commander is determined to ensure Afghanistan remains in Pakistan's sphere of influence, and that Islamabad exerts decisive influence over any future peace talks with the Taliban. He must thus maintain links with and support for the jihadis, reining them in just enough to placate world opinion while allowing them the space to satisfy their considerable support base within Pakistan.

For new CIA director General David Petraeus, Pakistan and the ISI's seemingly incorrigible double-dealing are the primary problem in the war against jihadi militancy. Whether he will be able to do anything about it remains to be seen, especially given that he and Kayani are said to dislike and distrust each other. The ISI, which owes its power and influence to Washington, has become a monster. Unless a way can be found to rein it in, the outlook for the fight against terrorism looks grim.
ramana
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by ramana »

All this modern analysis ignores the issue that just as TSP is a modern Sultanate, ISI is a Mukhabarat ie the ideological spy agency of an ideological Islamist state.

Modern analysis will not let you understand the ISI. You need to go back to early Islami states of the four 'rightly' guided Caliphs. Very little historical accounts exist for that period.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by Anujan »

Also a thing to note is that Sultanates had very poor succession policy. The successor always gave the predecessor his 72.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Kathy Gannon and Sebastian Abbot in an Associated Press article on the ISI:
The ISI, which is part of Pakistan's military, has a history of spawning and funding jihadi groups to fight India, in particular for the disputed territory of Kashmir. Pakistan's military relies heavily on these groups in the absence of the conventional might to take on India, said defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqua. For example, Pakistan has hosted training camps for militants and has sent them across the border into India, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

"How else do you fight?" Siddiqua asked. "It is the Pakistan version of private security guards."
Read more:

Pakistani Intelligence: Friend or Foe?
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by shiv »

Cross Post
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... an-alqaida
it was founded by an Australian. As Pakistan recovered from its disastrous first war with India in 1948, Major General R Cawthorne, on secondment from the British army, decided the fledgling military needed a proper intelligence outfit. The first decades were inauspicious. The ISI mishandled the 1965 war with India and failed to predict the East Pakistan conflict in 1971, which sundered Pakistan in two and created Bangladesh. All changed, however, eight years later when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979. The decade-long war of resistance – bankrolled by the United States, fought by Afghans and Arabs, but largely run by the ISI from Pakistan's tribal areas – revolutionised the agency's fortunes. It ran a network of secret training camps along the Afghan border that trained more than 80,000 fighters. It controlled a weapons pipeline, funded by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, that smuggled Kalashnikovs and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from Karachi to the Khyber Pass. And it grew powerful and rich.

A legendary figure from that period was a man named Colonel Imam, whom I first met five years ago. He was tall and burly, with a thick beard and a crooked smile that suggested several missing teeth. He wore a white turban and an olive-green, British issue second world war-issue paratroop jacket, which he told me he had been wearing since he joined the army in 1971. During the 80s, Imam ran many of the ISI training camps, becoming popular among ethnic Pashtun fighters for his love of Islam and his fondness for killing Soviets. "Those were wonderful times," he told me. Although his real name was Sultan Amir, to the Afghans he became "Colonel Imam". "I loved the fight. And the mujahideen were very fond of me," he said with a smile.

The US liked him too. On the wall of his Rawalpindi home hung war trophies from the 80s – daggers, faded photos, a Russian general's gun – but on the table sat a chunk of the Berlin wall, cased in glass. "To one who helped deliver the first blow," it read. "The Americans gave me that," he said.

With the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA largely abandoned Pakistan. But the spirit of "jihad" – fighters imbued with Islamist vim – lived on in the ISI. Pakistani officers, having imbibed too much of their own ideology, transformed the spy agency. It started to support Islamist groups across Asia – Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Burma, India – and the US placed Pakistan on a terrorist watchlist. In 1993, Javed Ashraf Qazi, a secular-minded general officer, was sent in to clean up the mess. "I was shocked at what I found," he tells me. Senior ISI officers had jettisoned their uniforms for shalwar kameez; their subordinates would disappear off to the mosque for hours on end. The ISI had bought a hotel in Bangkok, probably to facilitate gun-running. The outgoing spy chief, Javed Nasir, was a playboy turned zealot who had grown a scraggly beard and refused to shake women's hands. On his first day in the office Qazi found him running out of the door to a Muslim missionary conference. "When people say the ISI is a rogue agency, it was true in those days," he says.

Qazi fired the ideologues, sold the hotel and ordered his subordinates to wear their uniforms (some struggled to fit in them). "We cleaned it up," says Qazi, who later became a minister under Pervez Musharraf.

But the ISI was not done with jihad; it had merely narrowed its focus. The proof is on the wall of Qazi's home. I notice an unusual rifle hanging on the wall. It is an Indian service rifle, Qazi admits half bashfully – a present from one of the "mujahideen" fighters the ISI started to send into Indian-occupied Kashmir from the mid 90s, when he was in charge. "We turned a blind eye to some groups," he says. They included Lashkar-e-Toiba, he admits – the terrorist outfit that in 2008 would attack hotels and train stations in the Indian city of Mumbai, killing 170 people.

In the early 90s, the ISI also started to support an obscure Islamist movement in Afghanistan called the Taliban. Colonel Imam was sent back into Afghanistan to advise the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar. They had history: Imam, it turned out, had trained Omar back in the mujahideen camps in the 80s. With ISI backing, the Taliban swept to power in Kabul; at the UN in New York, a beleaguered Afghan official complained that Imam was the "de facto governor" of the newly conquered territories. "Ah, they are naughty people," Imam told me of the Taliban with his shy smile. "Rough people, good fighters, but respected. And they were all my friends."

Over the past decade, however, the ISI has professed to have abandoned jihad. As American troops swarmed across Afghanistan, in search of Bin Laden in late 2001, President General Pervez Musharraf disavowed the Taliban, sacked his most Islamist generals (including the then ISI director, Mahmud Ahmed) and brought Colonel Imam home. The following January he made a signature speech banning a slew of jihadi groups. "We need to rid society of extremism," he declared.

On the ground, though, things have looked different. US diplomatic cables released through WikiLeaks last year claimed the ISI was still covertly supporting the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani network, as part of its decades-old grudge match with India. And despite billions of dollars in American assistance, wrote ambassador Anne Patterson, "no amount of money" was likely to make the army – or the ISI – change direction.

Simultaneously, though, the ISI has become a victim of jihadi violence. The Pakistani Taliban – related to the Afghan movement, but separate, and heavily influenced by al-Qaida – is seeking to oust the Pakistani state. The ISI, deemed to have betrayed them, has become the enemy. Hundreds of ISI officials have died in recent years, killed in bombings of buses and offices, and ISI spies have been beheaded in the tribal belt. In the latest atrocity on 8 March a massive car bomb outside an ISI office in Faisalabad destroyed an airline office and killed 32 people.
sum
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sum »

Only BS in this was the part:
Javed Ashraf Qazi, a secular-minded general officer, was sent in to clean up the mess. "I was shocked at what I found," he tells me. Senior ISI officers had jettisoned their uniforms for shalwar kameez; their subordinates would disappear off to the mosque for hours on end. The ISI had bought a hotel in Bangkok, probably to facilitate gun-running. The outgoing spy chief, Javed Nasir, was a playboy turned zealot who had grown a scraggly beard and refused to shake women's hands. On his first day in the office Qazi found him running out of the door to a Muslim missionary conference. "When people say the ISI is a rogue agency, it was true in those days," he says.

Qazi fired the ideologues, sold the hotel and ordered his subordinates to wear their uniforms (some struggled to fit in them). "We cleaned it up," says Qazi, who later became a minister under Pervez Musharraf.

But the ISI was not done with jihad; it had merely narrowed its focus. The proof is on the wall of Qazi's home. I notice an unusual rifle hanging on the wall. It is an Indian service rifle, Qazi admits half bashfully – a present from one of the "mujahideen" fighters the ISI started to send into Indian-occupied Kashmir from the mid 90s, when he was in charge. "We turned a blind eye to some groups," he says. They included Lashkar-e-Toiba, he admits – the terrorist outfit that in 2008 would attack hotels and train stations in the Indian city of Mumbai, killing 170 people.
If Qazi is secular, then im Al-Qaida...
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by Johann »

The ISI has four major departments; Analysis, Security, Counter-Terrorism/Counter-Intelligence and Technical, each headed by a two-star general officer.

The Security wing's name is a bit of misdirection - it is their job to handle and liaise with jihadi groups everywhere. They tend to avoid the Americans

The Counter branch on the other hand has worked closely with the Americans since 2001.

The Americans did not expect much from S branch since they've consistently supported America's enemies for years now.

What they are really angry about is C branch's failure to play a more active role in finding Bin Laden. Monitoring the message traffic on equipment installed and paid for by the Americans is hardly a great achievement.

Remember the $20b are funds that came through State Department and DoD channels. It does not include intelligence aid from the CIA to the ISI's C branch.

This is why they want Shuja to go.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by chiragAS »

another article on isi , this time from europe LINK
Whose side is Pakistan's ISI really on?It has been accused of supporting al-Qaida and double-dealing with the CIA. At the same time the ISI, Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, is being targeted by Islamist extremists. In the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, what role will it play?
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Anatol Lieven, Professor of war studies at King's College London in the New Statesman via Sonasol. Excepts from a longish article on the ISI in which India figures prominently:
Thursday, May 12, 2011

Inside Pakistan's spy network

Anatol Lieven
Published 12 May 2011

The ISI gorged on US money during the 1980s. Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, can the west still buy its loyalty?

One reason why there are so many bizarre conspiracy theories in Pakistan is that there are so many conspiracies, as the past few weeks have amply demonstrated.

Many focus on the role of the country's principal spy network, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Some liberal journalists believe that it exercises a decisive influence over Pakistan's media and politics and even secretly backs the Pakistani Taliban, whose rebellion has cost the lives of more than 3,500 soldiers and police - including 80 officers of the ISI.

These beliefs are often grossly exaggerated, but then again, what we do know of the ISI's activities is enough to give us pause. I find it entirely plausible that, from somewhere inside the ISI's headquarters in Islamabad - whose gleaming grandeur dwarfs any government office I have seen - the service was helping to shelter Osama Bin Laden. To believe otherwise, one would have to think that it was guilty of gross negligence. ………………….

The underfunded and poorly staffed IB loathes the ISI and some of the most vicious stories I have heard about the ISI's involvement in terrorism come from the IB. Needless to say, the lack of co-ordination between the three services has often been the despair of western counterterrorism officers. ……………….

The ISI's growth from a British-model intelligence organisation to a "state within a state" was the result of three processes. The first was the conflict with India, which, in one form or another, has been dragging on since both countries gained independence. This conflict and the acute paranoia it has created have profoundly shaped the Pakistani state and the ethos of its military.

The second was fear of internal revolt in Pakistan, which led the state to give the ISI a vital role in domestic intelligence. ………………

The third factor was the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. General Zia-ul-Haq used the ISI to channel US and Arab aid to the Afghan mujahedin. A good deal of this money stuck to the ISI's fingers, giving it secret sources of funding independent of the Pakistani military, let alone the state. ………………………

Fatefully, when the revolt against India broke out in Kashmir in 1989 (initially as a spontaneous protest against Indian misrule), the state and military charged the ISI with the task of directing help to the Kashmiri rebels. It did this by supporting the Pakistani militant groups that it had backed in Afghanistan as they carried out guerrilla and terrorist attacks against Indian targets. These later spread more widely and became more indiscriminate. ……………………….

So, where does this history leave the ISI today, especially in the context of the Bin Laden affair? It goes without saying that the ISI is not under any sort of control by the Pakistani government. When I was asked on US television recently how President Asif Ali Zardari could not have known what his intelligence service might have been up to, I let out a hoot of incredulous laughter. The interviewer had clearly not been following Pakistan very closely. Contempt for civilian politicians and ministers is strong in the military and stronger still among the retired ISI officers to whom I have spoken - in part because they know so much about these politicians' corruption, murders, sexual behaviour and family lives.

A much more difficult question is whether the ISI is even under the full control of the Pakistani military or whether it, and groups within it, are following their own agenda. This is of crucial importance in relation to Bin Laden's death and Pakistan-based terrorism more generally; for not only does it raise the possibility of the ISI's complicity in terrorism against the west (as opposed to the Taliban revolt in Afghanistan), it suggests the possibility of Islamist subversion within the Pakistani military. That points towards the threat of mutiny within the army, the collapse of the state and loss of control over Pakistan's nuclear stockpiles. This possibility still seems pretty remote to me unless Washington were to attack Pakistan directly (for example, following a terrorist attack on the US). …………………….

What mindset has shaped the behaviour of Pakistan's generals, including those of the ISI? By far the most important aspect of a Pakistani senior soldier's identity is that he (or, very occasionally, she) is an officer. The Pakistani military is a profoundly shaping influence. It would be hard to find a more different group of men than the generals Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia, Mirza Aslam Beg, Asif Nawaz, Jehangir Karamat, Musharraf and Kayani in terms of social origin, character and attitude to religion. Yet all have been first and foremost military men.

This in turn means that their ideology was, or is, rooted primarily in Pakistani Muslim nationalism. As institutions, the military and the ISI are tied to Pakistan, not the universal Muslim caliphate of Islamists' dreams. If it is true, as so many officers have told me, to say that "No army, no Pakistan", it is equally true to say that "No Pakistan, no army". ………………………

Nationalism can be a positive and even indispensable force for the development of a country. Modern Turkey, so often held up to the rest of the world as a model, was founded on an ardent and ruthless nationalism.

The problem is that it may be wrapped up with particular differences and enmities. Pakistan's existential hostility is to India. Just as the US national security state was shaped by the cold war, so the Pakistani national security state (vastly more powerful in its own country) was born chiefly out of fear of, and hostility to, India. This is felt most strongly in the military and, in the ISI, it is a raging monomania.

Asked to describe an average Pakistani officer today, the retired lieutenant general Tanveer Naqvi told me: "He has no doubt in his mind that the adversary is India - and that the raison d'être of the army is to defend [the country] against India. His image of Indians is of an anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim and treacherous people. So he feels that he must be always ready to fight against India." …………………….

The shelter given by the Pakistani military to the Afghan Taliban and its allies is based on a belief that the US is sure to fail in Afghanistan and that civil war will follow the US's withdrawal. In that civil war, India will use its allies to encircle Pakistan strategically.

Thus, Pakistan, too, must have allies - and the only one available is the Taliban. That stands even though senior officers know very well that, in the 1990s, despite all the help Pakistan had given the Taliban, it repeatedly kicked the country in the teeth.
On the whole, Pakistan has given shelter, not support, to the Taliban. But the ISI - perhaps through a notorious, ultra-secret branch, the "S wing" - has given some direct help to its Haqqani network (in its 2008 and 2009 attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul, for example).

As for LeT and the other anti-Indian militant groups, the Pakistani military and the ISI insist that they must keep them close in order to restrain them from attacking India, as well as making sure that they do not launch or help in terrorist assaults on the west.

As a result, the Pakistani courts have overturned the ban on LeT's public organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and refused to convict the LeT leader, Hafiz Saeed, on terrorism charges. There is a fear in the Pakistani establishment that a crackdown on LeT of the kind demanded by Delhi and Washington would result in its members joining the revolt of the Pakistani Taliban and that the revolt would spread to Punjab. It would also remove any constraint on LeT from hatching terror plots against the west.

In seeking to deflect western criticism, the ISI points to its helpfulness in the past in capturing al-Qaeda leaders and helping to identify terrorist plots against Britain and the US. Those arrested with ISI participation include two of the most senior figures apart from Bin Laden: Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both of whom are being held in detention in Guantanamo Bay. ……………………..

In 2009, I had a horrifying conversation with the journalist and analyst Zaid Hamid, who had been recommended to me by a senior ISI officer as an interesting person to meet.

Hamid is a self-described Pakistani neoconservative and, like some neocons of my acquaintance in Washington, his favourite word seemed to be "ruthless".

"We say that if India tries to break up Pakistan by supporting insurgents such as the Baloch nationalists, then our response should be to break up India," he told me. "India is not nearly as strong as it looks. The fault lines of the Indian federation are much deeper than those of Pakistan: Kashmir, the Naxalites, Khalistan, Nagaland, all kinds of conflicts between upper and lower castes, tribals, Hindus and other religions, and so on. If we were to support these insurgencies, India would cease to exist."

Kashmir aside, there is no evidence that the ISI is supporting any of these insurgencies within India. But Hamid's apparent closeness to the ISI makes these views deeply alarming - although, to be fair, they are also quite widely shared in Pakistani society and attract a mass audience to his television programme.

If Hamid's views are representative of elements within the ISI, we must conclude that the service remains determined to strike India again at some point in future, using Islamist militants. And given that the US is increasingly seen in Pakistan as an ally of India, there is a good chance that Americans will be among the victims of any attack on high-profile targets in India. That is what happened in 2008 in Mumbai, when the gunmen searched for those with US and British passports. ……………………..

One thing is clear: the ISI should be brought under much greater state control. This will require a détente between India and Pakistan that would reduce the anti-Indian paranoia in Pakistani society which gives the military and the ISI their legitimacy. But this is not going to happen any time soon and, in the meantime, we are doomed to try to co-operate with the ISI - without trusting it an inch.
From here:

Sonasol Blogspot
svinayak
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by svinayak »

One of the comments
What is that about dogs and fleas?

The Saudi financed Sunni Wahabi Salafi preached jihad against the “godless” communist USSR and its assistance to the then Afghan Government. The House of Saud provided vast amounts of money, the CIA provided funds laundered through BCCI from the trafficking of heroin grown in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands, incidentally boosting the flow of narcotics to Europe and U.S.A.

The CIA provided most of the military equipment, initially of Eastern bloc origin, from that great bazaar that is the black market in weapons world wide. This enabled the recruitment of thousands of mujahadeen, their arming, equipping and training all done through the "good offices" of the Pakistani ISI.

Between 1980-1989: both the CIA and British SAS trained mujahadeen in Afghanistan and helped to arm Usama Bin Laden.

May I suggest reading Buda's Wagon : a brief history of the car bomb by Mike Davis. Chapter 13 Car Bomb University An jointly funded by the Saudi GID then run by Prince Turki bin Faisal and the CIA then run by William Casey

At Car Bomb U they were trained by CIA operatives whose experience came from their work in Viet Nam and other parts of Indo China, Central and South America and Europe. They were instructed in the construction and use of IED, pipe bombs, VIED even camel bombs! These devices were then employed with other weaponry to attack the Soviet Occupying Forces in Afghanistan.

The ISI controlled most of those funds. They and their cabal in the Government of Pakistan would have done very well out of the mess that was then Afghanistan and they wish to continue to do so in the mess that is now Afghanistan
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sum »

^^ Guys, given that there are reports emerging of the OBL saga kicking off due to a "walk-in" by a ISI officer, wanted to know if there have been any documented defections to US from ISI ?

Wanted to know since CIA anyways doesn't follow a "no poaching friend" policy and actively poaches for defectors from all and sundry. Even India couldn't avoid defectors despite the massive distrust and minimal interaction of our spooks with Unkil. Cant imagine ISI not having multiple defectors given that ISI and CIA are virtually in bed all the time.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by SSridhar »

Intelligence agencies and Civilian Supremacy - TFT
Ties between Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders had been strained since the deluge of leaked US diplomatic cables earlier this year. The crisis following the killing of Osama bin Laden in an American raid on what appears to be a safehouse in the military town of Abbottabad has caused serious, if not permanent, impact on these ties.

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director general Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha made an unprecedented offer to resign, during an in-camera briefing to the parliament. He admitted that the presence of OBL in Pakistan and the failure to pre-empt the American raid were failures.

But when opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar took a tough line against the ISI, Gen Pasha said the PML-N leader had been targeting him since he had declined to extend “a personal favour” to him. One implication of the tirade, he said, was that CIA chief Leon Panetta said to him in an important meeting, “How can we trust you when your own country’s opposition leader is saying that you cannot be believed?”

The PPP government has distanced itself from this new PML-N led onslaught for a number of reasons, including ISI’s patronage in brokering a deal with the PML-Q. Sources in the government said the PPP did not plan to take on the military directly because of the fragile nature of this alliance, but it quietly supports any pressure on the establishment, which has blackmailed governments and hijacked foreign policy. “After all, it was the PPP which initiated the plan to take the ISI in control,” an insider said.

In the line of fire are the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, especially the ISI whose chief had recently been listed by Time magazine among the most powerful people in the world. The Americans are angry to find out that bin Laden had been living in Pakistan for years, and there is national and international pressure on the ISI to come clean.

The civilian-military distrust can also be seen at the level of intelligence agencies. The ISI and the Military Intelligence (MI) always seal off the K-Block headquarters of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) whenever there is a military coup. The IB often accuses other intelligence agencies of interfering in its affairs. Recently, 4,000-5,000 sacked IB officials previously profiled to be “unfit for service” due to political connections were recently reinstated by the PPP government with back salaries and benefits.

Understanding how our intelligence agencies work, and their roles, authority and limitations, might also help us understand how OBL managed to live in Pakistan for so long without being noticed, with or without institutional support.

“It’s true that the agencies were free from any real political and legal constraints up to the 1990’s, but the government of Pakistan has now tried to limit the influence of intelligence agencies and institutionalised them by writing rules to protect civil liberties,” Brig (r) Muhammad Irfan, a former ISI officer, told TFT.

But many security analysts believe the move is not productive. “There seems to be no mechanism at all in the intelligence community to even remotely appear to be transparent or accountable,” former IB director general said.

When the assertive interior minister did the unthinkable by trying to bring the ISI under civilian control, it did not work out too well. It is said that when a top government official went to an agency’s headquarters to close down its political cell, he was shown “compromising videos” of himself, after which he said, “officially, the cell is closed.”

There is an impression that the MI, the IB and the ISI are at times in a state of conflict. A former ISI official, who asked not to be named, said the MI “is principled and works under a set framework, but the ISI is only interested in results and does not care about the modus operandi”.

Most rivalries in the intelligence community are bureaucratic, often over budget cuts, turf wars and adjusting to new policy roles. They do not transform into serious conflicts. Some time after 2007-2008, an understanding was reached between the ISI and MI not to step on each other’s toes. The MI now looks after internal affairs and the ISI is concerned with external threats within and outside the borders.

“The ISI is working on Jihadi networks and other threats related to national security,” said Commander Naseer, a veteran intelligence official. He said intelligence officials “work like sub-inspectors and mostly tap phones and chase people. They don’t have any analytical skills.”

So is the Big Brother watching us? Yes. A former top intelligence chief told TFT that according to the Telegraph Law, “only Intelligence Bureau (IB) is allowed to tap someone’s phone, and that too, only based on real fears, only after the prime minister’s permission. But the IB director general often makes the decision himself.”

The ISI taps phones too, but under a special permission which was taken ‘forcefully’. The CEO of a top cellphone company said his company received up to two thousand requests to tap phones last year. He said the spies had access to the company’s data as well as NADRA records.

A former intelligence chief said if someone does not reveal the required information, “we tap your best friend too. He is probably going to talk about you.”

While the three top intelligence agencies have acquired state-of-the-art surveillance equipment and training over the years, courtesy the US, they can only tap emails and phones. They lag behind in VoIP decryption, which means, they cannot tap calls made over Skype. They do have a pool of hackers to work for them.

It is odd, however, that there are no intelligence training schools in Pakistan. Most mid-career officers have had no advanced intelligence education, except language courses and workshops that have no real impact. Several of them rise to seniority with little training and little exposure to outside ideas. That ultimately affects the behaviour of these agencies. Ground operatives also receive little systematic training and lack analytical, critical or administrative planning skills.

But there has been some investment in ‘counter intelligence’ operations, which, when successful, can create endless feedback loops and data.

Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad has raised questions about the capabilities of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, but it is not the first serious intelligence failure. The tragic assassination of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own guard is one example. Another example of counter-intelligence failure is not keeping track of Sheikh Omar, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Zargar after they were released by India following the hijack of the Indian Airlines {That was *NOT* an intelligence failure. That was a deliberate policy to allow them to go scot free. These guys were very close to the ISI and the entire IC-814 hijack was scripted and carried out by the ISI upto the negotiations at Kandahar} Flight 814. Sheikh Omar eventually played a role in the beheading of Daniel Pearl, and Masood Azhar orchestrated the attacks on the Indian parliament that cost Pakistan billions in a troop stand-off with India.

The finances and funding of the intelligence agencies are often dubious. Former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf gave out Rs 2.2 billion and then Rs 140 million to a premier intelligence agency from the Finance Ministry funds on November 10, 2007 in an effort to manipulate the elections which were to be held in 2008. Some operations are financed by a “secret fund”. There are no records. Questions have been raised about why Osama bin Laden’s bank accounts were frozen in 2004, three years after 9/11.

The lessons to be learned after the OBL intelligence failure is that the military must subjugate itself to civil control, not because political leaders are necessarily wiser, but because they are the elected representatives of the people and remain accountable to the people.

“It is only those who are elected by the people who have the authority and the responsibility to decide the fate of a nation,” a top foreign diplomat said. WikiLeaks and the OBL affair could have as much as done the job for politicians in terms of parliamentary supremacy for now, he said, “but let’s hope they can play their cards right.”
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sum »

Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad has raised questions about the capabilities of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, but it is not the first serious intelligence failure. The tragic assassination of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own guard is one example. Another example of counter-intelligence failure is not keeping track of Sheikh Omar, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Zargar after they were released by India following the hijack of the Indian Airlines
Stopped reading the article when the quoted BS came up...
It is odd, however, that there are no intelligence training schools in Pakistan. Most mid-career officers have had no advanced intelligence education, except language courses and workshops that have no real impact. Several of them rise to seniority with little training and little exposure to outside ideas. That ultimately affects the behaviour of these agencies. Ground operatives also receive little systematic training and lack analytical, critical or administrative planning skills.
Huh, TSPA has no formal intel training setup despite ~60 years with masters like the CIA?? Where do the new recruits get trained then?
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by Altair »

sum wrote: Huh, TSPA has no formal intel training setup despite ~60 years with masters like the CIA?? Where do the new recruits get trained then?
Ask yourselves this
Who would want to train them?
No body.
ISI is a band of smugglers,closed minded, egotistical,easily offended,plotting turds who get power by blackmailing and torture. They rise in their ranks by currying favors or by assassination. Its a perpetually self-defeating mindset which will lead the entire Pakistan nation to complete utter destruction. There is nothing US or China could do to prevent Pakistan's self-destruction any more.
As a final act they would want to burn India with a thousand fires which would end their miserable existence. India should avoid any exposure to these despicable creatures for our own safety.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sum »

^^ During the DCH saga, there was a detailed report by pro-publica about how Maj Sameer Ali taught DCH all the classic spy techniques and even had him running around Lahore on training spy missions like in the movie "spy game". So, all these guys just learn it on a informal basis from seniors on joining up to the ISID and actually have no formalized setup?

Amazing!!!
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Links of the Intelligence arm of the Armed Forces of the Military of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the ISI / ISID, to the Islamic Terrorist attack of Mumbai disclosed in Court.

The Telegraph, UK:

Pakistan intelligence service coordinated with Mumbai attackers : Clicky

The Wall Street Journal:

Witness Ties Pakistan to Mumbai Massacre : Clicky
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

The UK‘s Daily Mail drawing on testimony provided in the ongoing trial of alleged Islamic Terrorist Tahawwur Hussain Rana reports the involvement of the ISI / ISID, the Intelligence Agency of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the Islamic Terrorist attack on Mumbai:

Pakistan’s intelligence agency was involved in planning of the Mumbai terror plot, conspirator claims
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

The International media on the suspected involvement of the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate ( ISI / ISID ), the intelligence arm of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the abduction, torture and murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad following his expose of links between the Pakistan Navy and Islamic Terrorists:

The Washington Post:

Pakistan’s spy agencies are suspected of ties to reporter’s death

The Independent, UK:

Leading journalist 'murdered by Pakistani security service'

The Star, Canada:

Pakistani journalist found dead after reported arrest by intelligence agency
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by ramana »

Mens Journal, June 2011 has Raymond Davis side of the story and the ISI shadowboxing with US.

Please read and be informed.

Thanks nairgolis.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by anmol »

Following is the story that RamanaJi mentioned. Sorry, I couldn't find this in text nor did I found the optical character recognition's result satisfactory... hence this one huge file.
Clink on thumbnails to see page in original size
pg 1 Image
pg 2 Image
pg 3 Image
pg 4 Image
pg 5 Image
pg 6 Image
pg 7 Image
pg 8 Image

Following is the link to the gallery where I uploaded the images: http://imgur.com/a/R2gfM/all
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by ramana »

Thanks, ramana
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Interestingly worded headline :lol: :

Pakistan's spymaster Hamid Gul: angel of jihad or windbag provocateur?

Story in the UK’s Guardian:

Clicky
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by svinayak »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... NETTXT3487
Pasha and the ISI are the heart of Pakistan's "establishment" – a nebulous web of generals, bureaucrats and hand-picked politicians (not always elected ones) who form the DNA of Pakistan's defence and security policies. It has at least 10,000 employees (some say twice as many), mixing serving army officers, many on three-year rotations from other services, with thousands of civilian employees, from suited analysts to beefy street spies. In theory they answer to the prime minister; in reality they are a tool of the army chief, Kayani. To supporters, the ISI safeguards national security – monitoring phones, guarding the country's nuclear weapons. But to its many critics, the ISI is the army's dirty tricks department, accused of abduction and assassination, vote-rigging and torture, and running Islamist terrorist outfits. "The ISI," said Minoo Bhandara, an outspoken Parsi businessman who ran a brewery across the road from army headquarters before he died in 2008, "is an institution full of intelligence but devoid of wisdom."

Oddly, it was founded by an Australian. As Pakistan recovered from its disastrous first war with India in 1948, Major General R Cawthorne, on secondment from the British army, decided the fledgling military needed a proper intelligence outfit. The first decades were inauspicious. The ISI mishandled the 1965 war with India and failed to predict the East Pakistan conflict in 1971, which sundered Pakistan in two and created Bangladesh. All changed, however, eight years later when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979. The decade-long war of resistance – bankrolled by the United States, fought by Afghans and Arabs, but largely run by the ISI from Pakistan's tribal areas – revolutionised the agency's fortunes. It ran a network of secret training camps along the Afghan border that trained more than 80,000 fighters. It controlled a weapons pipeline, funded by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, that smuggled Kalashnikovs and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from Karachi to the Khyber Pass. And it grew powerful and rich.

A legendary figure from that period was a man named Colonel Imam, whom I first met five years ago. He was tall and burly, with a thick beard and a crooked smile that suggested several missing teeth. He wore a white turban and an olive-green, British issue second world war-issue paratroop jacket, which he told me he had been wearing since he joined the army in 1971. During the 80s, Imam ran many of the ISI training camps, becoming popular among ethnic Pashtun fighters for his love of Islam and his fondness for killing Soviets. "Those were wonderful times," he told me. Although his real name was Sultan Amir, to the Afghans he became "Colonel Imam". "I loved the fight. And the mujahideen were very fond of me," he said with a smile.

The US liked him too. On the wall of his Rawalpindi home hung war trophies from the 80s – daggers, faded photos, a Russian general's gun – but on the table sat a chunk of the Berlin wall, cased in glass. "To one who helped deliver the first blow," it read. "The Americans gave me that," he said.

With the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA largely abandoned Pakistan. But the spirit of "jihad" – fighters imbued with Islamist vim – lived on in the ISI. Pakistani officers, having imbibed too much of their own ideology, transformed the spy agency. It started to support Islamist groups across Asia – Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Burma, India – and the US placed Pakistan on a terrorist watchlist. In 1993, Javed Ashraf Qazi, a secular-minded general officer, was sent in to clean up the mess. "I was shocked at what I found," he tells me. Senior ISI officers had jettisoned their uniforms for shalwar kameez; their subordinates would disappear off to the mosque for hours on end. The ISI had bought a hotel in Bangkok, probably to facilitate gun-running. The outgoing spy chief, Javed Nasir, was a playboy turned zealot who had grown a scraggly beard and refused to shake women's hands. On his first day in the office Qazi found him running out of the door to a Muslim missionary conference. "When people say the ISI is a rogue agency, it was true in those days," he says.

Qazi fired the ideologues, sold the hotel and ordered his subordinates to wear their uniforms (some struggled to fit in them). "We cleaned it up," says Qazi, who later became a minister under Pervez Musharraf.

But the ISI was not done with jihad; it had merely narrowed its focus. The proof is on the wall of Qazi's home. I notice an unusual rifle hanging on the wall. It is an Indian service rifle, Qazi admits half bashfully – a present from one of the "mujahideen" fighters the ISI started to send into Indian-occupied Kashmir from the mid 90s, when he was in charge. "We turned a blind eye to some groups," he says. They included Lashkar-e-Toiba, he admits – the terrorist outfit that in 2008 would attack hotels and train stations in the Indian city of Mumbai, killing 170 people.

In the early 90s, the ISI also started to support an obscure Islamist movement in Afghanistan called the Taliban. Colonel Imam was sent back into Afghanistan to advise the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar. They had history: Imam, it turned out, had trained Omar back in the mujahideen camps in the 80s. With ISI backing, the Taliban swept to power in Kabul; at the UN in New York, a beleaguered Afghan official complained that Imam was the "de facto governor" of the newly conquered territories. "Ah, they are naughty people," Imam told me of the Taliban with his shy smile. "Rough people, good fighters, but respected. And they were all my friends."

Over the past decade, however, the ISI has professed to have abandoned jihad. As American troops swarmed across Afghanistan, in search of Bin Laden in late 2001, President General Pervez Musharraf disavowed the Taliban, sacked his most Islamist generals (including the then ISI director, Mahmud Ahmed) and brought Colonel Imam home. {Kunduz Airlift?}The following January he made a signature speech banning a slew of jihadi groups. "We need to rid society of extremism," he declared.

On the ground, though, things have looked different. US diplomatic cables released through WikiLeaks last year claimed the ISI was still covertly supporting the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani network, as part of its decades-old grudge match with India. And despite billions of dollars in American assistance, wrote ambassador Anne Patterson, "no amount of money" was likely to make the army – or the ISI – change direction.

Simultaneously, though, the ISI has become a victim of jihadi violence. :mrgreen: The Pakistani Taliban – related to the Afghan movement, but separate, and heavily influenced by al-Qaida – is seeking to oust the Pakistani state. The ISI, deemed to have betrayed them, has become the enemy. Hundreds of ISI officials have died in recent years, killed in bombings of buses and offices, and ISI spies have been beheaded in the tribal belt. In the latest atrocity on 8 March a massive car bomb outside an ISI office in Faisalabad destroyed an airline office and killed 32 people.

I last saw Colonel Imam in January 2010 at his home in Rawalpindi. He joked about media articles describing him as the "father of the Taliban". Weeks later he set off for Waziristan with another former ISI man, Khawaja, and a British journalist, Asad Qureshi, who had been commissioned by Channel 4, to interview the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. But the Taliban took them hostage. After a few weeks Khawaja was executed, after confessing on video to being a "CIA spy". Qureshi was released in September after his family paid a hefty ransom. Then last January, a video of Imam surfaced showing him kneeling before a group of masked, armed men. Mehsud appeared, and said a few words. Then a Talib opened fire, pumped Imam with bullets. {Good riddance to bad rubbish! and a just punishment for a thug}

"When you're Frankenstein, and you create a lot of baby monsters who are running round your ankles looking sort of cute, they eventually grow up to be recalcitrant adults," a US official tells me in Islamabad. "And you hope you can get them back into the fold so they become useful. But the Pakistanis can't control everything they create."
Last edited by ramana on 01 Jun 2011 23:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

Snake Oil salesman Mansoor Ijaz in the Daily Beast excoriates the intelligence arm of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI / ISID ).

Manoor Ijaz states that the enemy of the US in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not apparently “the people of Pakistan” nor is it the “incompetent and toothless civilian government” nor is it the “ politicians and officials love to line their pockets with our taxpayer dollars “, it is the ISI / ISID:

The enemy is the ISI—it runs Pakistan from the shadows like a puppet master. The ISI is a danger to civilized societies everywhere, because it nurtures and breeds hatred among Pakistan's Islamist masses, and then uses their thirst for jihad as a foreign policy sledge hammer against Pakistan's neighbors and allies, often for no purpose besides just creating chaos. Its financial, logistics, and intelligence support of myriad jihadist groups in Kashmir thrice brought India and Pakistan to war—once a near-nuclear confrontation. Its S-Wing planning and logistics support for Afghanistan's Taliban from Pakistani soil has so muddied the waters in Afghan-Pakistan relations that President Hamid Karzai turned to India to counterbalance Pakistan's negative influences on his country. War, against both its neighbors, may be big business for Pakistan's army and intelligence organs, but the damage to civil life is nearly catastrophic—and it must now stop.
Read it all:

Pakistan's Spy Agency and Terrorism
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

arun wrote:The International media on the suspected involvement of the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate ( ISI / ISID ), the intelligence arm of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the abduction, torture and murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad following his expose of links between the Pakistan Navy and Islamic Terrorists:

The Washington Post:

Pakistan’s spy agencies are suspected of ties to reporter’s death

The Independent, UK:

Leading journalist 'murdered by Pakistani security service'

The Star, Canada:

Pakistani journalist found dead after reported arrest by intelligence agency
More indications that the torture and murder of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad was an act of extra-judicial murder by State Actors of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Syed Saleem Shahzad’s cell phone records starting from 18 days prior to his abduction erased:

Saleem Shahzad’s cell phone record erased
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X Posted.

The extra judicial killing of Syed Saleem Shahzad likely by the ISI causes Mustafa Malik to recount his run-in with the ISI dating back to 1989.

The ISI certainly does have a long standing history of intimidating journalists:
A_Gupta wrote:http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Com ... cabal.ashx

Mustafa Malik, in The Daily Star, Lebanon
...On Aug. 21, 1989, I was interviewing a retired army general, Khalid Mahmud Arif, at the Rawalpindi offices of then army chief of staff General Mirza Aslam Beg.

...

Were not the Pakistani army’s repeated coups, I inquired, affecting its morale and professionalism? I would learn later that Arif had been deeply involved in the coup led by General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.

Enraged, Arif ambushed me with a series of rapid-fire personal questions, including one about whether I was a practicing Muslim. When I refused to answer some of his queries and sought to end the interview, he ordered me to wait and went out.

Two armed guards prevented me from leaving. About 20 minutes later three plainclothes men barged in, arrested, handcuffed and blindfolded me, placed a hood over my head, and drove me off to an unknown location.

I was interrogated by two angry men in a basement room with spooky images on the wall and smudges of dry blood (or perhaps red dye) on the floor. Sporting wooden staffs, the men harangued me about the quality of my upbringing as a Muslim, any links I might have with Indian intelligence, the reason for my “snooping” in Pakistan’s army headquarters, and so on.
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Pakistani Role in Global Terrorism thread.

More hunting with the hounds and running with the hare by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

“Security Officials” of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan tipped off Islamic Terrorists that raids would be conducted on "IED factories" located in North and South Waziristan which had been identified by the US who passed on the locations of the "IED factories" to the Islamic Republic with a request to act. The tip off provided time to the Islamic Terrorists to make good their escape.

Evidence of this newest piece of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s duplicity regards Islamic Terrorism was reportedly given by US official Leon Panetta during his current (ongoing?) visit to the Islamic Republic :

Pakistan Officials Colluding With Militants? US Presents Evidence
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Pakistani Role in Global Terrorism thread.

More on the story of “Security Officials” of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan tipping off Islamic Terrorists that raids would be conducted on "IED factories" located in North and South Waziristan which had been identified by the US who passed on the locations of the "IED factories" to the Islamic Republic with a request to act.

From Time Magazine:

Sources: Panetta Confronts Pakistan Over Collusion With Militants

From the New York Times:

C.I.A. Director Warns Pakistan on Collusion With Militants
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by ramana »

X-Posting..
Philip wrote:Here is a superb analysis in the New Statesman's cover story, May 16th issue,"Pak's dirty secret"-"The enemy's enemy",by Anatol Lieven,about the chicanery of its military and the role of the ISI.Here are some titbits.Read it in full.

Choice quote:
"Asked to describe an average Pakistani officer today, the retired lieutenant general Tanveer Naqvi told me: "He has no doubt in his mind that the adversary is India - and that the raison d'être of the army is to defend [the country] against India. His image of Indians is of an anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim and treacherous people. So he feels that he must be always ready to fight against India."

Inside Pakistan's spy network
Anatol Lieven
Published 12 May 2011

The ISI gorged on US money during the 1980s. Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, can the west still buy its loyalty?
The ISI was established by a British army officer of Australian extraction, Major General William Cawthorne, during that curious period after independence when, even after Pakistan and India had in effect gone to war over Kashmir, Britain continued to provide many of the senior officers of the Pakistani military.

The ISI was set up to gather and co-ordinate military intelligence, supplanting Military Intelligence (MI), which had performed poorly in the first conflict with India and had been relegated largely to combating subversion and mutiny in the armed forces. MI, an organisation so secretive that it makes the ISI look like a bunch of blabbermouths, continues to do this with what seems to be considerable success. But one thing is certain about MI: while it can monitor the regular armed forces, it is not allowed to supervise the ISI. Pakistan's third intelligence service is the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB), which comes under the ministry of the interior. The ISI regards it, in the words of one officer, as "no better than policemen. And you know what our police are like."

The underfunded and poorly staffed IB loathes the ISI and some of the most vicious stories I have heard about the ISI's involvement in terrorism come from the IB. Needless to say, the lack of co-ordination between the three services has often been the despair of western counterterrorism officers. :((

The ISI's growth from a British-model intelligence organisation to a "state within a state" was the result of three processes. The first was the conflict with India, which, in one form or another, has been dragging on since both countries gained independence. This conflict and the acute paranoia it has created have profoundly shaped the Pakistani state and the ethos of its military.

The second was fear of internal revolt in Pakistan, which led the state to give the ISI a vital role in domestic intelligence. In 1989-90, the ISI used this power in Operation Midnight Jackal, a plot to undermine parliamentary support for Benazir Bhutto, which helped to bring down her government. It also wields much influence within the bureaucracy because it is in charge of giving security clearance to senior officials. A negative assessment will ruin a career.

The third factor was the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. General Zia-ul-Haq used the ISI to channel US and Arab aid to the Afghan mujahedin. A good deal of this money stuck to the ISI's fingers, giving it secret sources of funding independent of the Pakistani military, let alone the state.
So, where does this history leave the ISI today, especially in the context of the Bin Laden affair? It goes without saying that the ISI is not under any sort of control by the Pakistani government. When I was asked on US television recently how President Asif Ali Zardari could not have known what his intelligence service might have been up to, I let out a hoot of incredulous laughter. The interviewer had clearly not been following Pakistan very closely. Contempt for civilian politicians and ministers is strong in the military and stronger still among the retired ISI officers to whom I have spoken - in part because they know so much about these politicians' corruption, murders, sexual behaviour and family lives.

A much more difficult question is whether the ISI is even under the full control of the Pakistani military or whether it, and groups within it, are following their own agenda. This is of crucial importance in relation to Bin Laden's death and Pakistan-based terrorism more generally; for not only does it raise the possibility of the ISI's complicity in terrorism against the west (as opposed to the Taliban revolt in Afghanistan), it suggests the possibility of Islamist subversion within the Pakistani military. That points towards the threat of mutiny within the army, the collapse of the state and loss of control over Pakistan's nuclear stockpiles. This possibility still seems pretty remote to me unless Washington were to attack Pakistan directly (for example, following a terrorist attack on the US).

By the nature of their work, their secrecy, their extremely compartmentalised organisation and their professionally fostered paranoia, secret services generate conspiratorial groups with separate and sometimes wild agendas. Nonetheless, the high command of the ISI is part of the high command of the military. The present army chief of staff, Ashfaq Kayani, was formerly head of the ISI under Musharraf. Formidably intelligent and self-disciplined, General Kayani is very much a Pakistani officer of the post-Zia era. His rise demonstrates the meritocracy of the military; his father was a non-commissioned officer.

Kayani is known to be a pious Muslim and is conservative in his personal life but has no reputation of sympathy for Islamist politics. Had he been an Islamist, he could not possibly have risen to the top under Musharraf, who was secular in his beliefs and behaviour.
Similarly, the present director of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, is known to be hostile to the militants and was appointed because he had long been close to Kayani; according to rumour, the US also urged Islamabad to appoint him. :mrgreen:
Like the commanders, most of the senior and middle-ranking staff of the ISI are not intelligence professionals but regular officers, temporarily seconded. At the top level, therefore, the ISI is part of the military high command and follows its orders.

The ISI does, however, see itself as an elite within the military. As a Pakistani journalist close to the intelligence service told me, "The ISI is the intellectual core and centre of gravity of the army. Without the ISI, the army is just an elephant without eyes and ears." This phrase caused extreme annoyance among some military friends to whom I repeated it.
What mindset has shaped the behaviour of Pakistan's generals, including those of the ISI? By far the most important aspect of a Pakistani senior soldier's identity is that he (or, very occasionally, she) is an officer. The Pakistani military is a profoundly shaping influence. It would be hard to find a more different group of men than the generals Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia, Mirza Aslam Beg, Asif Nawaz, Jehangir Karamat, Musharraf and Kayani in terms of social origin, character and attitude to religion. Yet all have been first and foremost military men.

This in turn means that their ideology was, or is, rooted primarily in Pakistani Muslim nationalism. As institutions, the military and the ISI are tied to Pakistan, not the universal Muslim caliphate of Islamists' dreams. If it is true, as so many officers have told me, to say that "No army, no Pakistan", it is equally true to say that "No Pakistan, no army".
Nationalism can be a positive and even indispensable force for the development of a country. Modern Turkey, so often held up to the rest of the world as a model, was founded on an ardent and ruthless nationalism. :((

The problem is that it may be wrapped up with particular differences and enmities. Pakis­tan's existential hostility is to India. Just as the US national security state was shaped by the cold war, so the Pakistani national security state (vastly more powerful in its own country) was born chiefly out of fear of, and hostility to, India. This is felt most strongly in the military and, in the ISI, it is a raging monomania.

Asked to describe an average Pakistani officer today, the retired lieutenant general Tanveer Naqvi told me: "He has no doubt in his mind that the adversary is India - and that the raison d'être of the army is to defend [the country] against India. His image of Indians is of an anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim and treacherous people. So he feels that he must be always ready to fight against India."
The shelter given by the Pakistani military to the Afghan Taliban and its allies is based on a belief that the US is sure to fail in Afghanistan and that civil war will follow the US's withdrawal. In that civil war, India will use its allies to encircle Pakistan strategically.

Thus, Pakistan, too, must have allies - and the only one available is the Taliban. That stands even though senior officers know very well that, in the 1990s, despite all the help Pakistan had given the Taliban, it repeatedly kicked the country in the teeth.

On the whole, Pakistan has given shelter, not support, to the Taliban. But the ISI - perhaps through a notorious, ultra-secret branch, the "S wing" - has given some direct help to its Haqqani network (in its 2008 and 2009 attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul, for example).

As for LeT and the other anti-Indian militant groups, the Pakistani military and the ISI insist that they must keep them close in order to restrain them from attacking India, as well as making sure that they do not launch or help in terrorist assaults on the west.
All of this is true enough, but doubts remain about the motives and future intentions of the ISI. In 2009, I had a horrifying conversation with the journalist and analyst Zaid Hamid, who had been recommended to me by a senior ISI officer as an interesting person to meet.
Hamid is a self-described Pakistani neoconservative and, like some neocons of my acquaintance in Washington, his favourite word seemed to be "ruthless".

“We say that if India tries to break up Pakistan by supporting insurgents such as the Baloch nationalists, then our response should be to break up India," he told me. "India is not nearly as strong as it looks. The fault lines of the Indian federation are much deeper than those of Pakistan: Kashmir, the Naxalites, Khalistan, Nagaland, all kinds of conflicts between upper and lower castes, tribals, Hindus and other religions, and so on. If we were to support these insurgencies, India would cease to exist." :rotfl: :rotfl:

Kashmir aside, there is no evidence that the ISI is supporting any of these insurgencies within India. :mrgreen: But Hamid's apparent closeness to the ISI makes these views deeply alarming - although, to be fair, they are also quite widely shared in Pakistani society and attract a mass audience to his television programme.

If Hamid's views are representative of elements within the ISI, we must conclude that the service remains determined to strike India again at some point in future, using Islamist militants. And given that the US is increasingly seen in Pakistan as an ally of India, there is a good chance that Americans will be among the victims of any attack on high-profile targets in India. That is what happened in 2008 in Mumbai, when the gunmen searched for those with US and British passports.
One thing is clear: the ISI should be brought under much greater state control. This will require a détente between India and Pakistan that would reduce the anti-Indian paranoia in Pakistani society which gives the military and the ISI their legitimacy. But this is not going to happen any time soon and, in the meantime, we are doomed to try to co-operate with the ISI - without trusting it an inch.

Anatol Lieven is professor of war studies at King's College London. His most recent book, "Pakistan: a Hard Country", is newly published by Allen Lane (£30). Samira Shackle reviews the book in this week's New Statesman
Thus,we can safe but sadly conclude that with the ISI's "monomania" againt India and the rapid Islamisation of its uniformed tribes,with the ISI at the very epi-centre of Pak's military strategy,further even more grievous and devastating attacks against the Indian state (as the author hs also concluded) is inevitable ,which will in the future most likely escalate into another full blown war.Has our nation's leadership understood this fact? Certainly not "snake-oil" S.I. Singh with his "peace in our time" parleys with the enemy!
Pak ISI is patterned after the Mukuhbarat of Zayed, Governor of Kufa during Muwaiya's days. He finessed the way for people to spy on each other to keep the state power. Further they worked on dirty ops to assassinate rival leaders.
svinayak
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by svinayak »

Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence
With transcript
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/InterSer

Panelists talked about Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency and its alleged involvement in several terrorism attacks. Among the topics they addressed were the structure of the agency, its role in government, and the ISI's relationship with U.S. intelligence. They also talked about growing distrust between the U.S. and Pakistan stemming from problems in intelligence sharing, the raid on a compound in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, and ties to a terrorist bombing in Mumbai, India. They also responded to questions from the audience.

The Pak person Shuja Nawaz talks about India and how India is referred for every other thing.
he also says India does not want to take Pak since Pak is 200M angry muslims.
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X posted from the Pakistani Role in Global Terrorism thread.

The Islamic Terrorist supporting ways of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan acknowledged in hearings before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee.

US Vice Adm.William McRaven says Mullah Omar is being sheltered in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan knows about this:
Senators level new criticism at Pakistan for sheltering terrorists

By Charley Keyes, CNN Senior National Security Producer

June 28, 2011 -- Updated 2307 GMT (0707 HKT)

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. senators didn't miss a chance Tuesday to voice frustration with Pakistan over how it takes billions of dollars of American aid while providing safe havens to terrorists to build bombs and launch cross-border attacks on U.S.troops in Afghanistan.

"Well, something's got to give, something's got to change," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing. "Because it just can't continue this way, for them to expect that we're going to have a normal relationship with them -- which we all hope for."

And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, also was critical of Pakistan; specifically, whether the top Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Mullah Omar was hiding there.

"Is Mullah Omar in Pakistan?" Graham asked Vice Adm.William McRaven, who supervised the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound In Pakistan that ended with the death of al Qaeda leader.

"Sir, we believe he is," McRaven replied.

The hearing was the next step toward Senate approval of President Barack Obama's decision to promote McRaven to become commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command.

Graham nudged McRaven along. "Do we believe he is there is with the knowledge of the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) and the upper echelon of the (Pakistani) army?" asked Graham.

"Sir, I believe the Pakistanis know he is in Pakistan," McRaven said.

"Let me ask you this -- If they tried for about a week do you think they could then find him?" said Graham.

"I can't answer that because i don't know whether they could or not because i don't know exactly where Mullah Omar is," answered McRaven, who said he believed the United States. has asked Pakistan to find the Taliban leader.

"Well, I'm asking," said Graham. "I think Sen. Levin and I will both ask together today." …………………..

CNN
sanjaykumar
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by sanjaykumar »

“We say that if India tries to break up Pakistan by supporting insurgents such as the Baloch nationalists, then our response should be to break up India," he told me. "India is not nearly as strong as it looks. The fault lines of the Indian federation are much deeper than those of Pakistan: Kashmir, the Naxalites, Khalistan, Nagaland, all kinds of conflicts between upper and lower castes, tribals, Hindus and other religions, and so on. If we were to support these insurgencies, India would cease to exist."


Well yes, see how successful Pakistan was in carving Bangladesh out of India. :mrgreen:
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

The citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan reportedly belatedly discover that the Uniformed Jihadi's of the Military are incompetent, corrupt and prone to abusing power:
Scandals taint revered Pakistan military

The military establishment, which long dominated politics and society, is accused of incompetency, corruption and abuse of power after the Bin Laden raid and other incidents.

By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times

July 3, 2011
Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan—

It's difficult to overstate the respect that Pakistan's military has enjoyed among its people. Since the nation's violent birth in 1947, the armed services have been touted as the glue holding the country together, having waged three wars with India, defended Pakistan's part of divided Kashmir, safeguarded the Islamic world's only known nuclear weaponry and battled growing domestic terrorist attacks.

In recent weeks, however, the military and its shadowy spymaster cousin, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, termed "the establishment" here, have been rocked by charges of incompetency, corruption, abuse of power and extrajudicial killings.

"I'm 37 and in my lifetime I never imagined the Pakistani army and the ISI would be bludgeoned in public like this," said Mazur Zaidi, a documentary filmmaker. "The narrative they built up over 63 years is cracking."

If the challenge to that narrative — that the military and intelligence services are above reproach — is sustained, it could have broad implications for Pakistan's democracy, regional relations and the fight against on terrorism, some analysts said.

By dominating Pakistan's domestic politics, national budget and foreign affairs, the military establishment has hampered development of a more representative government, placed undue priority on facing down India and gobbled up resources better spent on education, electricity and the economy, critics said………………………….

L.A. Times
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X Posted ..............
ranjbe wrote:Interview with a Paki terrorist in todays NYT, where he admits TSP army support for terrorist groups. This article is interesting not because it reveals anything that BRF did not know decades ago, but by its timing. You would not have seen such an article prior to the OBL killing. Looks like Unkil now has the knives out, and TSP H&D is no longer an issue.
The Pakistani military continues to nurture a broad range of militant groups as part of a three-decade strategy of using proxies against its neighbors and American forces in Afghanistan, but now some of the fighters it trained are questioning that strategy, a prominent former militant commander says
Militant groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen, are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection. That system was still functioning, he said.

The former commander’s account belies years of assurances by Pakistan to American officials since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups in its territory. The United States has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid over the past decade for its help with counterterrorism operations. Still, the former commander said, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has not abandoned its policy of supporting the militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the border territory of Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.

“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said. He named a number of former military officials involved in the program, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals. “These people have a very big role still,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept. 11, the former commander said.
Pakistan has 12,000 to 14,000 fully trained Kashmiri fighters, scattered throughout various camps in Pakistan, and is holding them in reserve to use if needed in a war against India, he said.

Yet Pakistan has been losing the fight for Kashmir, and most Kashmiris now want independence and not to be part of Pakistan or India, he said. Since Sept. 11, Pakistan has redirected much of its attention away from Kashmir to Afghanistan, and many Kashmiri fighters are not interested in that fight and have taken up India’s offer of an amnesty to go home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/world ... ml?_r=1&hp
Only natural that an organisation such as the Army of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan that sports the very steeped in Islam motto of “Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah” or translated from Urdu, “Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Way of Allah”, will take its motto seriously and succumb to the charms of Jihadi Islamic Terrorism:
arun
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by arun »

X Posted from the TSP thread.

New York Times reports that that “two senior administration officials” of the Obama Administration have said that classified intelligence showed that senior officials of the spy agency of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI / ISID) directed the attack that killed journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad in an effort to silence criticism.
pgbhat wrote:Pakistan’s Spies Tied to Slaying of a Journalist
New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.
Particularly embarrassing for the military, Mr. Shahzad described negotiations before the raid between the navy and a Qaeda representative, Abdul Samad Mansoor. The navy refused to release the detainees, Mr. Shahzad wrote. The Pakistani military maintains that it does not negotiate with militants.
It was possible that Mr. Shahzad had become too cavalier, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani columnist and author.

“The rules of the game are not completely well defined,” she said. “Sometimes friendly elements cross an imaginary threshold and it is felt they must be taught a lesson.”

The efforts by the ISI to constrain the Pakistani news media have, to a degree, worked in recent days. The virulent criticism after Mr. Shahzad’s death has tempered a bit.


A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents.
ramana
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Re: ISI-History and Discussions

Post by ramana »

The proof of the pudding is will US stop interacting with ISI?

No! So shut up.
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