In the last few days, dozens of people have been killed in the Pakistani city of Karachi in clashes between various groups. At the same time, violence flared up in a handful of other places in the country. The clashes were inspired by the suspension of Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from his job, two months ago, by president Pervez Musharraf. There now seems to be a kind of standoff between the president who needs to reaffirm his authority and the judge who has become the unwilling hero of a nationwide protest that has grown into a movement. Who really benefits from this situation? The ousted judge? No: he’s merely the man of the moment, a temporary focal point for anti-government protesters. President Musharraf ? No; the last thing the embattled president needs is a further set of complications. Who, then? It is Pakistan’s secret service ISI (“Inter-Services Intelligence”) that will profit.
Tightrope
The Musharraf-Chaudhry standoff is exactly what ISI needs. Whichever way things will develop in Pakistan, chaos will spread - in the very near future or in months to come, be it quick and explosive, be it as a slowly spreading fire. General Musharraf wants to be re-elected as president in the Fall and he most probably wants to keep his position as chief of the army, since an effective Pakistani presidency is impossible without control of the army. Constitutionally, the latter is very difficult for the general. So not surprisingly, Musharraf suspended his well-know critic, the Chief Justice, expecting to replace him by someone more pliable and now he seems to be hoping to ride it out, despite civil unrest.
The unrest is deeply-rooted; the population has had enough of military rule and of rising unemployment and poverty and seizes the moment. The only real - but significantly worse - alternative for Musharraf would be to declare a state of emergency and clamp down on any type of unrest - but the outcome of that would be even more uncertain. So Musharraf stands to expect at least a weakening of his power in the near future, or total uncertainty in the somewhat longer run. In other words, present power-settings are to change in any case. If Musharraf manages to stay on after elections, he’ll need ISI. If he doesn’t stay on, his successor will need ISI.
Whoever is head of state in six months, he must master the art of walking a tightrope; on the one side there’s a strongly “Islamist” country, on the other, there’s the western “War on Terror” with its necessary intelligence-and-security-ties with the US. ISI is central to both, with its strategic interests in “Islamism” and its material interests in western funds. In short, no viable Pakistani presidency without ISI. ISI holds the tightrope.
ISI was founded, over half a century ago, as Pakistan’s main instrument to contain or even destabilize neighbouring India’s military aspirations and political stability. ISI’s ideological basis has always been Pakistan’s “Islamism”; in addition to political and military strategic necessities, Pakistan’s identity was and is rooted in deeply “Islamist” notions. The service has always done its utmost to further the destabilization of its neighbour, for example by supporting or inciting subversion in Indian regions that didn’t “fit” naturally into India. To gain any degree of influence in the region, ISI has always seen the strategic necessity to cooperate actively with “Islamist” fundamentalist groups towards the “talebanization” of the region - and it has been very successful in doing exactly that.
CIA support
ISI, in the past 50 years, has influenced subversive groups in, among others, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Sometimes its “Islamist” influence used practical political lines, sometimes it used religious lines. In the process of building, supporting and influencing a “network of Islamist” subversive or even terrorist groups, ISI also hooked up with Maktab al-Khidamar, or MAK (“Services Office”). MAK was an organization founded in the early eighties by Osama bin Laden and two others to funnel money, arms and combatants into Afghanistan to combat the soviet-supported Marxist Afghan regime and the de facto Soviet occupation of that country. By then, ISI had also become the US Central Intelligence Agency’s main “channel” for covert action against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Surprising? No: the desire of the Carter government to thwart any Soviet success in Afghanistan needs no explanation. The means to this end, designed by National Security Advisor Brzezinski, was to “create” or promote a “Muslim” extremist movement in the region, aimed at destabilizing the Muslim republics of the USSR and then to have it spill over into Afghanistan. These goals were shared by Pakistan’s dictator Gen Zia ul-Haq and ISI. In addition, CIA and ISI mounted an operation to recruit Islamic militants from anywhere to fight in Afghanistan. It is believed that up to a hundred thousand “Islamist” combatants ultimately were channelled to Afghanistan. ISI profited; the CIA (and thus the US) profited.
After the demise of Afghanistan’s Soviet occupation, the CIA and ISI and other parties involved, decided the “force” they had created was far too useful to be disbanded. So by the end of 1991, in a meeting between CIA representatives, Prince Turki bin Faisal (head of the Saudi intelligence service) and the "Arab Afghans", they decided to continue links.
The MAK had its headquarters in Peshawar, Pakistan, but “offices” were also set up in the US. It is even said that one such “office” was at or close to the Farouq mosque on Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn, NYC. There exist documents (from the US Defence Intelligence Agency - the DIA, for example) showing that the US government did know what it was supporting. However, the Bush Administration looked the other way. There are more such examples, but, in short: in the past few decades there has been close cooperation between ISI and “Islamist” terrorists, and there has not been much distance between the CIA end ISI, to say the least.
The relationship between the CIA and “al Qaeda”, the terrorist organization that Bin Laden founded in 1989 with the more extreme members of MAK (as MAK was becoming too soft for his liking ?). A telling example is what Milt Bearden, CIA chief of station in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, told The New Yorker in 2000: “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what Bin Laden did.”
The US government has always denied that it cooperated with or even sponsored Bin Laden, but for example J. Michael Springmann, head of the non-immigrant visa section at the US consulate in Jeddah (Saudi-Arabia) in the late Eighties, stated in an interview on Fox television that the CIA had a "program to bring people to the United States for terrorist training, people recruited by the CIA and its asset Usama bin Laden, and the idea was to get them trained and send them back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets". Furthermore, these people were “Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese" nationals, Springmann stated.
“Just enough”
Officially, Pakistan is a US ally. Has Pakistan really been combating terrorism in the past 4 or 5 years? Not at all. In the words of former CIA analyst Daniel Byman, quoted in “U.S. News & World Report”: "The Pakistanis do just enough to avoid jeopardizing U.S. support." In fact, the situation is even worse. For example, the Musharraf government has signed a pact with Taleban-oriented militias in the semi-autonomous North-Waziristan province, close to the Afghan border, aimed at stabilizing the province. Taleban and al-Qaeda fugitives had been using the province as a base for operations in Afghanistan, and at least cosmetically something had to be done. Effectively, the Pakistani army has now withdrawn from the area, allowing the locals to remain armed and organized. The Musharraf government tries to sell this as a victory, pointing at the fact that the militias no longer attack the Pakistani army. Yet leaving the province under the control of terrorist elements who have set up a string of training camps can also be seen in a rather different light. In a similar manner the neighbouring province of South-Waziristan has become a Taleban breeding ground. Besides, three hundred ISI personnel who had been working with the Taleban before 9/11 and who had been given regular army duties after 9/11, have in the last year returned to ISI.
When the sincerity and effectiveness of Pakistan’s contribution to the “War on Terror” are questioned, the Musharraf government usually boasts the arrest of more than twenty “al Qaeda” terrorists in the past few years – “proof” of Pakistan’s genuine cooperation with the US. But the government conveniently fails to point out that these arrests were the result of cooperation between the FBI and the Pakistani interior ministry - not ISI. Pakistan, while actively “allowing” further “talebanization” of the region, is paying simply lip service to the West, it seems. Both, the “talebanization” and the lip service, are impossible without ISI.
Cooperation
Does it go further? Well, take a look at the Balkans. It is known that hundreds of Muslim fighters joined the Bosnians in their struggle for survival against the Serbs in the mid-Nineties. Most of them came from the Middle East and are seriously rumoured to have travelled through “al Qaeda”. However, there is stronger confirmation that when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) needed numbers and weapons in 1998-99, Mujahedeen combatants from the Middle East and Asia joined the ranks of the KLA. Strategically, this operation was organized by the CIA and ISI, and the actual arming and training of these combatants was in the hands of the DIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (more popularly known as MI6). As a result of this cooperation between Western intelligence services and ISI, the Mujahedeen strongly lessened the operational burden on NATO in the region.
“War on Terror”
So when we view a CIA-ISI-“al Qaeda” relationship as not at all improbable (to say the least), what is the common interest that ISI and the West, predominantly the US, have in the current situation in Pakistan? It is the “War on Terror”. Both have almost totally different motivations, but their interests merge significantly enough to overcome motivational differences. The US government needs the “War on Terror” to legitimize its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan; ISI needs it to continue and strengthen its influence in “Islamist” circles.
Apparently, General Musharraf has outlived his usefulness; let’s wait and see how long it takes before circumstances force him to be replaced.
John Berlin
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
Please also see:
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout1.php&id=17&blz=1
Tightrope
The Musharraf-Chaudhry standoff is exactly what ISI needs. Whichever way things will develop in Pakistan, chaos will spread - in the very near future or in months to come, be it quick and explosive, be it as a slowly spreading fire. General Musharraf wants to be re-elected as president in the Fall and he most probably wants to keep his position as chief of the army, since an effective Pakistani presidency is impossible without control of the army. Constitutionally, the latter is very difficult for the general. So not surprisingly, Musharraf suspended his well-know critic, the Chief Justice, expecting to replace him by someone more pliable and now he seems to be hoping to ride it out, despite civil unrest.
The unrest is deeply-rooted; the population has had enough of military rule and of rising unemployment and poverty and seizes the moment. The only real - but significantly worse - alternative for Musharraf would be to declare a state of emergency and clamp down on any type of unrest - but the outcome of that would be even more uncertain. So Musharraf stands to expect at least a weakening of his power in the near future, or total uncertainty in the somewhat longer run. In other words, present power-settings are to change in any case. If Musharraf manages to stay on after elections, he’ll need ISI. If he doesn’t stay on, his successor will need ISI.
Whoever is head of state in six months, he must master the art of walking a tightrope; on the one side there’s a strongly “Islamist” country, on the other, there’s the western “War on Terror” with its necessary intelligence-and-security-ties with the US. ISI is central to both, with its strategic interests in “Islamism” and its material interests in western funds. In short, no viable Pakistani presidency without ISI. ISI holds the tightrope.
ISI was founded, over half a century ago, as Pakistan’s main instrument to contain or even destabilize neighbouring India’s military aspirations and political stability. ISI’s ideological basis has always been Pakistan’s “Islamism”; in addition to political and military strategic necessities, Pakistan’s identity was and is rooted in deeply “Islamist” notions. The service has always done its utmost to further the destabilization of its neighbour, for example by supporting or inciting subversion in Indian regions that didn’t “fit” naturally into India. To gain any degree of influence in the region, ISI has always seen the strategic necessity to cooperate actively with “Islamist” fundamentalist groups towards the “talebanization” of the region - and it has been very successful in doing exactly that.
CIA support
ISI, in the past 50 years, has influenced subversive groups in, among others, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Sometimes its “Islamist” influence used practical political lines, sometimes it used religious lines. In the process of building, supporting and influencing a “network of Islamist” subversive or even terrorist groups, ISI also hooked up with Maktab al-Khidamar, or MAK (“Services Office”). MAK was an organization founded in the early eighties by Osama bin Laden and two others to funnel money, arms and combatants into Afghanistan to combat the soviet-supported Marxist Afghan regime and the de facto Soviet occupation of that country. By then, ISI had also become the US Central Intelligence Agency’s main “channel” for covert action against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Surprising? No: the desire of the Carter government to thwart any Soviet success in Afghanistan needs no explanation. The means to this end, designed by National Security Advisor Brzezinski, was to “create” or promote a “Muslim” extremist movement in the region, aimed at destabilizing the Muslim republics of the USSR and then to have it spill over into Afghanistan. These goals were shared by Pakistan’s dictator Gen Zia ul-Haq and ISI. In addition, CIA and ISI mounted an operation to recruit Islamic militants from anywhere to fight in Afghanistan. It is believed that up to a hundred thousand “Islamist” combatants ultimately were channelled to Afghanistan. ISI profited; the CIA (and thus the US) profited.
After the demise of Afghanistan’s Soviet occupation, the CIA and ISI and other parties involved, decided the “force” they had created was far too useful to be disbanded. So by the end of 1991, in a meeting between CIA representatives, Prince Turki bin Faisal (head of the Saudi intelligence service) and the "Arab Afghans", they decided to continue links.
The MAK had its headquarters in Peshawar, Pakistan, but “offices” were also set up in the US. It is even said that one such “office” was at or close to the Farouq mosque on Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn, NYC. There exist documents (from the US Defence Intelligence Agency - the DIA, for example) showing that the US government did know what it was supporting. However, the Bush Administration looked the other way. There are more such examples, but, in short: in the past few decades there has been close cooperation between ISI and “Islamist” terrorists, and there has not been much distance between the CIA end ISI, to say the least.
The relationship between the CIA and “al Qaeda”, the terrorist organization that Bin Laden founded in 1989 with the more extreme members of MAK (as MAK was becoming too soft for his liking ?). A telling example is what Milt Bearden, CIA chief of station in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, told The New Yorker in 2000: “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what Bin Laden did.”
The US government has always denied that it cooperated with or even sponsored Bin Laden, but for example J. Michael Springmann, head of the non-immigrant visa section at the US consulate in Jeddah (Saudi-Arabia) in the late Eighties, stated in an interview on Fox television that the CIA had a "program to bring people to the United States for terrorist training, people recruited by the CIA and its asset Usama bin Laden, and the idea was to get them trained and send them back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets". Furthermore, these people were “Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese" nationals, Springmann stated.
“Just enough”
Officially, Pakistan is a US ally. Has Pakistan really been combating terrorism in the past 4 or 5 years? Not at all. In the words of former CIA analyst Daniel Byman, quoted in “U.S. News & World Report”: "The Pakistanis do just enough to avoid jeopardizing U.S. support." In fact, the situation is even worse. For example, the Musharraf government has signed a pact with Taleban-oriented militias in the semi-autonomous North-Waziristan province, close to the Afghan border, aimed at stabilizing the province. Taleban and al-Qaeda fugitives had been using the province as a base for operations in Afghanistan, and at least cosmetically something had to be done. Effectively, the Pakistani army has now withdrawn from the area, allowing the locals to remain armed and organized. The Musharraf government tries to sell this as a victory, pointing at the fact that the militias no longer attack the Pakistani army. Yet leaving the province under the control of terrorist elements who have set up a string of training camps can also be seen in a rather different light. In a similar manner the neighbouring province of South-Waziristan has become a Taleban breeding ground. Besides, three hundred ISI personnel who had been working with the Taleban before 9/11 and who had been given regular army duties after 9/11, have in the last year returned to ISI.
When the sincerity and effectiveness of Pakistan’s contribution to the “War on Terror” are questioned, the Musharraf government usually boasts the arrest of more than twenty “al Qaeda” terrorists in the past few years – “proof” of Pakistan’s genuine cooperation with the US. But the government conveniently fails to point out that these arrests were the result of cooperation between the FBI and the Pakistani interior ministry - not ISI. Pakistan, while actively “allowing” further “talebanization” of the region, is paying simply lip service to the West, it seems. Both, the “talebanization” and the lip service, are impossible without ISI.
Cooperation
Does it go further? Well, take a look at the Balkans. It is known that hundreds of Muslim fighters joined the Bosnians in their struggle for survival against the Serbs in the mid-Nineties. Most of them came from the Middle East and are seriously rumoured to have travelled through “al Qaeda”. However, there is stronger confirmation that when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) needed numbers and weapons in 1998-99, Mujahedeen combatants from the Middle East and Asia joined the ranks of the KLA. Strategically, this operation was organized by the CIA and ISI, and the actual arming and training of these combatants was in the hands of the DIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (more popularly known as MI6). As a result of this cooperation between Western intelligence services and ISI, the Mujahedeen strongly lessened the operational burden on NATO in the region.
“War on Terror”
So when we view a CIA-ISI-“al Qaeda” relationship as not at all improbable (to say the least), what is the common interest that ISI and the West, predominantly the US, have in the current situation in Pakistan? It is the “War on Terror”. Both have almost totally different motivations, but their interests merge significantly enough to overcome motivational differences. The US government needs the “War on Terror” to legitimize its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan; ISI needs it to continue and strengthen its influence in “Islamist” circles.
Apparently, General Musharraf has outlived his usefulness; let’s wait and see how long it takes before circumstances force him to be replaced.
John Berlin
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
Please also see:
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout1.php&id=17&blz=1