Britain to help Pak establish MI5-like network
ANI | October 2, 2009
Washington, Oct. 2 (ANI): Britain will assist Pakistan to set up a counter-intelligence agency on the line of British secret service, MI5.
BBC’s Richard Watson quoted senior British and Pakistani counter-terrorism officials as saying that British training and funding will be made available to the new security authority.
In the first phase, 200 experts will be employed in Pakistan, covering extremism and religious affairs, he said.
One of these will examine the alleged role in religious schools and radicalisation.
He added that there will be a new counter-terrorism strategy within six months, and research projects will be launched.
British intelligence has estimated that almost three quarters of terrorist attacks in Britain have their origins in Pakistan.
British experts fear that Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI could block progress, as it would want to remain in charge of terrorist investigations.
However, Pakistani sources insisted that the ISI is fully on board.
The Home Office declined to comment on funding, but said it strongly supported the move. (ANI)
Showing posts with label ISI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISI. Show all posts
Telegraph : The new enemy within is invisible
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The new enemy within is invisible
Al-Qaeda is changing its tactics to avoid detection of its agents. Security forces must adapt quickly to find them, says Con Coughlin
By Con Coughlin | April 10, 2009
Within Britain's counter-terrorism community they are known as the "clean skins": highly trained, professional killers whose blameless backgrounds provide not the slightest clue as to their true, evil intent.
The phenomenon was first identified during the bloody 30-year campaign the IRA waged against the British Isles. At the start of the Troubles, British intelligence and security officials quickly established a profile of the main IRA suspects, enabling them to dent severely the organisation's operational effectiveness. To counter this, IRA commanders sought recruits who did not fit the classic image – no known involvement in Republican politics, no criminal record and preferably no Irish family ties.
Now it appears that the "clean skins" may be back, this time in Islamist form. That is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the latest operation in which anti-terror police detained 12 men in a series of raids conducted in Manchester, Liverpool and Clitheroe, Lancs.
Most of the headlines have inevitably focused on the resignation of Bob Quick, the country's leading anti-terrorism policeman, who risked jeopardising the entire operation by exposing its details in advance.
But it is the raids themselves, targeted at 11 Pakistani-born nationals who had entered Britain on student visas (and one British national), which suggest that al-Qaeda might now be attempting to effect a radical transformation in its tactics.
We should remember that September 11, 2001 changed the face of modern terrorism. Britain's security and intelligence establishment found itself on a sharp learning curve as it struggled to master the new threat that had suddenly appeared.
It was only through painstaking investigation of the subsequent plots in this country that a clearer picture emerged of the modus operandi of al-Qaeda's British-based terror cells. Up to now, nearly all of the major plots – both those that have succeeded and those that have been thwarted by the diligence of our security forces – have involved British passport holders of Pakistani descent, or "Brit-Paks" as they are known within the intelligence-gathering community.
The architects of the July 7 bombings in London in 2005 were Brit-Paks, as were many of those involved in the failed suicide bombings two weeks later. Those jailed for planning terror attacks in British shopping centres and airports fitted a similar profile.
As a consequence – and despite protests from leaders of the British Muslim community, who have insisted that Britain's two million Muslims pose no threat to national security – police and security officials have concentrated their efforts on infiltrating and monitoring known radical elements, particularly mosques, where inflammatory preachers such as Abu Qatada delivered sermons in favour of waging jihad against the West.
Much effort was expended on tracking the movements of the estimated 400,000 Brit-Paks who travel regularly between Britain and Pakistan, while MI6 worked closely with Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, to spot potential terror leads.
Then, at the end of last year, the Government revealed that, at any given time, British security forces were contending with at least 20 active terror plots, mainly involving groups of Brit-Paks who have been radicalised and trained at Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan, and have then managed to return undetected to Britain. Despite their success in establishing a useful profile of likely jihadists, security officials are trained to keep an open mind as to possible changes in the pattern. "Terror groups have an advantage over us because they have no restrictions they have to work to," says a senior security official. "They will do whatever they can to ensure their attacks are a success."
For this reason, security officials need to be aware of what they refer to as "the diversification of the threat", where terror groups adapt their tactics to escape detection. Thus, even though radicalised Brit-Paks form the basis of the Government's normal terrorist profile, officials are well aware of discrepancies where white British males and Muslim converts of other ethnicities have cropped up.
The Government's recent report on counter-terrorism, Contest Two, suggested that al-Qaeda-related groups were trying to adapt their tactics to counter the British security forces' increased awareness of traditional operations. Commanders of British forces fighting in Afghanistan have uncovered evidence that British Muslims have been sending electronic components for use in the Taliban's roadside bombs; there have even been reports of them being involved in attacks on British patrols. Contest Two also warned that British hotels and public buildings faced the threat of Mumbai-style attacks by terrorists with automatic weapons.
Government officials have estimated the current threat against the UK to be at "the severe end of severe". This is one step short of critical, which is when the Government judges a major attack to be imminent, as it did with one alleged plot in the summer of 2006.
Senior police and security officers suspect those arrested this week were planning a number of suicide bombings in a major city centre over the Easter weekend. If true, this would confirm that a cell of Pakistan-born nationals has infiltrated the UK, a development that would add a disturbing dimension to the Government's counter-terrorism effort.
Every year, an average of 10,000 Pakistani nationals travel to Britain on student visas. Every applicant undergoes close scrutiny, including fingerprint checks against a range of immigration, terrorism and crime watch lists. If al-Qaeda has managed to avoid detection and infiltrate a "clean skin" cell into the UK, this system is clearly ineffective.
"It is a very different proposition if we have Pakistani citizens plotting terror attacks against Britain, as opposed to British citizens," says a senior intelligence official. "We will be entering a whole new ball game."
To start with, it will mean working even more closely with Pakistani intelligence, which has a chequered history of co-operating with its British counterpart.
Rashid Rauf, the British-born Islamist who is thought to be the mastermind of the latest alleged plot, managed to escape from Pakistani custody while his guards stopped for lunch at McDonald's, prompting speculation that he may have been an ISI agent all along.
And if British security officials are to prevent further terror attacks they will need full access to detainees held in foreign jails who might have important information, irrespective of the conditions in which they are being held.
Following the allegations made last month by former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohammed that he had been tortured with the complicity of MI5 officers, the Government is under pressure to limit British security officials' access to suspects held in countries like Pakistan, where torture is routine.
But to do so might seriously jeopardise attempts to combat the terror threat. No one in the intelligence and security services wants to torture suspects: but they do want access to the intelligence that will prevent further bloodshed on the streets of Britain.
Al-Qaeda is changing its tactics to avoid detection of its agents. Security forces must adapt quickly to find them, says Con Coughlin
By Con Coughlin | April 10, 2009
Within Britain's counter-terrorism community they are known as the "clean skins": highly trained, professional killers whose blameless backgrounds provide not the slightest clue as to their true, evil intent.
The phenomenon was first identified during the bloody 30-year campaign the IRA waged against the British Isles. At the start of the Troubles, British intelligence and security officials quickly established a profile of the main IRA suspects, enabling them to dent severely the organisation's operational effectiveness. To counter this, IRA commanders sought recruits who did not fit the classic image – no known involvement in Republican politics, no criminal record and preferably no Irish family ties.
Now it appears that the "clean skins" may be back, this time in Islamist form. That is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the latest operation in which anti-terror police detained 12 men in a series of raids conducted in Manchester, Liverpool and Clitheroe, Lancs.
Most of the headlines have inevitably focused on the resignation of Bob Quick, the country's leading anti-terrorism policeman, who risked jeopardising the entire operation by exposing its details in advance.
But it is the raids themselves, targeted at 11 Pakistani-born nationals who had entered Britain on student visas (and one British national), which suggest that al-Qaeda might now be attempting to effect a radical transformation in its tactics.
We should remember that September 11, 2001 changed the face of modern terrorism. Britain's security and intelligence establishment found itself on a sharp learning curve as it struggled to master the new threat that had suddenly appeared.
It was only through painstaking investigation of the subsequent plots in this country that a clearer picture emerged of the modus operandi of al-Qaeda's British-based terror cells. Up to now, nearly all of the major plots – both those that have succeeded and those that have been thwarted by the diligence of our security forces – have involved British passport holders of Pakistani descent, or "Brit-Paks" as they are known within the intelligence-gathering community.
The architects of the July 7 bombings in London in 2005 were Brit-Paks, as were many of those involved in the failed suicide bombings two weeks later. Those jailed for planning terror attacks in British shopping centres and airports fitted a similar profile.
As a consequence – and despite protests from leaders of the British Muslim community, who have insisted that Britain's two million Muslims pose no threat to national security – police and security officials have concentrated their efforts on infiltrating and monitoring known radical elements, particularly mosques, where inflammatory preachers such as Abu Qatada delivered sermons in favour of waging jihad against the West.
Much effort was expended on tracking the movements of the estimated 400,000 Brit-Paks who travel regularly between Britain and Pakistan, while MI6 worked closely with Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, to spot potential terror leads.
Then, at the end of last year, the Government revealed that, at any given time, British security forces were contending with at least 20 active terror plots, mainly involving groups of Brit-Paks who have been radicalised and trained at Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan, and have then managed to return undetected to Britain. Despite their success in establishing a useful profile of likely jihadists, security officials are trained to keep an open mind as to possible changes in the pattern. "Terror groups have an advantage over us because they have no restrictions they have to work to," says a senior security official. "They will do whatever they can to ensure their attacks are a success."
For this reason, security officials need to be aware of what they refer to as "the diversification of the threat", where terror groups adapt their tactics to escape detection. Thus, even though radicalised Brit-Paks form the basis of the Government's normal terrorist profile, officials are well aware of discrepancies where white British males and Muslim converts of other ethnicities have cropped up.
The Government's recent report on counter-terrorism, Contest Two, suggested that al-Qaeda-related groups were trying to adapt their tactics to counter the British security forces' increased awareness of traditional operations. Commanders of British forces fighting in Afghanistan have uncovered evidence that British Muslims have been sending electronic components for use in the Taliban's roadside bombs; there have even been reports of them being involved in attacks on British patrols. Contest Two also warned that British hotels and public buildings faced the threat of Mumbai-style attacks by terrorists with automatic weapons.
Government officials have estimated the current threat against the UK to be at "the severe end of severe". This is one step short of critical, which is when the Government judges a major attack to be imminent, as it did with one alleged plot in the summer of 2006.
Senior police and security officers suspect those arrested this week were planning a number of suicide bombings in a major city centre over the Easter weekend. If true, this would confirm that a cell of Pakistan-born nationals has infiltrated the UK, a development that would add a disturbing dimension to the Government's counter-terrorism effort.
Every year, an average of 10,000 Pakistani nationals travel to Britain on student visas. Every applicant undergoes close scrutiny, including fingerprint checks against a range of immigration, terrorism and crime watch lists. If al-Qaeda has managed to avoid detection and infiltrate a "clean skin" cell into the UK, this system is clearly ineffective.
"It is a very different proposition if we have Pakistani citizens plotting terror attacks against Britain, as opposed to British citizens," says a senior intelligence official. "We will be entering a whole new ball game."
To start with, it will mean working even more closely with Pakistani intelligence, which has a chequered history of co-operating with its British counterpart.
Rashid Rauf, the British-born Islamist who is thought to be the mastermind of the latest alleged plot, managed to escape from Pakistani custody while his guards stopped for lunch at McDonald's, prompting speculation that he may have been an ISI agent all along.
And if British security officials are to prevent further terror attacks they will need full access to detainees held in foreign jails who might have important information, irrespective of the conditions in which they are being held.
Following the allegations made last month by former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohammed that he had been tortured with the complicity of MI5 officers, the Government is under pressure to limit British security officials' access to suspects held in countries like Pakistan, where torture is routine.
But to do so might seriously jeopardise attempts to combat the terror threat. No one in the intelligence and security services wants to torture suspects: but they do want access to the intelligence that will prevent further bloodshed on the streets of Britain.
Filed under
Binyam Mohammed,
ISI,
MI5,
MI6,
Operation Pathway,
Pakistan,
Rashid Rauf,
UK
by Winter Patriot
on Saturday, April 11, 2009
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Observer : UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'
Saturday, February 21, 2009
UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'
• Intelligence sources 'confirm abuse'
• Extent of Mohamed injuries revealed
Mark Townsend | The Observer | February 22, 2009
A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.
In the study, which will be published next month by the civil liberties group Human Rights Watch, at least 10 Britons are identified who have been allegedly tortured in Pakistan and subsequently questioned by UK intelligence officials. It warns that more British cases may surface and that the issue of Pakistani terrorism suspects interrogated by British agents is likely to "run much deeper".
The report will further embarrass the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has repeatedly said the UK does not condone torture. He has been under fire for refusing to disclose US documents relating to the treatment of Guantánamo detainee and former British resident Binyam Mohamed. The documents are believed to contain evidence about the torture of Mohamed and British complicity in his maltreatment. Mohamed will return to Britain this week. Doctors who examined him in Guantánamo found evidence of prolonged physical and mental mistreatment.
Ali Dayan Hasan, who led the Pakistan-based inquiry, said sources within the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the Intelligence Bureau and the military security services had provided "confirmation and information" relating to British collusion in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
Hasan said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) evidence collated from Pakistan intelligence officials indicated a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services, involving a significant number of UK agents from MI5 rather than maverick elements. Different agents were deployed to interview different suspects, many of whom alleged that prior to interrogation by British officials they were tortured by Pakistani agents.
Among the 10 identified cases of British citizens and residents mentioned in the report is Rangzieb Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, who claims he was tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by two MI5 officers. Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida at Manchester crown court, yet the jury was not told that three of the fingernails of his left hand had been removed. The response from MI5 to the allegations that it had colluded in Ahmed's torture were heard in camera, however, after the press and the public were excluded from the proceedings. Ahmed's description of the cell in which he claims he was tortured closely matches that where Salahuddin Amin, 33, from Luton, says he was tortured by ISI officers between interviews with MI5 officers.
Zeeshan Siddiqui, 25, from London, who was detained in Pakistan in 2005, also claims he was interviewed by British intelligence agents during a period in which he was tortured.
Other cases include that of a London medical student who was detained in Karachi and tortured after the July 2005 attacks in London. Another case involving Britons allegedly tortured in Pakistan and questioned by UK agents involves a British Hizb ut-Tahrir supporter.
Rashid Rauf, from Birmingham, was detained in Pakistan and questioned over suspected terrorist activity in 2006. He was reportedly killed after a US drone attack in Pakistan's tribal regions, though his body has never been found.
Hasan said: "What the research suggests is that these are not incidents involving one particular rogue officer or two, but rather an array of individuals involved over a period of several years.
"The issue is not just British complicity in the torture of British citizens, it is the issue of British complicity in the torture period. We know of at least 10 cases, but the complicity probably runs much deeper because it involves a series of terrorism suspects who are Pakistani. This is the heart of the matter.
"They are not the same individuals [MI5 officers] all the time. I know that the people who have gone to see Siddiqui in Peshawar are not the same people who have seen Ahmed in Rawalpindi."
Last night the government faced calls to clarify precisely its relationship with Pakistan's intelligence agencies, which are known to routinely use torture.
A Foreign Office spokesman said that an investigation by the British security services had revealed "there is nothing to suggest they have engaged in torture in Pakistan". He added: "Our policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture, or inhumane or degrading treatment, for any purpose."
But former shadow home secretary David Davis said the claims from Pakistan served to "reinforce" allegations that UK authorities, at the very least, ignored Pakistani torture techniques.
"The British agencies can no longer pretend that 'Hear no evil, see no evil' is applicable in the modern world," he added.
Last week HRW submitted evidence to parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights. The committee is to question Miliband and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, over a legal loophole which appears to offer British intelligence officers immunity in the UK for any crimes committed overseas.
It has also emerged that New York-based HRW detailed its concerns in a letter to the UK government last October but has yet to receive a response.
The letter arrived at the same time that the Attorney General was tasked with deciding if Scotland Yard should begin a criminal investigation into British security agents' treatment of Binyam Mohamed. Crown prosecutors are currently weighing up the evidence.
Hasan said that evidence indicated a considerable number of UK officers were involved in interviewing terrorism suspects after they were allegedly tortured. He told the Observer: "We don't know who the individuals [British intelligence officers] were, but when you have different personnel coming in and behaving in a similar fashion it implies some level of systemic approach to the situation, rather than one eager beaver deciding it is absolutely fine for someone to be beaten or hung upside down."
He accused British intelligence officers of turning a blind eye as UK citizens endured torture at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
"They [the British] have met the suspect ... and have conspicuously failed to notice that someone is in a state of high physical distress, showing signs of injury. If you are a secret service agent and fail to notice that their fingernails are missing, you ought to be fired."
Britain's former chief legal adviser, Lord Goldsmith, said that the Foreign Office would want to examine any British involvement in torture allegations very carefully and, if necessary, bring individuals "to book" to ensure such behaviour was "eradicated".
• Intelligence sources 'confirm abuse'
• Extent of Mohamed injuries revealed
Mark Townsend | The Observer | February 22, 2009
A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.
In the study, which will be published next month by the civil liberties group Human Rights Watch, at least 10 Britons are identified who have been allegedly tortured in Pakistan and subsequently questioned by UK intelligence officials. It warns that more British cases may surface and that the issue of Pakistani terrorism suspects interrogated by British agents is likely to "run much deeper".
The report will further embarrass the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has repeatedly said the UK does not condone torture. He has been under fire for refusing to disclose US documents relating to the treatment of Guantánamo detainee and former British resident Binyam Mohamed. The documents are believed to contain evidence about the torture of Mohamed and British complicity in his maltreatment. Mohamed will return to Britain this week. Doctors who examined him in Guantánamo found evidence of prolonged physical and mental mistreatment.
Ali Dayan Hasan, who led the Pakistan-based inquiry, said sources within the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the Intelligence Bureau and the military security services had provided "confirmation and information" relating to British collusion in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
Hasan said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) evidence collated from Pakistan intelligence officials indicated a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services, involving a significant number of UK agents from MI5 rather than maverick elements. Different agents were deployed to interview different suspects, many of whom alleged that prior to interrogation by British officials they were tortured by Pakistani agents.
Among the 10 identified cases of British citizens and residents mentioned in the report is Rangzieb Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, who claims he was tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by two MI5 officers. Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida at Manchester crown court, yet the jury was not told that three of the fingernails of his left hand had been removed. The response from MI5 to the allegations that it had colluded in Ahmed's torture were heard in camera, however, after the press and the public were excluded from the proceedings. Ahmed's description of the cell in which he claims he was tortured closely matches that where Salahuddin Amin, 33, from Luton, says he was tortured by ISI officers between interviews with MI5 officers.
Zeeshan Siddiqui, 25, from London, who was detained in Pakistan in 2005, also claims he was interviewed by British intelligence agents during a period in which he was tortured.
Other cases include that of a London medical student who was detained in Karachi and tortured after the July 2005 attacks in London. Another case involving Britons allegedly tortured in Pakistan and questioned by UK agents involves a British Hizb ut-Tahrir supporter.
Rashid Rauf, from Birmingham, was detained in Pakistan and questioned over suspected terrorist activity in 2006. He was reportedly killed after a US drone attack in Pakistan's tribal regions, though his body has never been found.
Hasan said: "What the research suggests is that these are not incidents involving one particular rogue officer or two, but rather an array of individuals involved over a period of several years.
"The issue is not just British complicity in the torture of British citizens, it is the issue of British complicity in the torture period. We know of at least 10 cases, but the complicity probably runs much deeper because it involves a series of terrorism suspects who are Pakistani. This is the heart of the matter.
"They are not the same individuals [MI5 officers] all the time. I know that the people who have gone to see Siddiqui in Peshawar are not the same people who have seen Ahmed in Rawalpindi."
Last night the government faced calls to clarify precisely its relationship with Pakistan's intelligence agencies, which are known to routinely use torture.
A Foreign Office spokesman said that an investigation by the British security services had revealed "there is nothing to suggest they have engaged in torture in Pakistan". He added: "Our policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture, or inhumane or degrading treatment, for any purpose."
But former shadow home secretary David Davis said the claims from Pakistan served to "reinforce" allegations that UK authorities, at the very least, ignored Pakistani torture techniques.
"The British agencies can no longer pretend that 'Hear no evil, see no evil' is applicable in the modern world," he added.
Last week HRW submitted evidence to parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights. The committee is to question Miliband and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, over a legal loophole which appears to offer British intelligence officers immunity in the UK for any crimes committed overseas.
It has also emerged that New York-based HRW detailed its concerns in a letter to the UK government last October but has yet to receive a response.
The letter arrived at the same time that the Attorney General was tasked with deciding if Scotland Yard should begin a criminal investigation into British security agents' treatment of Binyam Mohamed. Crown prosecutors are currently weighing up the evidence.
Hasan said that evidence indicated a considerable number of UK officers were involved in interviewing terrorism suspects after they were allegedly tortured. He told the Observer: "We don't know who the individuals [British intelligence officers] were, but when you have different personnel coming in and behaving in a similar fashion it implies some level of systemic approach to the situation, rather than one eager beaver deciding it is absolutely fine for someone to be beaten or hung upside down."
He accused British intelligence officers of turning a blind eye as UK citizens endured torture at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
"They [the British] have met the suspect ... and have conspicuously failed to notice that someone is in a state of high physical distress, showing signs of injury. If you are a secret service agent and fail to notice that their fingernails are missing, you ought to be fired."
Britain's former chief legal adviser, Lord Goldsmith, said that the Foreign Office would want to examine any British involvement in torture allegations very carefully and, if necessary, bring individuals "to book" to ensure such behaviour was "eradicated".
Filed under
Binyam Mohamed,
David Miliband,
drones,
Guantánamo,
ISI,
MI5,
Pakistan,
Rashid Rauf,
torture
by Winter Patriot
on Saturday, February 21, 2009
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NYT : Musharraf Walked a Tightrope
Monday, August 18, 2008
Musharraf Walked a Tightrope
By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.
It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.
But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.
Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.
Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.
“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”
The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.
Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.
Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.
Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.
After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.
In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.
But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.
Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.
“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”
One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.
After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.
In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.
A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.
In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.
Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.
In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.
Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.
“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.
By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.
It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.
But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.
Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.
Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.
“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”
The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.
Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.
Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.
Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.
After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.
In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.
But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.
Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.
“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”
One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.
After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.
In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.
A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.
In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.
Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.
In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.
Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.
“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.
Filed under
9/11,
al Qaeda,
ISI,
Jane Perlez,
lawyers,
Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, August 18, 2008
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NYT : Musharraf Walked a Tightrope
Monday, August 18, 2008
Musharraf Walked a Tightrope
By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.
It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.
But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.
Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.
Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.
“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”
The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.
Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.
Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.
Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.
After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.
In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.
But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.
Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.
“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”
One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.
After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.
In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.
A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.
In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.
Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.
In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.
Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.
“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.
By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.
It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.
But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.
Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.
Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.
“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”
The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.
Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.
Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.
Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.
After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.
In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.
But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.
Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.
“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”
One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.
After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.
In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.
A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.
In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.
Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.
In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.
Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.
“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.
Filed under
9/11,
al Qaeda,
ISI,
Jane Perlez,
lawyers,
Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, August 18, 2008
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NYT : Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE | January 15, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.
As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.
The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.
The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.
The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus attention on the ISI’s role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18 and a battle for control of the government looms:
¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.
A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.
¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.
¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.
None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.
So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.
The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.
The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.
While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.
The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”
The Context
After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.
Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.
Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.
“It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000 people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda,” Mr. Musharraf said. “These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes.”
But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr. Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and instead carried on a “double-game.” They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.
In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.
“I think he would make a decision when a situation arises,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants openly confronting the government. “But before that he would not alienate any side.”
There is little dispute that Pakistan’s crackdown on the militants has been at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.
Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials, including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined, like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.
A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the government, not the agency. “That’s not an ISI decision,” the official said. “That’s a government-of-Pakistan decision.”
But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.
One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.
“We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability,” the former senior intelligence official said.
Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.
When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.
Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them. The result was confusion.
In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes by C.I.A.-operated drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.
The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur in October 2006 killed scores of people.
Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants have insisted that thousands did.
Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees, killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their longtime patrons.
The Militant
One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.
In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.
Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.
“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.
After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.
At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.
Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.
Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.
That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.
The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in Britain and Germany since 2005.
Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely affiliated with Mr. Azhar’s group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.
One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar’s group, Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence official.
Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since 2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the Pakistani government’s intentions.
Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. “It is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just debriefing,” the diplomat said.
“There are groups they know they have lost control of,” the Western diplomat added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, “It seems very difficult for them to write them off.”
The Agency Now
Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.
“For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these organizations,” a Western diplomat said. “I don’t think we should expect this man to become an elder statesman as we know it.”
That puts Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he thinks Mr. Musharraf’s actions are significantly undermining the standing of the Pakistani army.
Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests coincide with General Kayani’s, they said, while the new civilian prime minister who emerges from February’s elections is likely to have far less authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the agency of meddling in next month’s election. The Western diplomat called the ISI “the army’s dirty bag of tricks.”
Since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, members of her party have accused government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.
American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.
But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms. Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also acknowledged.
Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan’s military rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate elections and support militant groups.
“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”
Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.
Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.
“The question is, how do you change that?” asked one Western diplomat. “Their tentacles are everywhere.”
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE | January 15, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.
As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.
The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.
The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.
The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus attention on the ISI’s role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18 and a battle for control of the government looms:
¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.
A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.
¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.
¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.
None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.
So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.
The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.
The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.
While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.
The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”
The Context
After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.
Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.
Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.
“It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000 people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda,” Mr. Musharraf said. “These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes.”
But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr. Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and instead carried on a “double-game.” They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.
In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.
“I think he would make a decision when a situation arises,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants openly confronting the government. “But before that he would not alienate any side.”
There is little dispute that Pakistan’s crackdown on the militants has been at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.
Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials, including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined, like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.
A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the government, not the agency. “That’s not an ISI decision,” the official said. “That’s a government-of-Pakistan decision.”
But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.
One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.
“We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability,” the former senior intelligence official said.
Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.
When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.
Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them. The result was confusion.
In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes by C.I.A.-operated drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.
The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur in October 2006 killed scores of people.
Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants have insisted that thousands did.
Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees, killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their longtime patrons.
The Militant
One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.
In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.
Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.
“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.
After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.
At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.
Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.
Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.
That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.
The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in Britain and Germany since 2005.
Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely affiliated with Mr. Azhar’s group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.
One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar’s group, Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence official.
Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since 2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the Pakistani government’s intentions.
Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. “It is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just debriefing,” the diplomat said.
“There are groups they know they have lost control of,” the Western diplomat added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, “It seems very difficult for them to write them off.”
The Agency Now
Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.
“For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these organizations,” a Western diplomat said. “I don’t think we should expect this man to become an elder statesman as we know it.”
That puts Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he thinks Mr. Musharraf’s actions are significantly undermining the standing of the Pakistani army.
Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests coincide with General Kayani’s, they said, while the new civilian prime minister who emerges from February’s elections is likely to have far less authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the agency of meddling in next month’s election. The Western diplomat called the ISI “the army’s dirty bag of tricks.”
Since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, members of her party have accused government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.
American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.
But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms. Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also acknowledged.
Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan’s military rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate elections and support militant groups.
“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”
Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.
Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.
“The question is, how do you change that?” asked one Western diplomat. “Their tentacles are everywhere.”
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Carlotta Gall,
David Rohde,
drones,
ISI,
Pakistan,
Taliban
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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NDTV : Karachi blasts: Govt denies ISI's role
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Karachi blasts: Govt denies ISI's role
NDTV Correspondent | Islamabad | October 21, 2007
The Pakistan government has denied any role played by its intelligence chief in the assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.
There were reports in the Pakistani press on Sunday that Bhutto had named an intelligence chief in a letter to President Musharraf.
Speaking on NDTV's special programme on the Karachi blasts, Pakistan Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid said the intelligence agencies were in support of Bhutto's return.
And the minister also said that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's plans to make a second attempt to return to Pakistan are far too tricky because of his pact with Saudi Arabia.
In other words, it was an indication that Sharif may well be deported again.
Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto visited bomb blast survivors being treated at the Government's Jinnah hospital in Karachi.
She also gave special prayers for the victims of last week's suicide bombing.
Around 140 people were killed and 325 were wounded in last week's attack on Bhutto during her homecoming parade in Karachi.
NDTV Correspondent | Islamabad | October 21, 2007
The Pakistan government has denied any role played by its intelligence chief in the assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.
There were reports in the Pakistani press on Sunday that Bhutto had named an intelligence chief in a letter to President Musharraf.
Speaking on NDTV's special programme on the Karachi blasts, Pakistan Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid said the intelligence agencies were in support of Bhutto's return.
And the minister also said that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's plans to make a second attempt to return to Pakistan are far too tricky because of his pact with Saudi Arabia.
In other words, it was an indication that Sharif may well be deported again.
Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto visited bomb blast survivors being treated at the Government's Jinnah hospital in Karachi.
She also gave special prayers for the victims of last week's suicide bombing.
Around 140 people were killed and 325 were wounded in last week's attack on Bhutto during her homecoming parade in Karachi.
Filed under
Benazir Bhutto,
ISI,
Karachi,
Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf,
suicide
by Winter Patriot
on Wednesday, October 24, 2007
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Telegraph : Benazir Bhutto takes on a powerful enemy
Monday, October 22, 2007
Benazir Bhutto takes on a powerful enemy
By Colin Freeman in Karachi | October 21, 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto plans to purge her country's intelligence services of hundreds of rogue agents suspected of supporting Islamic terrorism, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
In a move that puts her in direct confrontation with the nation's most powerful institutions, Ms Bhutto, who returned home from exile last week, said Pakistan's security agencies had to become "professional" outfits free from political agendas.
Foremost in her sights if she returns to power will be the notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the secretive "state within the state" that is blamed for orchestrating much of the terrorist violence convulsing Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many suspect it of providing financial and logistical assistance to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the prime suspects for the suicide bombing that killed 139 people during her homecoming parade in Karachi on Thursday.
Oxford-educated Ms Bhutto, 54, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We need a security service that is professional in its approach, which rises above ties of religious or political sentiment.
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"I have strong reservations about some of the people still operating within the intelligence services, and we need reforms to get rid of them."
She spoke out as Pakistani investigators revealed new details about the attack, in which a lone suicide bomber blew himself up alongside her armoured bus.
The attacker, a source close to the investigation said, had tried to break through the security cordon by claiming he was a Bhutto aide, bringing her a box of cotton buds that she had requested. Security staff and police turned him away on his first two attempts, but did not suspect he was a terrorist.
On his third try, having penetrated an outer ring of security, he is thought to have thrown a grenade as a diversion before detonating a device made of C4 plastic explosive and ball bearings.
The bomber's severed head, which remained intact, was recognised by police as the man they twice turned away.
Yesterday, as a police photograph of the bloodied head was printed in many Pakistani newspapers, the source also disclosed that they thought the bomber had been picked for the job because of his close physical resemblance to many of Ms Bhutto's security staff.
The stewards around the bus included many makranis, distant descendants of African slaves who came to Pakistan centuries ago. "The makranis are known for being strong PPP supporters, so they were trusted with being in the inner cordon," said the security source. "The guy they picked for the suicide bombing looked just a makrani."
The same tactic had been used in at least three other suicide bombings in Pakistan in the past year, he said, with the attackers picked to blend in with their surroundings. "If it's an attack in the Punjab province, they'll use a Punjabi, and so on," he said. "It's a sinister development – it shows that they have so many volunteers to choose from."
The source also gave the identities of three government officials said to have been named in a letter written by Ms Bhutto to Pakistan's military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, in which she accused them of plotting to attack her. The Sunday Telegraph is not revealing their names for legal reasons, but they include a serving senior commander within Pakistani intelligence.
Ms Bhutto makes no secret of her disdain for the ISI, long the most powerful of Pakistan's myriad security agencies. Formed in 1948 to look after external threats, it expanded out of control in the 1980s, when it was responsible for disbursing millions of dollars of US cash to Islamic mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many of those recruited to its ranks during that time actively sympathised with Islamist movements, and when the Soviets forces left in 1989 they went on to nurture both the Taliban and its ideological ally, al Qaeda.
Among the Islamist operations thought to be sponsored by factions within the ISI today is the Taliban revival in southern Afghanistan, where it is now fighting a bloody campaign against British troops.
For Ms Bhutto, the distrust of the ISI also has a strongly personal element. Its expansion and radicalisation were overseen by another Pakistani military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who in 1977 overthrew Ms Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executing him two years later.
Ms Bhutto suspects the ISI still contains many Haq appointees who nurtured particular grudges against her family's political dynasty. Asked how many agents needed to be removed, Ms Bhutto replied: "There are hundreds of them. We should not have anybody from Zia's time still there."
Ms Bhutto, who hopes to contest elections in January to become prime minister for a third time, said most Pakistanis were now "fed up with extremism and militancy" and anxious to see the ISI tamed.
However, such is the agency's reputation for destabilising successive Pakistani civilian governments that its it is by no means clear whether Ms Bhutto would come out on top. A mass purge of the ISI could see a repeat of problems experienced in Iraq, where the removal of Ba'athist security agents after the fall of Saddam Hussein pushed many directly into the insurgent ranks.
"It is obvious why she might want to kick them out, but it will be very difficult for her," said one Pakistan-based Western official. "It is one of the major friction points in Pakistani politics."
Last night, the atmosphere in the Bhutto camp remained subdued, and a planned trip to visit the grave of her father in the family's home town of Larkana was postponed while officials reassessed the security threat against her.
In the meantime she is in effect confined to her home in Karachi, a reminder of the grim years she endured under house arrest during Haq's time. She has pledged to stay in Pakistan to campaign in general elections in January, but the prospect of further attacks means she may have to think carefully before organising mass rallies.
Additional reporting: Massoud Ansari
By Colin Freeman in Karachi | October 21, 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto plans to purge her country's intelligence services of hundreds of rogue agents suspected of supporting Islamic terrorism, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
In a move that puts her in direct confrontation with the nation's most powerful institutions, Ms Bhutto, who returned home from exile last week, said Pakistan's security agencies had to become "professional" outfits free from political agendas.
Foremost in her sights if she returns to power will be the notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the secretive "state within the state" that is blamed for orchestrating much of the terrorist violence convulsing Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many suspect it of providing financial and logistical assistance to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the prime suspects for the suicide bombing that killed 139 people during her homecoming parade in Karachi on Thursday.
Oxford-educated Ms Bhutto, 54, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We need a security service that is professional in its approach, which rises above ties of religious or political sentiment.
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"I have strong reservations about some of the people still operating within the intelligence services, and we need reforms to get rid of them."
She spoke out as Pakistani investigators revealed new details about the attack, in which a lone suicide bomber blew himself up alongside her armoured bus.
The attacker, a source close to the investigation said, had tried to break through the security cordon by claiming he was a Bhutto aide, bringing her a box of cotton buds that she had requested. Security staff and police turned him away on his first two attempts, but did not suspect he was a terrorist.
On his third try, having penetrated an outer ring of security, he is thought to have thrown a grenade as a diversion before detonating a device made of C4 plastic explosive and ball bearings.
The bomber's severed head, which remained intact, was recognised by police as the man they twice turned away.
Yesterday, as a police photograph of the bloodied head was printed in many Pakistani newspapers, the source also disclosed that they thought the bomber had been picked for the job because of his close physical resemblance to many of Ms Bhutto's security staff.
The stewards around the bus included many makranis, distant descendants of African slaves who came to Pakistan centuries ago. "The makranis are known for being strong PPP supporters, so they were trusted with being in the inner cordon," said the security source. "The guy they picked for the suicide bombing looked just a makrani."
The same tactic had been used in at least three other suicide bombings in Pakistan in the past year, he said, with the attackers picked to blend in with their surroundings. "If it's an attack in the Punjab province, they'll use a Punjabi, and so on," he said. "It's a sinister development – it shows that they have so many volunteers to choose from."
The source also gave the identities of three government officials said to have been named in a letter written by Ms Bhutto to Pakistan's military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, in which she accused them of plotting to attack her. The Sunday Telegraph is not revealing their names for legal reasons, but they include a serving senior commander within Pakistani intelligence.
Ms Bhutto makes no secret of her disdain for the ISI, long the most powerful of Pakistan's myriad security agencies. Formed in 1948 to look after external threats, it expanded out of control in the 1980s, when it was responsible for disbursing millions of dollars of US cash to Islamic mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many of those recruited to its ranks during that time actively sympathised with Islamist movements, and when the Soviets forces left in 1989 they went on to nurture both the Taliban and its ideological ally, al Qaeda.
Among the Islamist operations thought to be sponsored by factions within the ISI today is the Taliban revival in southern Afghanistan, where it is now fighting a bloody campaign against British troops.
For Ms Bhutto, the distrust of the ISI also has a strongly personal element. Its expansion and radicalisation were overseen by another Pakistani military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who in 1977 overthrew Ms Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executing him two years later.
Ms Bhutto suspects the ISI still contains many Haq appointees who nurtured particular grudges against her family's political dynasty. Asked how many agents needed to be removed, Ms Bhutto replied: "There are hundreds of them. We should not have anybody from Zia's time still there."
Ms Bhutto, who hopes to contest elections in January to become prime minister for a third time, said most Pakistanis were now "fed up with extremism and militancy" and anxious to see the ISI tamed.
However, such is the agency's reputation for destabilising successive Pakistani civilian governments that its it is by no means clear whether Ms Bhutto would come out on top. A mass purge of the ISI could see a repeat of problems experienced in Iraq, where the removal of Ba'athist security agents after the fall of Saddam Hussein pushed many directly into the insurgent ranks.
"It is obvious why she might want to kick them out, but it will be very difficult for her," said one Pakistan-based Western official. "It is one of the major friction points in Pakistani politics."
Last night, the atmosphere in the Bhutto camp remained subdued, and a planned trip to visit the grave of her father in the family's home town of Larkana was postponed while officials reassessed the security threat against her.
In the meantime she is in effect confined to her home in Karachi, a reminder of the grim years she endured under house arrest during Haq's time. She has pledged to stay in Pakistan to campaign in general elections in January, but the prospect of further attacks means she may have to think carefully before organising mass rallies.
Additional reporting: Massoud Ansari
Filed under
Benazir Bhutto,
ISI,
Karachi,
Pakistan,
suicide
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, October 22, 2007
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Times of India : Former ISI chief could succeed Musharraf: Report
Monday, October 01, 2007
Former ISI chief could succeed Musharraf: Report
October 1, 2007
NEW YORK: If Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wins the October 6 presidential polls and keeps his pledge to remove his uniform, a westernised, chain-smoking spy could soon become the most powerful man in the country, a media report said on Monday.
Musharraf is widely believed to have chosen former ISI chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani as his successor to head the army, says Newsweek in its upcoming issue.
Although Kiyani has always kept a low public profile, people who have worked closely with him speak highly of his abilities -- more highly in some cases than his boss might like, the magazine says.
"Kiyani is not only a strong commander, he's the most competent candidate by far," a Western military official in Islamabad was quoted as saying.
The Pentagon, Newsweek says, wants him to turn much of Pakistan's military into a counter-insurgency force, trained and equipped to combat al-Qaida and its extremist supporters along the Afghan border.
As a civilian head of state, Musharraf will need a strong, capable top officer who can revive the fighting spirit of a badly demoralised army, the report says, noting that in the past two months, suicide bombers have relentlessly attacked army convoys, camps, mess halls and mosques.
The extremists have killed more than 200 Pakistani soldiers, and tribal militants have captured more than 250 others as hostages.
"The army has had its butt kicked in the tribal area," the Western military official was quoted as saying. "But I'm optimistic that if Musharraf's choice is Kiyani, he can start to turn the army around."
October 1, 2007
NEW YORK: If Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wins the October 6 presidential polls and keeps his pledge to remove his uniform, a westernised, chain-smoking spy could soon become the most powerful man in the country, a media report said on Monday.
Musharraf is widely believed to have chosen former ISI chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani as his successor to head the army, says Newsweek in its upcoming issue.
Although Kiyani has always kept a low public profile, people who have worked closely with him speak highly of his abilities -- more highly in some cases than his boss might like, the magazine says.
"Kiyani is not only a strong commander, he's the most competent candidate by far," a Western military official in Islamabad was quoted as saying.
The Pentagon, Newsweek says, wants him to turn much of Pakistan's military into a counter-insurgency force, trained and equipped to combat al-Qaida and its extremist supporters along the Afghan border.
As a civilian head of state, Musharraf will need a strong, capable top officer who can revive the fighting spirit of a badly demoralised army, the report says, noting that in the past two months, suicide bombers have relentlessly attacked army convoys, camps, mess halls and mosques.
The extremists have killed more than 200 Pakistani soldiers, and tribal militants have captured more than 250 others as hostages.
"The army has had its butt kicked in the tribal area," the Western military official was quoted as saying. "But I'm optimistic that if Musharraf's choice is Kiyani, he can start to turn the army around."
Filed under
elections,
ISI,
Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf,
suicide
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, October 01, 2007
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