Author: Reuters
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 9, 2010
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/288744/US-becoming-increasingly-wary-of-ISIs-clout.html
Top U.S. defence officials are concerned some
elements of Pakistan's main spy agency may be interacting improperly with
the Taliban and other insurgent groups, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday.
Colonel David Lapan said Pakistani army chief,
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, himself a former spy chief, was aware of U.S.
concerns about the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and
shared some of them.
Here are some questions and answers about
the ISI, the most powerful intelligence agency in Pakistan, a country the
United States sees as indispensable to its efforts to tame a raging Taliban
insurgency in Afghanistan.
HOW POWERFUL IS THE ISI?
The shadowy military intelligence agency has
evolved into what some describe as a state within a state.
Widely feared by Pakistanis, it is believed
to have a hidden role in many of the nuclear-armed nation's policies, including
in Afghanistan, one of U.S. President Barack Obama's top foreign policy priorities.
The ISI is seen as the Pakistani equivalent
of the U.S. Central Agency (CIA) -- with which it has had a symbiotic but
sometimes strained relationship -- and Israel's Mossad.
Its size is not publicly known but the ISI
is widely believed to employ tens of thousands of agents, with informers in
many spheres of public life.
Hardline elements within the ISI are capable
of being spoilers, no matter what position a Pakistani government might take,
a reality the U.S. and Afghan governments should take into account if they
attempt to exclude Pakistan from negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.
WHAT ABOUT THE ISI'S PAST?
Created in 1948, the ISI gained importance
and power during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and is now
rated one of best-organised intelligence agencies in the developing world.
The ISI along with the United States and Saudi
Arabia, nurtured the Afghan mujahideen, or Muslim holy warrior guerrillas,
and helped them win the war. It helped to plan many of their operations and
was the main conduit for Western and Arab arms. It later helped create the
Taliban.
Although Pakistan officially abandoned support
for the Taliban after joining the U.S.-led war against al Qaeda and Taliban,
critics, including Western military commanders in Afghanistan, say it has
maintained its ties with, and support for, the Afghan Taliban. The military
denies supporting the Taliban but says agents maintain links with militants,
as any security agency would do, in the interests of intelligence.
Analysts say the main preoccupation of the
ISI, and the Pakistani military, is the threat from nuclear-armed rival India
and it sees the Afghan Taliban as tools to influence events, and limit India's
role, in Afghanistan.
The ISI was heavily involved in the 1990s
in creating and supporting Islamist factions that battled Indian forces in
the disputed Kashmir region. Some of those groups have since joined forces
with the Pakistani Taliban to attack the state, including the ISI. That militants
alliance may be the biggest threat to Pakistan's long-term security, analysts
say.
WHAT ABOUT THE ISI'S CURRENT LEADERSHIP?
Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha is the
director general of the ISI and a close ally of Kayani. Pasha is seen as anti-Taliban,
unlike some of his predecessors, and analysts suggest he is using the ISI
to broker some sort of deal between factions of the Afghan Taliban and the
Afghan government.
Although he is seen as relatively moderate,
the ISI is almost certain to come under a new wave of pressure as the United
States gets increasingly frustrated with the army's perceived reluctance to
go after Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the border to attack Western forces
in Afghanistan. But the strategic interests of the ISI, headquartered in a
sprawling, well-guarded complex in Islamabad, will invariably come first,
analysts say.
