The ISI and the War on Terrorism

By Professor Shaun Gregory, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford,

First published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism October 2007.
Reproduced by kind permission of the author to illustrate address to U K Defence Forum 7 July 2008.
All rights reserved - see also foot of article

Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI] plays an ambiguous role in the War on Terrorism. An important ally for Western intelligence with whom it has very close links, the ISI also has a long history of involvement in supporting and promoting terrorism in the name of Pakistan's geostrategic interests. This article explores the nature of the ISI and its aims and objectives in the post-9/11 era. It argues that the focus of the ISI's actions are to shore up Pakistan's ruling elite and to destabilize Pakistan's enemies by the promotion of Sunni Islamism at home and of pan-Islamist jihad abroad.

The ISI's strategy, however, deeply conflicts with that of the West, a point underlined by the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban almost six years after the War on Terrorism began. With grave new trends evident in Pakistan, reliance on the ISI is failing and a Western rethink of its intelligence strategy toward Pakistan is now imperative.

[T]he ISI is a disciplined force, for 27 years they have been doing what the government [of Pakistan] has been telling them.
—President Pervez Musharraf, interview, London Times, 28 September 2006

Introduction

To approach the truth about an intelligence organization it is necessary not only to know something of its organization, purpose, history, and operations, but also to seek to understand its broader motivations and aims and objectives in relation to those of its masters at the state level. For the West there is arguably at present no more important intelligence organization than Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI], yet after decades of close co-operation the ISI remains an enigma. Is it the indispensable ally of the West as the Pakistan president insists? Or is it something else; an organization that foments terrorism, that operates against Western interests, and that functions as an obstacle to, rather than the means for, progress in the War on Terrorism? Of course, this is to pose a slightly false dichotomy: the ISI need not be a trusted ally to remain important to the West. The real question is whether there is sufficient overlap between Western interests and the activities of the ISI to merit the trust and the investment the West, primarily the United States, makes in the ISI indirectly through the support of the military government of Pakistan and directly to the organization itself. This article is an attempt to respond to this question.

The History of the ISI

The Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI] was formed in 1948 by the British Army Officer Major General William Cawthorne,(Note 1) then serving as the new state of Pakistan's Army Deputy Chief of Staff. The ISI was established within the Pakistan Army to supplement the existing Military Intelligence [MI] as a means to address the lack of inter-service intelligence co-operation that had proven so disastrous for Pakistan in the 1947 Indo-Pak war. Trained from its early days by U.K.'s Military Intelligence, and a little later by the CIA and the French SDECE, the ISI originally had no role beyond that of military intelligence gathering except in relation to the disputed region in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the
Northern areas of Gilgit and Baltistan.

The assumption of martial law in Pakistan for this first time in 1958 under Lt. Gen.
Ayub Khan brought the ISI into the political realm. It was tasked by Ayub with three roles, which continue to define it: (a) to safeguard Pakistan's interests, (b) to monitor political opposition, and (c) to sustain military rule in Pakistan. It is clear from these functions that the ISI from 1958, if not before, viewed its raison d'etre first and foremost in terms of the Pakistan military rather than in relation to any broader concept of the defence and security of the nation-state or the people of Pakistan. Moreover, Ayub Khan's formulation gave the ISI primacy among the other intelligence agencies in Pakistan—the MI and the civilian Intelligence Bureau [IB]— because it combined in the one agency the twin roles of internal and external intelligence. Unlike the U.K.'s MI5 and MI6 or the U.S.'s FBI and CIA, the ISI
faces no equivalent turf-war with a powerful internal rival, and is thus able to integrate the internal and external facets of its work with profound implications for the way it operates and the power it is able to exercise within Pakistan and outside it.

Internally this remit meant opposition to political organizations and parties that
threatened the power of the military or pro-military elites within Pakistan. The activities of the ISI in this respect routinely included phone-tapping and surveillance, the harassment of political opponents and those working to build civil society (student movements, trades unions, etc.), blackmail of individuals and the exposure of corruption, the fomentation of civil violence, political assassination, and the creation and support of political opposition, often of violent hue. The ISI quickly became adept at exploiting the multiple lines of tensions within Pakistani society of religious, ethnic, and political character.

A key element of this was the ISI's activities in the politics of East Pakistan in which the ISI struggled against rising Bengali Muslim nationalism using political gerrymandering, the surveillance and intimidation of political opponents, and political assassinations.

Externally the ISI used similar approaches to seek to destabilize India, in particular supporting religious and political secession movements that threatened the integrity of India's secular vision of the state, most particularly support for Islamic militants in thePunjab and Indian-Administered Kashmir and the Sikh Home Rule/Khalistan movement of the 1960s.

Ayub so unbalanced the focus of the ISI's work toward these kinds of political
operations—within and outside Pakistan—that Pakistan's military intelligence proved a disaster during the 1965 war with India, which Pakistan rapidly lost. Subsequently Pakistan began the restructuring and expansion of the ISI to redress the dearth of competence in the military intelligence field. However, the overwhelming importance of the issues of East Pakistan, Jammu, and Kashmir, and the destabilization of India siphoned off most of the enlarged ISI with the result that military intelligence was little better in Pakistan's defeat by India in 1971, which enabled the realization of Bengali nationalist aspirations in the creation of Bangladesh.

An important point for present purposes is to understand the degree to which the loss of East Pakistan was a national trauma for Pakistan, the more so because it was India that delivered the secession blow. The breakup of Pakistan burned into the psyche of the Pakistan military and the ISI the overarching importance of safeguarding, at almost any cost, the territorial integrity of what remained of Pakistan. It is this that has since shaped the ferocity of the Pakistan military and intelligence community's response to separatism in Pakistan, whether in Balochistan, in Jammu and Kashmir, in Sindh, or among those dreaming of uniting the Pashtun communities across the Durrand line dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The defeat of Pakistan in the 1971 war discredited the military after 16 years in
power and brought to power the civilian government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto whose Pakistan People's Party [PPP] had dominated the 1970 elections in the Western half of Pakistan. Having been on the receiving end of ISI pressure for many years8 Bhutto sought to bring the ISI under his control, although he was more interested in the ISI becoming a personal tool for his political ambitions than in making the ISI subordinate to civilian rule in lasting constitutional terms. He thus deployed the ISI against Balochi nationalists during the uprising of 1972, legalized through parliament the ISI's role in domestic surveillance, created the Federal Security Force9 to check and balance the ISI, and in 1974 appointed Lt. Gen. Gulam Jilani Khan (who had been Pakistan's first military attache to Washington) as Director General of the ISI, assuming him to be a loyal officer capable of delivering Bhutto's agenda within the ISI.

Following India's nuclear weapons test on 18 May 1974, Bhutto directed the ISI to support Pakistan's effort to develop nuclear weapons, tasking a section within the
ISI with the "clandestine procurement" of nuclear and missile technology. This program was funded from the mid-1970s in part by both Saudi Arabia and Libya (who expected to gain access to nuclear technology, and possibly to security guarantees in relation to Israel, if Pakistan succeeded) as well as by monies diverted from drug and arms smuggling by the ISI from Afghanistan.

It is widely accepted that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI]served as an ISI front and clearing house for much of the Saudi money, enabling Bhutto and his successors to hide this element of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program from what limited oversight Pakistan's political institutions were able to exercise.

In the event Bhutto's trusted appointee Jilani Khan paved the way for General Zia
ul-Haq first to be appointed Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) in March 1976 and
subsequently to topple Bhutto by military coup on 5 July 1977 following political unrest—in which the ISI had a hand—and the erosion of Pakistan's civil institutions by Bhutto.

Under Zia the ISI began to rise again, in particular becoming a key tool for Zia's fierce imposition of martial law. Moreover, Zia's Islamization of Pakistani society and politics facilitated the movement of many members of Pakistan's Islamist political parties—such as Jamaat-I-Islami—into the military and ISI15 and inculcated within the military and ISI a growing Islamism16 that was to underwrite the forging of strong bonds between the ISI and various extremist/terrorist groups in the decades ahead.

The ISI and Afghanistan

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 transformed the ISI. The decision by the United States to support Afghan forces in a guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union placed Pakistan on the frontline as the base from which the United States would mount its campaign. The crucial development for the ISI was the decision by the United States, through the CIA, to use Pakistan's ISI as the instrument of support for the Afghan rebels. The ISI already had deep inroads into Afghanistan and laid down strict conditions, which the CIA accepted, that the ISI would control almost all aspects of how the guerrilla war was fought and supported. The ISI insisted that it would retain control over contacts with Afghan rebels, that no Americans (CIA included) would cross the Afghan border from Pakistan, that movements of weapons within Pakistan and their disbursement to Afghan groups would be handled exclusively by the ISI, and that all the training of Afghan rebels
would be handled by the ISI.

The willingness of the CIA to agree to these terms, at least for the early years of the war, enabled the ISI to hijack U.S. money and arms for its own purposes in Afghanistan and for Pakistan interests more broadly. It was the scale of
these flows of money and materiel, and the operational space they afforded, which were to transform the ISI.

By 1984, three years after serious money began to flow from Washington, the United
States was supporting the Afghan rebels with at least $200 million dollars annually, almost all of it handed over to the ISI. Moreover, this figure was matched by Saudi funding also channelled directly to the ISI through the General Intelligence Department (GID), the external intelligence arm of Saudi Arabia. These immense funds were in turn supplemented by money raised from drug and arms smuggling and crime. Neither the CIA nor the GID had clear and tight oversight of what the ISI (and by extension the Pakistan military government)was doing with the money or the arms. It has since become clear that the ISI siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars for its own purposes as well as millions of small arms.

Equally important, the ISI was free to use the money and materiel to pursue Pakistan's distinct objectives in Afghanistan. For Islamabad a stable and friendly Afghanistan has always been a central plank of Pakistan's security, and its obverse—an unstable or, worse, pro-Indian Afghanistan—one of its key fears.19 Policy from the outset was thus centered on engineering the dominance and success of pro-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan in anticipation of the withdrawal of the Soviet army and the fall of the communist Afghan government.

This meant a policy centered on Pashtun groups in Afghanistan, with which the Pakistan military government and ISI had strong and close links, but it also meant a focus on those Pashtun groups that were not sympathetic to ideas of Pashtun unity and self-determination.

Thus it was that the ISI began to organize among the millions of Afghan refugees fleeing into Pakistan and among the groups inside Afghanistan to ensure that pro-Pakistan groups, particularly those that shared Islamabad's and Riyadh's Sunni Islamism, were empowered relative to the panoply of Afghan tribal groups united temporarily against the Soviet Union.

The ISI's favored son was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamist Pashtun with links to the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Hekmatyar became one of the most significant beneficiaries of ISI support and thus emerged as one of the strongest players inside Afghanistan. At the behest of the United States and Saudi Arabia, the ISI also supported six other leaders able to command sizeable populations and armies, among them Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, both with close ties to Islamabad and the ISI.

To further support the war and shore up Hekmatyar, who could draw on little tribal
strength directly, Zia through the ISI created a string of training camps and deeni madaris [religious schools] along the Afghan–Pakistan border, many with Saudi funding, to turn out religiously motivated students, in what later became characterized as an "assembly line of gun-fodder" for the mujahidin.

The students, in the resonant words of one informed author, were "crafted for one function alone—to kill the infidel communists or die trying and to view either outcome as the ultimate victory."

Moreover, to ensure a sustained throughput of students the ISI came up with idea of reaching out to radical Muslims across the Islamic world and inviting them to come for training, paid for largely by the Saudis and CIA, in the Madaris and training camps of Pakistan. This is the moment at which Pakistan began to promote the idea of pan-Islamic jihad for its own geostrategic interests.23 It is also the moment, as one seasoned observer of Pakistan noted, that Zia and the ISI, with the help
of the CIA, "transformed an essentially nationalist struggle into a Holy War."

Thousands of young men from across the Islamic world, and from Muslim communities
in the non-Islamic world, made their way through the camps. As is now well known these men were to be an important element in the emergence of Al Qaeda25 and of the Taliban in the 1990s, both of which therefore were from their inception tied deeply to the ISI. They were also to become part of the fabric from which was woven the global jihad from
Algeria27 and Bosnia28 to Chechnya29 and the United Kingdom.30

By the end of the 1980s the ISI's policy of promoting Islamist clients in Afghanistan
and the flow of Saudi and Arab money to Islamist factions had "effectively eliminated
all the secular, leftist and royalist political parties that had formed when Afghan refugees
fled communist rule."31 Afghanistan was subsequently plunged into civil war as the Soviet
client regime of Najibullah clung to power in the context of rising internecine conflict
between mujahidin and warlord factions. Most perniciously the United States scaled down
its involvement in the region, leaving Pakistan and the ISI to handle the conflict and
instability in Afghanistan with an all but free hand.

The Turbulence of the 1990s

The death of Zia ul-Haq in a mysterious plane crash on 17 August 198832 led to a
resumption of civilian rule in Pakistan under first Benazir Bhutto (Prime Minister 1988–90
and 1993–96) and then Nawaz Sharif (Prime Minister 1990–93 and 1997–1999). Bhutto
had been subject to ISI intimidation for years, the ISI working assiduously against the PPP
she had taken over from her father, and both her brothers were murdered by the ISI, Shah
Nawaz Bhutto in 1985 and Murtaza Bhutto in 1996,33 the former in an attempt to dissuade
her from returning to Pakistan to contest elections.

As with previous civilian leaders Bhutto, once elected, sought to discipline the ISI
through the appointment of purportedly loyal military officers to senior posts in the ISI and
by empowering rival intelligence agencies to provide checks and balances. As before these
efforts failed: Bhutto was dismissed by the Pakistan president—a constitutionally powerful
but politically weak role34—at the request of the Chief of the Army Staff General Aslam
Beg. She was replaced by Nawaz Sharif, a politically inexperienced industrialist and widely
assumed to be the ISI's political creation, in elections rigged by the ISI. Nawaz in turn
over-reached himself both in terms of seeking to curb the autonomy of the Army and ISI
and in challenging the power of the presidency. He too was dismissed by the president.

Benazir's return owed as much to factional fighting among political rivals as to the
popularity of the PPP, although her dismissal in 1990 and the gerrymandering of the 1990
elections had created considerable political opposition to the Army and Sharif. Bhutto again
sought to curb the power of the military and ISI and again found herself dismissed by the
president after just three years in office, overwhelmed by accusations of corruption. Nawaz
Sharif's brief return to power was ended in October 1999 by the military coup led by Pervez
Musharraf.

This then was the turbulent political background against which the ISI engineered two
overlapping—and deeply interlinked—Islamist projects: the one an attempt to finally wrest the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir from India, the other to orchestrate the rise
to power in Afghanistan of a pro-Pakistani Pashtun Islamist student-led movement, the Taliban.

From the mid-1980s Pakistan had begun to step up support for separatist militants
fighting for the independence of Jammu and Kashmir from India. Pakistan was particularly
supportive of groups that saw the future of a Jammu and Kashmir as being under Pakistani
patronage rather than those that sought an independent future for Jammu and Kashmir, free
from both Indian and Pakistani dominance.35 During this period Kashmiri separatists had
been taken by the ISI to train in parts of Afghanistan (Paktia province in particular) and in
camps in Pakistan. Kashmiri separatists thus found themselves training alongside Afghan
mujahidin and Muslim radical fighters transiting through Pakistan.

From the late 1980s, as the United States downscaled its regional involvement, the ISI
launched a much more assertive strategy to destabilize Jammu and Kashmir. The pertinent
elements of this plan were fourfold: (a) to divert arms and ammunition from the Afghan
conflict—including many of those siphoned off during the Afghan War by the ISI—and
use the weapons to empower favored J&K separatist groups36; (b) to expand the number of
Madaris and training camps inside Pakistan Administered Kashmir to boost the number of
trained and indoctrinated fighters who could be infiltrated into Indian controlled territory;

(c) to transit Afghan and international Muslim fighters from the Afghan conflict to the
new pan-Islamist "Holy War" in Jammu and Kashmir; and (d) the creation of new militant
organizations that could become the vehicles for ISI control of the separatist insurgency. The
latter included Lashkar-e-Toiba (formed in 1990), Harakat ul-Ansar (formed in 1993), and
Jaish-e-Mohammed (formed in 1994). All of these groups comprised majority proportions
of non-Kashmiri fighters drawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Arabs and other
Muslims radicals.
The effect of these policies was to sharply escalate the violence in Indian Administered
Kashmir throughout the 1990s, a spiral of violence reinforced by the repressive tactics
of India's counterinsurgency, which in total cost more than 50,000 lives. Equally
perniciously the non-Kashmiri fighters—strongly backed by Saudi money—brought with
them an extremist form of Wahhabi37 Islamism that displaced the historically tolerant
Sufi-influenced "Kashmiriat" Islam of the region's indigenous Muslim peoples.

In Afghanistan the fall of the Najibullah in April 1992 to the militarily superior forces of
the uneasy alliance between the Afghan warlord armies of the Tajik Ahmed Shah Massoud
and the Uzbek Aburrashid Dostum left the ISI's principal client Hekmatyar isolated and
marginalized. That Massoud and Dostum had been directly supplied with arms at critical
moments by the United States, in part due to growing unease in Washington about Pakistan's
backing for Pashtun Islamist groups, only underlined Pakistan's sense of betrayal by the
United States.

In the civil war that followed in Afghanistan, as the rival groups of Dostum, Hekmatyar,
Massoud, Rabbani, Sayyaf, and others battled it out, Pakistan's ISI had only one agenda:
to engineer the rise to power in Afghanistan of a Pashtun-dominated pro-Islamabad client
regime. Hekmatyar lacked the tribal support and military ability to achieve this, even with
strong Pakistani backing and foreign fighters. In 1994 the ISI found the instrument of their
ambitions in a small student (Talib) militia that had emerged in the area around Kandahar.
The Taliban are an austere religious group, articulating a Deobandi Islam strongly influenced
by Saudi Wahhabism, and supported financially by the Saudis for that reason. It was the
purity of this version of Islam and the Taliban's criticism of, and opposition to, the violent
excesses of the warlords and the chaos they were inflicting on Afghanistan, as much as their military competence, that began to draw other Afghans, Pashtun groups in particular, to the Taliban in the mid-1990s.

From 1994, guided by Pakistan's Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar and with the
assent of Benazir Bhutto, the ISI began to funnel arms and ammunition to the Taliban, to
provide the Taliban with access to huge weapons stores kept in Afghanistan after the Soviet
war,38 to provide intelligence and specialized training, and to expand the size of the Taliban
with Afghan, Pakistani, and foreign radical Muslims still transiting Pakistani and Afghan
Madaris and training camps. Moreover the ISI promoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as the
Taliban leader believing he was their man and would remain under their influence. Within
two years, and with widespread Afghan support, the Taliban had risen to power defeating or
displacing Afghanistan's other tribal and warlord groups.39 One of their first acts on taking
Kabul on 26 September 1996, allegedly at the behest of the ISI, was to capture Najibullah
who was still languishing in a UN compound and subject him and his brother to torture,
mutilation, and public hanging.40

It is widely commented that the Taliban were empowered by the ISI but not created
by them. In fact the ISI were very much the fathers and supportive parents of the Taliban,
if not perhaps the mothers and midwives. It was the ISI from the late 1970s which, with
Saudi money and in cooperation with Pakistani Islamist parties, had organized the building
of large numbers of Madaris and training camps around Peshawar, Quetta, and Karachi,
through which tens of thousands of Afghan and Pakistani students passed for the war in
Afghanistan, including many displaced from Kandahar. It was here that the future Taliban
militia were schooled in austere Deobandi/Wahhabi Islam, and it was through these Madaris
and camps, with the support of the ISI, that the footsoldiers of the Taliban—Afghan and
non-Afghan—continued to pour throughout the 1990s. As the Taliban took Kabul in 1996
Pakistan was the first and one of only three countries41 to offer diplomatic recognition
to the new regime and the Taliban has continued to benefit from close Pakistan support,
including military training, through all their excesses, through 11 September 2001, and up
to the present time.

The closeness of relations between the ISI and the Taliban, and the closeness of
relations between the Taliban and Al Qaeda necessarily raises the issue of the nature of
relations between the ISI and Al Qaeda. The link between the ISI and Osama bin Laden
goes back more than 25 years. The wealthy Saudi bin Laden with strong links to the Saudi
royal family and Saudi intelligence almost inevitably had good contacts with the ISI. Bin
Laden had emerged as an important foreign fighter for the ISI during the Afghan war,
more because his wealth could be used deniably by the ISI than because of his significance
or military prowess on the battlefield. By most accounts Al Qaeda was formed sometime
between May and August 1988 (with many of the foundational meetings taking place in
Pakistan) as the Soviets began their withdrawal from Afghanistan, as a means of continuing
the jihad against the global enemies of Islam.42 It is clear at this time that bin Laden enjoyed
the protection of the ISI and that the ISI sought to co-opt bin Laden for two projects: the
overthrow of Najibullah in Kabul and the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto in Islamabad, both
of whom were seen as the enemies of Islam by bin Laden and the Islamists in the ISI.43
Bin Laden's absence from Afghanistan for the four years between 1992 and 1996 meant
he had no direct role in the rise of the Taliban, and indeed was unfamiliar with them
when he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. It was the ISI that reportedly facilitated bin
Laden's initial meetings with the Taliban, which were successful enough to see him move
to Kandahar as the winter of 1996 closed in.44

Under the protection of the ISI and the Taliban Osama bin Laden began to expand
the activities of Al Qaeda for global jihad. Focused on its regional agenda—Kashmir,
the support of the Taliban, and a growing determination to stake a strong hand in the oil-rich southern Caucus—the ISI colluded with bin Laden to establish further training camps inside Afghanistan, and to facilitate the spread of bin Laden's influence in existing camps on both sides of the border, in order to host, indoctrinate, and train foreign fighters who could reinforce Kashmiri separatist/terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, support the
Taliban, and promote a pro-Pakistan Islamist agenda from Chechnya, through Uzbekistan,
to China.

Despite Internet conspiracies to the contrary, there is little or no evidence that the
ISI, even its most Islamist officers, had a hand in Al Qaeda's global terrorist spectaculars.
Moreover, bin Laden's anti-Saudi rhetoric and his actions against the Saudi government,
created something of a headache for both the ISI and the Taliban given the dependence
of both on Saudi funding and support. However, there is no doubt that bin Laden was so
useful to the ISI, and their Sunni Islamist agendas so closely aligned, that the ISI turned
a blind-eye to Al Qaeda operations and repeatedly protected bin Laden, warning the Al
Qaeda leadership about CIA and Afghan plots against him. A notable example of this was
tipping him off about the U.S. cruise missile strikes (in retaliation for the 1998 Al Qaeda
bombings in East Africa) on a meeting he was due to attend at Zawhar Kili camp on 20
August 1998.45

The critical insight is that by the late 1990s, even after Musharraf came to power,
the degree of overlap between the pan-Islamist agenda of Pakistan, exercised through its
ISI, and Al Qaeda was deep and extensive. Pakistan was the hub of a radiating network
of Islamist groups and organizations that by 2000 were asserting a pro-Pakistan agenda
across the region taking in Afghanistan, the Southern Caucus, the west of China, Kashmir,
and across the Indian subcontinent in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and inside India
itself.46

The ISI after 9/11

For Pakistan and the ISI the consequences of the attacks of 9/11 were almost incalculable.
Pakistan was co-opted by the United States as a necessary if uncertain partner47 for the
"War on Terrorism" and as an indispensable forward base for the overthrow of the Taliban,
which—once the Taliban refused to hand the Al Qaeda leadership over—became a sine
qua none for the destruction of Al Qaeda. The military government of Pervez Musharraf
was given no choice other than to assist the United States and was offered lavish rewards
of aid, debt write-off, and the lifting of the Pressler sanctions and the additional sanctions
imposed after the Pakistan nuclear weapons tests in 1998.48 In almost all other respects the
consequences of the 9/11 attacks have been catastrophic for Pakistan.

The United States engineered the rapid overthrow of the Taliban and, through the
Bonn process, brought to power a coalition Afghan government with a significant Pashtun
presence. The emergent Karzai government allowed Indian influence to reassert itself
once again in Afghanistan, to the deep alarm of Pakistan. The Bush administration became
rapidly less tolerant of Pakistan's support for separatists/terrorists in Kashmir and elsewhere,
considerably closing down Pakistan's political space to use terrorism for its geopolitical
ends. Furthermore, the establishment of a large U.S. military presence in the Southern
Caucus and the arrival of NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2003 have both displaced Pakistan
and significantly complicated its regional calculus.

Against this backcloth the ISI and the Pakistan Army were asked to hunt down Al
Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and help hunt them down in Afghanistan. The way the ISI
has responded has been shaped by two sets of tensions: the first the tensions between the need for Musharraf to demonstrate fidelity to the United States in the pursuit of Al Qaeda
and Musharraf's sensitivity to the widespread support for Al Qaeda and the Taliban across
Pakistan, a support demonstrated by a large proportion of the people,49 by Islamist political
parties,50 and by elements within Pakistan's Army and ISI. The second tension is that
between U.S. objectives in relation to Al Qaeda and in terms of the region more broadly,
and Pakistan's objectives in the region as a whole. These tensions explain the ambiguity of
the ISI actions since 9/11.

To support his pro-U.S. stance, for which he has been subject to at least seven
assassination attempts,51 Musharraf needed tight control of the ISI and in the aftermath
of 9/11 he moved to try to impose it.52 Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad, Director General of
the ISI (1999–2001) was replaced a month after 9/11 with a Musharraf loyalist, Lt. Gen.
Ehsan ul Haq, and two further appointments to the position have since been made; Lt. Gen.
Pervez Kiani (October 2004–to date).

To understand the changes imposed on the ISI under these DGs it is necessary to
say a little more about its organization. From its headquarters on Khayaban-e-Suharwady
in Islamabad the contemporary ISI, comprising an unknown number of operatives but
estimated at around 10,00053 (not including assets and informants), is understood to be
organized into eight sections:

1. Joint Intelligence X (JIX) serves as the secretariat that co-ordinates and provides
administrative support for the other ISI sections and field organizations. It is said to
prepare intelligence estimates and threat assessments.

2. Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), is responsible for political intelligence and comprises
three subsections, one of which deals with India. The JIB is thought to be responsible
for all "open source" and human intelligence within as well as outside Pakistan.

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

4. Joint Intelligence North (JIN) is responsible for operations in Jammu and Kashmir,
including infiltration, exfiltration, propaganda, and other clandestine operations.
JIN has key responsibility for "separatist/terrorist" training camps in Pakistan
Administered Kashmir and thus is the section that largely controls organizations such
as Harket-ul-Mujahidin [HUM], Lashkar-e-Toiba [LET], and Jaish-e-Mohammed
[JEM].

5. Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous (JIM) conducts espionage in foreign countries,
including offensive intelligence operations. It has a role in the clandestine
procurement of nuclear and missile technologies and thus may have had links with
the AQ Khan network.54 It has also been reported that JIM has a role in separatist/
terrorist training camps.

6. Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau (JSIB) operates signals intelligence collection
stations along the Indian border and has wireless, monitoring, and photo sections. It also provides communications support to militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir.

7. Joint Intelligence Technical (JIT) deals with the collection of all technical
intelligence (other than communications), with gadgetry, and may include the
subsections involved with explosives, chemical weapons, and with the monitoring
of those in Pakistan with nuclear weapons roles.
8. The Special Wing that is responsible for intelligence training for the Pakistan armed forces at the Defence Services Intelligence Academy and possibly for liaison with foreign intelligence and security agencies.55

Musharraf restructured the two directorates of the ISI with the strongest links to terrorist
groups: those responsible for operations in Afghanistan (part of the JCIB) and for Jammu
and Kashmir (JIN), bringing them under the scrutiny of the Army's MI. Officers thought
suspect in key sections and at key ISI bureaux such as Peshawar, Quetta, and Muzaffarabad
were transferred out and replaced by loyalists.56

According to some sources the ISI has also been reorganized so that personnel are now
on two-to three-year rotational secondment from the three branches of the military and the
police or from civilian life.57 This rotation is meant to assure military control of the ISI by
ensuring that the assertion and continuity of a distinct and cohesive agenda from within the
ISI, or one of its regional branches, is almost impossible. However, the idea that all of the
ISI staff is rotated in this way is highly improbable and likely to be a fiction designed to
encourage the idea that the ISI is now tightly disciplined by the military.58 Furthermore, it
must be doubted that the appointment of a DG close to the president would be enough to
assure the fidelity of the ISI to military control, even with the MI monitoring ISI activities on
behalf of the Musharraf.59 As discussed earlier the ISI became so powerful in part because
of its access to money and materiel outside the control of any other part of the government in
Pakistan, sourced from arms dealing, the drug trade, crime, money laundering,60 extortion,
kidnap ransom, or given directly to it by foreign intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA
and Saudi Arabia's GID.

This raises the important question of relations between the military government of
Pakistan and the ISI. Musharraf's statement of ISI loyalty, which opened this article, is
probably true as far as the objectives of the Pakistan military government and the ISI
overlap,61 and the ISI is certainly under much tighter government control when the military
are in power in Pakistan than under civilian rule. There are, however, deniable ISI officers
and operations used by the government that can be dismissed as "rogue" activities if they
attract unwanted consequences.62 There are equally many ISI officers and operations that
serve narrower interests, or the interests of foreign agencies, and which are well beyond
the capability of the Pakistan government to control.

Notwithstanding these complexities there is no question that the ISI was essential to the
United States and the West in the early phase of the War on Terrorism. The ISI helped the
United States to arrest many hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members, among
them many leading Al Qaeda figures. These included Abu Zubaydah (captured 28 March
2002 in Faisalabad), Khlaid Sheikh Mohammed (captured 1 March 2003 in Rawalpindi),
Ahmed Ghailani (captured 26 May 2004 in Gujerat), Amjad Farooqi (killed 26 September
2004 in Nawabshah), and Abu Faraj Al-Libbi (captured 2 May 2005 at Mardan near
Peshawar).63 The case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11
attacks, is particularly instructive. Sheikh Mohammed was tipped off and narrowly escaped
arrest in Karachi in September 2002 and was finally captured in Rawalpindi. Why Sheikh
Mohammed chose to flee to the garrison headquarters town of the Pakistan military as he felt
the net tightening remains a mystery, but he was captured in the "safe house" of a serving
military officer with close family links to the Islamist political party Jamaat-I-Islami, part
of the MMA coalition that was until recently in political partnership with the Musharraf
government.64

Under U.S. pressure the ISI made many arrests among the Kashmiri separatist
organizations and the Musharraf government publicly banned many of them as terrorist
groups.65 However, most of those arrested were subsequently released without any
charges and the separatist/terrorist groups, such as the ISI creations Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, have been permitted to re-form, some of them under different names.
To escape U.S. attention some of the ISI training camps for these organizations have been moved from Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) to training camps outside Pakistan, in particular to Bangladesh,66 to continue to be available to the ISI as policy instruments.

According to mainly Indian sources these camps are also being used by the ISI as part of a strategy "to encircle India by establishing [ISI] bases within with country and outside
through Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka to transform various secessionist
movements into a pan-Islamic jihad against India,"67 although it is understood that the
ISI has been rebuffed in Nepal68 and is making little headway in Sri Lanka.69 This would
clearly be consistent with the ISI's use of pan-Islamist jihad in Afghanistan, in Jammu and
Kashmir, and in the Southern Caucus.

The ISI has nevertheless been of significant value to the West in unravelling the details
of international terrorist operations or in helping foil international terrorist operations, a
large number of which have had their roots in Pakistan.70 Of particular importance in
this respect have been the investigations into the 9/11 attacks, and into the 7/7 London
bombings,71 and the ISI's role in foiling the alleged summer 2006 plot to simultaneously
blow up airliners leaving London Heathrow for the United States.72

Critics however point to systematic problems with the ISI's role in these operations, in
particular that:

1. the ISI tends to act on U.S. and/or U.K. intelligence but not to be proactive in
bringing its own intelligence to the West73;
2. the ISI is unhelpful in relation to specific investigations—most notably of 7/7 and 21/774—where the trail in Pakistan seems to have gone cold;
3. the ISI has restricted or denied the U.S./U.K. access to many alleged terrorists as
well as to many of its own operatives and assets75;
4. the ISI manipulates intelligence for its own internal and geopolitical reasons, and misdirects U.S. and U.K. intelligence services.76

The crucial point is not that the ISI is aiding Al Qaeda directly—although some of its operatives may be77—but rather that Pakistan's geopolitical interests, and in particular the
ISI's promotion of pan-Islamist jihad, make it an unreliable ally for the West and plays into
Al Qaeda's hands. As ISI successes against Al Qaeda have declined since 2002/3 and the
hunt for the Al Qaeda leadership has petered out, and as the number of Al Qaeda directed
or aided operations emanating from Pakistan continues to rise,78 the ambiguous role of the
ISI in the War on Terrorism is becoming a mounting problem from the West.

In addition, the ISI's support for Sunni Islamism in Pakistan adds another layer of
complexity to the West's problems in Pakistan. Despite his moderate credentials Musharraf
has eschewed the Western-orientated political parties of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif,
both of whom he has refused, until very recently, to allow to return from political exile
abroad. Instead, as Islamist forces in Pakistan rose in the wake of 9/11,79 Musharraf made
common cause with a group of Islamist parties80 under the banner of the MMA (Muttadida
Majlis-e-Amal) to sustain his position in power.81 As a result the ISI has been working
assiduously to support the MMA and undermine pro-Western non-Islamist political parties
in Pakistan and those working to restore democracy and the rule of law from outside.82 One
consequence of this has been the rise to power by the MMA in the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) and in Balochistan, Pakistan's two most volatile and lawless provinces
and each a base for the Taliban.83

To temper the rising influence of Iran on the Shi'a communities in Pakistan, the ISI
has been supporting and orchestrating anti-Shi'a violence, particularly in Karachi and the
Punjab, using sectarian Sunni groups such as Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jangvi
(L-e-J), despite these being two of the groups proscribed by Musharraf in his clamp down on terrorist groups.84

In addition, the ISI have taken the opportunity provided by the CIA's bounty85 on
suspected Al Qaeda and other terrorist group members to arrest, torture, and in dozens of
cases, "disappear" domestic enemies of the regime.86 In sum the ISI has been and continues
to work systematically for the exclusion of pro-Western political parties, the repression of
Shi'a communities, the intimidation and elimination of political rivals and those struggling
to build civil society, and in support of alliances with Sunni Islamist groups. This has shifted
the center of gravity in Pakistan's polity in the direction of the Islamists, a point made more
grave by a growing concern that these forces may now be slipping out of the control of the
ISI87 and the Pakistan government.88

The ISI and the War on Terrorism: Six Years On

Six years after the War on Terrorism began, as John Negroponte, U.S. National Intelligence
Director has stated, Al Qaeda are resurgent and "are cultivating stronger operational
connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in
Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe."89 The deals
agreed between Pakistan and tribal groups supportive of the Taliban in Southern90 and
Northern91 Waziristan have taken the pressure off Al Qaeda in the tribal areas92 and have
also created the context for the resurgence of the Taliban,93 the latter very much in line with
Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan.

It is equally clear that the Al Qaeda leadership has somehow managed to reactivate
at least some of its financial conduits and thus has the means again to begin to assert
direct influence on Al Qaeda operations within Afghanistan/Pakistan, to reconstitute some
training camps in Pakistan,94 and to directly influence again the networks around the world
loyal to Al Qaeda's agenda if not directly subordinate to the leadership. An example of the
latter is the renewal of the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Algerian terrorist group
the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat [GSPC], renamed in September 2006
L'Organisation Al-Qaeda au pays de Maghreb Islamique.95

There are at least five trends in Pakistan that are bolstering Al Qaeda's resurgence, and
the ISI has had a hand in all five:

1. The first is the continued expansion of Madaris in Pakistan that have risen from an estimated 7,000 in 2000, to 11,000 in 2003 to 13–14,000 in 2006.96 Efforts by the
Pakistan government to reorientate the curricula of many of these Madaris away
from jihadi radicalization have largely failed with around 35 percent of the Madaris
still not even registered under the government scheme.97 Although only a proportion
of Madaris articulate radical ideas,98 those that do are growing in number strongly
supported by external funders such as Saudi Arabia's continued promotion of austere
Wahhabism and by local funders themselves becoming more Islamist and estranged
from the West, not least as a consequence of Western bombing, which takes lives
indiscriminately.99

2. The second—mutually informing—trend is the rising radicalization of young
Pakistanis and Afghans living in Pakistan, something being fueled by the U.S. and
NATO presence in the South Asian theater.100 Many of these young men are flocking
with the support of the ISI to the Taliban101 and to Kashmiri separatist/terrorist
groups, and some are finding their way to Al Qaeda.

3. The third is a creeping radicalization within the Pakistan military and intelligence services themselves underpinned by almost three decades of Zia ul-Haq's
Islamization policies and fueled by the Pakistan government's alignment with the
West and thus the requirement of military personnel and intelligence operatives to
turn their guns on their own kinsmen and countrymen at the behest of the United
States.

4. The fourth is the evolution of the long-standing links between radical terrorist groups that have been the recipients of Pakistan's support in the past—most particularly the groups fighting for Kashmir separatism102 and the Taliban—and Islamist political parties,103 some in Pakistan's military and intelligence forces, and Al Qaeda.
One important development within this process is the emergence of indigenous
Pakistani Al Qaeda, which has enhanced the relationship between Al Qaeda and
separatist/terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba. It is no longer possible for the
government of Pakistan to portray Al Qaeda simply as foreigners taking up residence
in areas of Pakistan that the government struggles to control.

5. Finally, significant amounts of illegitimate arms and money are being generated by the reestablishment of the drugs trade, the illegal trade in small arms, smuggling, crime, and the "taxation" of goods moving in and out of Afghanistan across the Pakistan border. These are finding their way to the Taliban, and to Al Qaeda, and provide another means by which recruits to the cause can be rallied and supported.

These trends—and the ISI's continued role in each—raise very fundamental questions
about the wisdom of the West continuing to support the ISI—directly and indirectly—and about the trajectory of the War on Terrorism in Pakistan.

Conclusion

This article has explored the nature and operations of the ISI and has argued that in supporting Pakistan's ruling elite and in pursuit of Pakistan's geostrategic interests the ISI has promoted an agenda of Sunni Islamism in Pakistan and of pan-Islamist jihad abroad. In the post-9/11 era the trajectory of this strategy has put Pakistan increasingly at odds with the West, a point underlined by Pakistan's strong support of the Taliban, even as the United States and NATO battle Taliban forces, and by the resurgence of Al Qaeda.

Whether under tight Pakistani government control, as Musharraf asserts, or not, the
ISI's support for pan-Islamist jihad threatens Western interests in Afghanistan, in the Southern Caucus, and across South Asia, whereas the ISI's support for Sunni Islamism in Pakistan and its repression of political alternatives and of civil society is closing down political space in the country, fueling instability and the risk of state disintegration. There is a growing concern, expressed even by cautious voices, that the forces created or empowered by the ISI over the past two decades in particular, are forging ever stronger links and may yet rise to challenge for control of Pakistan itself.

Six years after the War on Terrorism began Pakistan has emerged as "the new
Afghanistan," the hub, as Negroponte put it, from which Al Qaeda has been able to
regenerate and reassert at least some of its lethal global influence. With grave new trends evident in Pakistan, reliance on the Janus-faced ISI is failing and a Western rethink of its intelligence strategy toward Pakistan is now imperative.

NOTES

1. Major General William Cawthorne had been the Pakistan Army's first Director of Military
Intelligence. See Sir Morrice James (Lord Saint Brides), Pakistan Chronicle (Karachi: Oxford
University Press, 1993), p. 25. The author is indebted to Brian Cloughley and Ian Talbot for help with
this history.
2. Intelligence Resource Program, "Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence," Federation of
American Scientists, 1 May 2002. Available at (http://www.fas.org/irp/world/pakistan/isi).
3. A helpful overview history of the ISI, from which this is taken, is: Sean P. Witchell,
"Pakistan's ISI: The Invisible Government," International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-
Intelligence 16(1) (Spring 2003), pp. 374–388.
4. The military had been de facto in control of Pakistan since the swearing in of Major
General Iskander Mirza as Acting Governor General of Pakistan on 7 August 1955.
5. For useful context see Irm Haleem, "Ethnic and Sectarian Violence and the Propensity
Towards Praetorianism in Pakistan," Third World Quarterly 24(3) (Autumn 2003), pp. 463–
477.
6. The politics of Bengali nationalism, the complexities of the struggle between East and
West Pakistan, and the intricacies of the 1971 war are outside the scope of this article. For insight
see: Richard Sisson and Leo Rose, War of Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Abdul Rehman Siddiqi, East Pakistan: The Endgame
1969–71 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Hasan Zaheer, The Separation of East
Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
7. It is worth recalling that Pakistan was a member of both the CENTO [1955] and SEATO
[1954] alliances during this period and India, although non-aligned, had close relations with the
Soviet Union. Pakistan thus found a ready ally in the CIA for ISI activities it could explain to the
United States as part of the struggle against communism or against Soviet-inclined India.
8. Zulfakir Ali Bhutto, If I am Assassinated (New Delhi: Vikas Press, 1979).
9. The FSF was disbanded and many of its operatives arrested when Zia ul-Haq assumed
power by military coup in 1977.
10. Hypocritically, given the ends to which he subsequently turned the ISI, General Zia ul-Haq
castigated Bhutto for politicizing the ISI during his term of office, calling it the "political arm of the
PPP." See Yashwant Deva Avsm, "ISI and its Chicanery in Exporting Terrorism," The India Defence
Review, available at (http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3328/idr00006.htm).
11. See Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity and
the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network (London: C. Hurst & Co, 2006), pp. 12–14 and Witchell,
"Pakistan's ISI," p. 378.
12. See James Ring Adams and Douglas Frantz, A Full Service Bank: How BCCI Stole
Billions Around the World (New York: Simon and Schuster,1993); Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwyne,
The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI (Maryland: Beard Books, 1993); Abid
Ullah Jan, From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues (New York: Booksurge Press, 2006);
and Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, BCCI: The Inside Story of the World's Most Corrupt Financial
Empire (New York: Bloomsbury, 1992).
13. There are a number of excellent histories of this period; among the most insightful
are: Hasan Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan 1947–1997 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel
Publications, 2000), pp. 208–267 and Hassan Abbas, Pakistan's Drift into Extremism (New Haven:
M. E. Sharpe Press, 2005), pp. 89–132.
14. Two key documents are Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq's addresses to the nation: "Introduction
of Islamic Law," 10 February 1979 and "Islamic Order; Our Goal," 3 June 1980, both published
by the Pakistan Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. For analysis see: Craig Baxter, Zia's
Pakistan: Politics and Stability in a Frontline State (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985) and Surendra
Naih Kaushik, Politics of Islamization in Pakistan: A Study of the Zia Regime (New Delhi: South
Asia Publications, 1998).
15. Kathy Gannon, I is For Infidel (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 2005), pp. 127–149.

The ISI and the War on Terrorism

16. Islamism is used throughout this article to refer to an Islamic revivalism usually
characterized by literalism, moral conservatism, and an attempt to implement increasingly radical
Islamic values in all spheres of life, particularly in the law and politics.
17. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From
the Soviet Invasion to September 10 (London: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 63–64.
18. One source indicates that the ISI built up a store of at least three million small arms during
this period. See Peter Chalk, "Light Arms Trading in South East Asia," Janes Intelligence Review,1
March 2001, available at (http://www.rand.org/commentary/030101JIR.html).
19. An extremely helpful backgrounder is Robert G. Wirsing, Pakistan's Security Under
Zia 1977–88: The Policy Imperatives of a Peripheral Asian State (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1991).
20. The seven mujahidin leaders became known as the seven dwarfs. See Lawrence Wright,
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road to 9/11 (London: Penguin/Allen Lane 2006), pp. 99–
100.
21. George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert
Operation in History (New York: Grove/Atlantic Monthly, 2003), pp. 491–492.
22. Abbas, Pakistan's Drift into Extremism, p. 114.
23. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New
Haven; Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 129–130.
24. Mary Anne Weaver, Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2003), p. 251.
25. Two of the best studies of Al Qaeda remain, Peter Bergen, Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret
World of Osama Bin Laden (New Haven: Phoenix Press, 2002) and Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True
Story of Radical Islam (London: Penguin Press, 2004).
26. Peter Marsden, The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan (London:
Zed Books, 1998).
27. Antoine Sfeir, Al Qaida Menace La France (Parfis: La Cherche-Midi, 2007).
28. John Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al Qaeda and the Rise of Global Jihad (London:
Motorbooks International, 2007).
29. James Hughes, Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad (Philapdelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
30. Sean O'Neil and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park
Mosque (London: Harper Perennial, 2006).
31. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 165.
32. Perhaps the best analysis of the crash, characterized as an assassination by some authors,
is by Abbas, Pakistan's Drift into Extremism, pp. 124–132.
33. Witchell, Pakistan's ISI, pp. 380–381.
34. The political strength of the Pakistan presidency is shaped by the extent to which elite
powers in Pakistan are willing to support it. A prime minister cannot retain office against the president's
will if the president has the support of the Army, particularly where the Army is supported by other
significant political forces in the country.
35. A useful insight is Phil Rees, Dining with Terrorists: Meetings with the World's Most
Wanted Militants (London: Pan Books, 2006), pp. 275–276.
36. It was important to both the ISI and CIA that these weapons not include traceable U.S.
hardware that could then expose Pakistan to claims of supporting the separatist violence and the
United States to charges of wittingly or unwittingly supporting terrorist violence.
37. For an useful introduction see Charles Allen, God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the
Historical Roots of Modern Jihad (New York: Abacus Press, 2007).
38. The defining moment arguably was the Taliban taking over on 12 October 1994 the huge
ISI weapons dump at Spin Boldak, originally earmarked for Hekmatyar. It is disputed whether this
arms transfer was organized by the ISI or whether the Taliban made a payment to local Afghan
commanders, but either way the symbolism was the same: a clear ISI shift from Hekmatyar to the
Taliban.

1028 S. Gregory

39. For excellent analyses of this rise see Nematollah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in
Afghanistan (Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, 2002) and William Maley, Fundamentalism Reborn?
Afghanistan and the Taliban (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2001).
40. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 333.
41. The others, perhaps not surprisingly, were Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
42. See: Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 121–144; see also Rohan Guranatna, Inside Al-
Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2002).
43. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 212. The ISI Director at this time, Lt. General Hamid Gul, held
deeply Islamist and profoundly anti-Western views and was, and remains, an admirer of bin Laden
and the Taliban. Gul is contentedly on record as blaming the United States and Mossad for the 9/11
attacks. See among many examples: Rediff Interview with Hamid Gul, 12 February 2004, available
at (http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/12inter.htm).
44. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 327.
45. Ibid., pp. 410–411.
46. For an expert development of these ideas see Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy,
Reseaux Islamiques: La Connexion Afghano-Pakistanaise (Paris: Hachette, 2002).
47. See C. Christine Fair, "Pakistan: An Uncertain Partner in the Fight Against Terrorism,"
Chapter 2, The Counterterror Coalitions: Co-operation with Pakistan and India (Santa Monica: Rand
Report, 2004).
48. For example, U.S. economic aid to Pakistan jumped from $91 million in 2001 to $974
million in 2002. See Bessma Momani, "The IMF, the US War on Terrorism and Pakistan," Asian
Affairs 31(1) (Spring 2004), p. 45.
49. See, for example, the data for Pakistan from the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys, available
at (http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248).
50. Zahid Hussain, "The War Within," Newsline, 1 April 2003, available at (http://www.
newsline.com.pk/NewsApr2003/cover1apr2003.htm).
51. See, for example, "Pakistani Links Military to Failed Plot to Kill Him," New York Times,
28 May 2004, p. 12.
52. Tim McGirk, "Has Pakistan Tamed Its Spies?" Time Magazine, 6 May 2002, p. 34.
53. David Chazan, "Profile: Pakistan's Military Intelligence Agency," BBC News Online,
available at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south asia/1750265.stm).
54. Corera, Shopping for Bombs. It is clear from this study that the ISI were watching Khan
and that at least two reports were delivered to the Pakistan government in 1989 and 1998–99 about
Khan's activities (see pp. 96 and 145–147). Corera does not, however, directly explore the question
of ISI involvement in supporting Khan.
55. This list is drawn from John Pike, "Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI]," Global
Security, (26 April 2005), available at (http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/pakistan/isi.htm)
and is supplemented with information from: Peter Chalk, "Pakistan's Role in the Kashmiri
Insurgency," Jane's Intelligence Review (1 September 2001), reproduced at (http://www.rand.org/
commentary/090101JIR.html) and B. Raman, "Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI]," SAAG
Paper No. 287 (8 January 2001), available at (http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper287.html).
56. V. Belokrenitsky, "The ISI: Still Terrorism's Ally?" Terrorism Monitor 1(3) (October
2003), pp. 34–37.
57. Former ISI Director General Javed Ashraf Qazi, for example, said "no-one can make a
career out the ISI ... ISI people are serving military officers and after three years they are out."
Quoted in Hussain, "The War Within."
58. First, if personnel really were being rotated out of the ISI every three years it would mean
that the entire staff would change over each three-year period. This would be an enormous loss of
institutional experience, memory, and efficiency and an enormous and unnecessary drain on resources
to train people coming into the organization to replace those rotated out. It would also mean people
leaving in the middle of operations and would carry the immense risk that those rotated out of the ISI
would disseminate their knowledge outside the ISI.
59. In his role as Chief of the Army Staff [COAS], see Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of
the Storm (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2002), p. 239.

The ISI and the War on Terrorism

60. This is not to imply that the Pakistan government is unaware of ISI involvement in these
kinds of activities. A particularly important case is that of "gangster/terrorist" Dawood Ibrahim,
whose long association with the ISI (and with Al Qaeda) and involvement in drug smuggling, crime,
and money laundering risks exposing the degree of government complicity in these kinds of activities.
This is one of many reasons why the Musharraf government will not allow Dawood to be handed over
to the United States. See John Wilson, "Dawood's ISI Links Could Trouble Musharraf," Observer
Research Foundation (2005), available at (http://www.observerindia.com/analysis/A029.htm).
61. Although his statement that it had only been in the government's control since 1979 is
thought provoking.
62. A recent example was the withdrawal of the British Military Attach´
e to Islamabad,
reported in August 2005, who had allegedly been involved in a "honeytrap" operation and
tricked into an inappropriate relationship with a female Pakistani "civilian defence academic"
thought to be a rogue ISI operative. See: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/4158958.stm) and
(http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/aug-2005/18/index4.php).

63. There are many interesting features of these arrests, including that most of them have
been in Pakistan's cities rather than in the wild tribal areas and that many of those arrested have
been found in "safe houses" linked to Islamist political parties or Kashmiri terrorist groups such as
Jaish-e-Mohammed.
64. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006),
pp. 155–157 and 204–206 and Ahmed Rashid, "Pakistani Army Officers Arrested in Terror Swoop,"
The Daily Telegraph (1 September 2003).
65. Stephen Burgess, "Struggle for the Control of Pakistan: Musharraf Takes on the Islamist
Radicals, US Air University Report" (2002), available at (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpcpubs/
know thy enemy/burgess.pdf). See also Douglas Jehl, "Pakistan Cutting it's Spy Unit Ties to
Some Militants," The New York Times, 20 February 2002, p. 1.
66. Jaideep Saika, "The ISI Reaches East: Anatomy of a Consiracy," Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism 25 (Spring 2002), pp. 185–197; S. Bhaumik, "Indian Rebels Sheltering in Bangladesh,"
BBC News (1 October 2002), available at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/2289916.stm); A.
Jain, "Pakistan's ISI Terror Camps in Bangladesh," India Daily, 15 September 2004; H. Sekhon,
"Bangladesh: A Haven for Pakistan's ISI," Strategic Trends, The Observer Research Foundation
(27 September 2004).
67. See, for example, N. S. Jamwal, "Counter Terrorist Strategy," Strategic Analysis,
IDSA (Spring 2003), available at (http://ciaonet.org/olj/sa/sa jan03jan01.html) and Jaideep Saika,
"Terror Sans Frontiers: Islamic Militancy in North East India," Arms Control, Disarmament and
International Security, (July 2003), available at (http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu:16080/Research/Ops/
Saika/SaikaOP.pdf).
68. See "Pakistan's ISI Tried to Infilitrate Nepal," India Daily, available at (http://www.
indiadaily.com/editorial/14321.asp). See also (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/
2006/11/mil-061121-irna02.htm).
69. "Pakistan-based Islamic Group Eyes Eastern Sir Lanka," Tamilnet (15 June 2004), available
at (http://www.tamilnet.com.art.html?catid=79&artid=12219).
70. Bronwen Maddox, "How the Road to Terror Leads Back to Pakistan," The London Times,
11 August 2006, p. 13.
71. House of Commons , Report of the Official Account of Bombing in London on 7 July
2005 (London: The Stationery Office, 2006) and ISC (Intelligence and Security Committee) Report
into the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005 (London: The Stationery Office, 2005). For
an excellent analysis of the Pakistan connection to terrorism in the United Kingdom see Julian
Richards, "Contemporary Terrorist Threats in the UK: The Pakistan Dimension," Journal of Policing,
Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism 2(1) (Spring 2007), pp. 11–29.
72. Several of the alleged plotters made recent visits and reportedly received money wired
from Pakistan. See CNN, "Terror Plot Leaves UK on Highest Level of Alert" (11 August 2006),
available at (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/11/terror.plot/index.html).
73. Almost all of the leading Al Qaeda figures captured or killed in Pakistan were located by
U.S. or Western intelligence, rather than by the ISI. Indeed Pakistan's formulation that they "will act on actionable intelligence" neatly passes the onus to the United States and the West to initiate
operations against Al Qaeda.

74. This was the plot two weeks after 7/7 to allegedly blow up four more suicide bombs on
London's transport network. The alleged leader of the plot, Muktar Said-Ibrahim, allegedly began
the plot after returning from a four-month trip to Pakistan in March 2005. He was thus in Pakistan at
the same time as two of the suicide bombers who undertook the 7/7 bombings. See "21/7: The Trial,"
The London Times, 16 January 2007, available at (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/
article1293339.ece).
75. The clearest example of this is Pakistan's refusal to extradite O mar Saeed Sheikh. See
Christina Lamb, "Just Whose Side is Pakistan Really On?" Sunday Times (13 August 2006), available
at (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article607597.ece). See also Tom Regan, "Report: US
Rendition Threat Forced Britain to Act on Airport Terror Plot," Christian Science Monitor, 2 October
2006. See also Musharraf's rebuttal: "West Will Fail Without Pakistan," 30 September 2006, BBC
World News, available at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/5394278.stm).
76. For a critical view of Pakistan's role in the War on Terrorism see T. G. Carpenter, "Take
the War on Terrorism to Pakistan," CATO Institute Paper (28 March 2002).
77. A very helpful study is C. Christine Fair, "Militant Recruitment in Pakistan," Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism 27(6) (November/December 2004), pp. 489–504.
78. As the DG of MI5 Dame Eliza Manningham Buller noted in relation to U.K. Islamic
terrorist incidents, "plots often have links back to Al-Qaida [sic] in Pakistan and through those links
Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and
growing [emphasis added] scale. For the full text of the speech see MI5's website at (http://www.mi5.
gov.uk/output/Page568.html).
79. International Crisis Group, "Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan's Failure to Tackle Extremism,"
ICG Report No 73 (16 January 2004).
80. Including Jamaat-I-Islami and the even more radical Deobandi-influenced Jamaat-Ulemae-
Islam.
81. For a discussion of the ISI's role in the political fortunes of the MMA see B. F. Fitzgerald,
"A New Deal for Pakistan?, Terrorism Monitor 2(3) (February 2004), pp. 1–3.
82. "Opposition Parties agree on Anti-Musharraf Alliance," The Daily Times [Pakistan]
(5 September 2005).
83. An extremely helpful study is Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between the Mosque and the
Military (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
84. Animesh Roul, "Sipah-e-Sahaba: Fomenting Sectarian Violence in Pakistan," Terrorism
Monitor 3(2) (January 2005), pp. 5–7. It would be a mistake to see sectarian violence in Pakistan only
in terms of the ISI. There is a long and complex history to the conflicts, particularly since the Iranian
revolution. For a good introduction see Musa Khan Jalalazai, Sectarianism and Political Violence in
Pakistan (Lahore: Taleeb Books, 1993).
85. Tom Burgis, "US Fuels Pakistan Bounty Market," Financial Times, 28 September 2006,
available at (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bbd820b2-4f3a-11db-b600-0000779e2340.html).
86. See Amnesty International, "Pakistan: Growing Anger at Continuing Enforced Disappearances,"
available at (http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGASA330522006) and "BBC in Missing Pakistani
Debate," BBC New Online, available at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/5142700.stm).
An important resource that has collated information and media reportage on these disappearances
can be found at (http://icssa.org/isi victims.php?pg=1).
87. Despite its enormous influence the ISI has had many intelligence failures, not least in the
1965 and 1971 wars. Its greatest mistake and failure, however, may yet prove to be the promotion of
Islamism, internally and regionally and the unleashing of forces it can no longer control.
88. For a superb analysis of this risk see Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle
With Militant Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). For prescient earlier analyses
see Brahma Chellaney, "Fighting Terrorism in South Asia," International Security 26(3) (Winter
2001/2), pp. 94–116; Anatol Lieven, "Preserving Pakistan," Foreign Affairs (January/February 2002),
pp. 107–118 and William Maley, "The War Against Terrorism in South Asia," Contemporary South
Asia 12(2) (June 2003), particularly pp. 207–208.

The ISI and the War on Terrorism

89. See John Negroponte, quoted in "Al Qaeda Rebuilding in Pakistan," BBC New Online (12
January 2007), available at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/6254375.stm).
90. The so-called Sargodha peace deal of February 2005 agreed the disengagement of Pakistani
armed forces from the region in return for the commitment of tribal groups not to attack Pakistani
forces. See Ismail Khan, "Waziristan Draft Accord Approved," Dawn, 2 February 2005.
91. Pazir Gul, "Waziristan Accord Signed," Dawn, 5 September 2006, p. 1. This deal also
agreed a no-combat deal with tribal groups.
92. The Waziristan accords require tribal groups to "ensure the departure" of foreign fighters
and end cross-border movement for militant activity but the Taliban and pro-Taliban tribal groups have
not observed these terms and by agreeing to end the use of force the Pakistan military has no means
to enforce such a request. At the same time the Northern Waziristan deal was announced Pakistan
Army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan was widely reported as stating that a "no arrest" deal
had been concluded with Osama bin Laden himself by the Pakistan military "provided he lived as
a peaceful citizen." The remarks were subsequently renounced as a "gross misquote" and corrected
by the Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, but there is no doubt that the Waziristan deals have
left Al Qaeda and bin Laden/Al-Zawahiri at greater freedom than at any point since 9/11. See CNN,
"Pakistan; No Bin Laden Arrest Deal" (6 September 2006), available at (www.cnn.com/2006/world/
asiapcf/09/06/pakistan.afghanistan/index.html).
93. Eben Kaplan, "The Taliban Resurgence in Afghanistan," Council on Foreign Relations
Backgrounder Briefing, CFR (30 May 2006).
94. Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde, "Terror Officials See AQ Chiefs Regaining Power," New
York Post, 19 February 2007.
95. "Un groupe Allie d'Al-Qaeda annonce changer de nom sur 'ordre de Ben Laden"' (26
January 2007) Cassafree, available at (www.cassafree.com/modules/news/print/php?storyid=8230).
For background see Shaun Gregory, "France and the War on Terrorism," Terrorism and Political
Violence 15(1) (Spring 2003), pp. 124–147.
96. Figures for the number of Madaris vary widely with as many as 50,000 suggested by some
sources. However, the more modest figure of 13–14,000 by 2005–6 is probably more accurate. See
"Special Report: School for Terror: Pakistan," The Economist, 19 August 2006.
97. F. Bokhari, "Third of Madrassas in Pakistan Defy Deadline," Financial Times, 30 December
2005, p. 8. Among those registered there is strong resistance to curricula reform, partly on the grounds
that the Westernization/secularization of curricula is un-Islamic and partly because most Madaris
received little or no money from the Pakistan government and thus are not susceptible to financial
pressure.
98. Two of the best studies of Madaris are those by C. Christine Fair, Islamic Education in
Pakistan (Washington: USIP 2006) and International Crisis Group, "Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism
and the Military," Report No. 36 (Islamabad: ICG, 2002).
99. An embedded point is that studies of Madaris do not and cannot provide data from the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] of Pakistan where Islamist influence is strongest and so
may underplay the problems. See Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, Asim Ijaz Khwaya, and Tristan Zajonc,
"Madrassa Metrics: The Statistics and Rhetoric of Religious Enrollment in Pakistan," available at
(http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~akhwaja/papers/madrassas beyondcrisis final.pdf).
100. See for example the data from the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys, available at
(http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248).
101. The rationale and role of Pakistan in supporting the Taliban uprising in 2007 is explored in Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Pakistan, The Taliban and Dadullah," PSRU Report No. 3 (Bradford; March 2007).
102. B. Raman, "Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Toiba," SAAG Paper, No. 678 (New Delhi, 2003).
103. One of the key concerns here is Jamaat-I-Islami, a significant player in Pakistan's National Assembly and one of the Pakistan government's partner parties under the MMA banner. JI party members have a long track record of association with Al Qaeda operatives and Kashmiri separatist/terrorist groups.

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Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30:1013–1031, 2007
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1057-610X print / 1521-0731 online
DOI: 10.1080/10576100701670862 The ISI and the War on Terrorism
Received 9 March 2007; accepted 25 March 2007.

The author thanks James Revill for research support and Gordon Corera, Christine Fair, and
Julian Richards for help with various aspects of the article. Responsibility for any errors is entirely
the author's.

Address correspondence to Professor Shaun Gregory, Department of Peace Studies, University
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