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| Who drives ISI? |
| 2002-04-10 |
All these acts were designed as a warning to Pakistan's military ruler: if you go too far in accommodating Washington, your head will also roll. Some senior journalists believe an attempt on Musharraf's life has already taken place. Are these acts of terrorism actually carried out by hardline groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkatul Ansar, which often claim them? Probably, but these groups are only a shell. Turn them upside down and the rational kernel is revealed in the form of Pakistan's major intelligence agency - the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), whose manipulation of them has long been clear.(Thank you for the link, Kathy.) These are my comments, which regular readers will recognize as mere reiteration... Not a bad article, and he makes points those of us who've watched this all along have been making. He's quite correct that Perv isn't fully in control of ISI, even though he appointed a trusted friend as its head. Tariq Ali makes his mistake in assuming ISI is in control of itself and its "covert" operations, which are probably more discrete than a parade down Main Street with brass bands but not much so. Under the Zia ul-Haq regime, ISI was staffed with officers and agents picked for their fundo bona fides and set to establishing an Islamist regime in Afghanistan. The tool for this was the NWFP fundamentalist establishment - Sami ul-Haq of the JUI, Qazi Hussein Ahmed of JI, and later the Afghan Defense Council, now the Muttahida Majlis Amal. Somewhere along the line the worm turned, and rather than ISI and its fundo substructure driving the religious parties, the religious parties ended up driving ISI. Dumping Hamid Gul and his cronies had no effect because the organization is swarming with "dual loyalty" fellows who really answer to Qazi and through him to Fazlur Rehman. Fazl, remember, is Binny's good friend. That's the way it seems to me, anyway, and events seem to fall into this framework; they don't work quite right with the ISI-in-control framework. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |