Friday, July 17, 2009

Military Intelligence




Military intelligence

Among the hoariest military jokes is that these two words are a contradiction in terms. Military intelligence means information, usually but not exclusively about the enemy, and without both information and the cerebral intelligence to make proper use of it, any commander is halfway to defeat. Among the obstacles that good intelligence must overcome in order to be applied are prejudice, as in US Secretary of State Stimson's statement that ‘gentlemen do not read each other's mail’, preconceptions in the commander's mind that will shut it out, as with Montgomery when planning Arnhem, and a sycophantic desire to reinforce those preconceptions and/or not to be the bearer of bad news, as with Haig's intelligence officer Charteris. But the most common problem is information overload, when so much undifferentiated intelligence pours into the decision-makers that they are unable to discern what it means. This may be deliberately exacerbated by the enemy through information warfare.The main input categories are by direct observation, easily the oldest and most trusted, by the collation of a number of indications none of which by itself offers a true picture, by inference from past behaviour or known constraints upon the enemy's freedom of action, and by actually knowing what the enemy is going to do by intercepting oral or written communications or by having an agent placed in his headquarters. Apart from direct observation by the commander himself, certainly the mainstay of all generals until well into the 19th century, all the others require specialist staff to collect, corroborate, evaluate, and sythesize information before presenting it to the commander.Throughout most of history generals themselves usually organized the collection of their own information, working through ad hoc means and a few trusted aides—European armies of the 18th and 19th centuries frequently assigned this task to their QMG. States sometimes created ad hoc bureaux to handle secret intelligence tasks for a decade or two, as the Admiralty did during the Napoleonic wars, but these vanished when the crisis passed. To a large extent, the essence of strategy and tactics has always been to force the enemy to react to your own initiatives, putting the onus of intelligence gathering and evaluation on him and thereby slowing his reaction time. Surprise in war is achieved by doing the unexpected and the avoidance of unpleasant surprises is what military intelligence is all about. Wellington put it exactly: ‘All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that is what I called guessing what was at the other side of the hill.’The key word here is ‘guess’, something that less gifted or intuitive commanders hate with uniform passion. This fear of the unknown can produce paralysis, as in the case of McClellan during the American civil war, whose natural caution was fed by exaggerated enemy troop strength estimates from Pinkerton until at last, even when Lee's written plans and troop dispositions were found wrapped around some cigars in a field, and even when he had him backed up against the Potomac river, and even though he outnumbered him two to one, he was unable to deliver the coup de grâce. In war there can be too much intelligence of the cerebral as well as the informational kind, indeed Clausewitz argued that on the battlefield ‘most intelligence is false’, more likely to weaken a commander's will than to guide his actions.Actually seeing what is on the other side of the hill was not something commanders could hope to do before the advent of aerial reconnaissance, from which have followed satellite surveillance and battlefield drones sending back pictures in real time. Before that, it was the province of the light cavalry both to report on enemy movements and to ‘screen’ the activities of their own army. Frederick ‘the Great’ complained that the Austrian cavalry covered his ‘army like a cloud and let nobody pass’, a service that the French light cavalry performed brilliantly for Napoleon in his campaigns. He could more easily replace the men he lost in Russia in 1812 than the horses, and part of his declining performance as a general thereafter can be attributed to loss of the light-cavalry dominance he had enjoyed previously.Really accurate, detailed maps were rare until quite recently, but when available they provided an inestimable advantage to whatever side possessed them. Napoleon was always poring over large-scale plans with Berthier and the brilliant campaign waged by Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley was built upon the work of a local cartographer who enabled him literally to run rings around the larger armies sent to crush him. Again, the intelligence alone without a commander with the confidence and the will to use it would have been sterile. An eye for terrain has been the signature of great commanders from Alexander ‘the Great’ to Chief Gall of the victorious Sioux at Little Bighorn, and neither of them had maps.The modern age of intelligence began in 1914. Aerial imagery and radio interception, joined to greatly improved communications and the general staff system, produced more powerful means to collect, assess, and use intelligence. During August-October 1914, radio interception enabled the Germans to shatter the Russians at Tannenburg and the Masurian Lakes, but aerial reconnaissance revealing an open flank lay behind their defeat on the Marne. SIGINT twice gave the Royal Navy the opportunity to trap the German High Seas fleet, but on both occasions the execution by Adms Beatty (Dogger Bank) and Jellicoe (see Jutland) let them get away. At an even higher level, the British interception and decipherment of the ‘Zimmerman telegram’ in which Germany offered Mexico an offensive alliance against the USA may have helped to bring the Americans into the war, even if doubt as to its authenticity may make it a better illustration of information warfare.British intelligence successes during WW II including ULTRA and FORTITUDE, the highly elaborate deception plan that preceded the invasion of Normandy, are now well known, as is the cryptographic intelligence that enabled Nimitz to deploy his remaining assets to such telling effect at Midway. But here again one may seriously doubt that a lesser admiral would have dared to risk everything on one throw of the dice in this manner. It gave him a chance to take the great Yamamoto by surprise, but his confidence in his own judgement and in the US navy's men, equipment, and doctrine did the rest.In the final analysis, the one place not even the most modern and sophisticated intelligence systems can penetrate is the human mind. Sometimes, as in the case of the Falklands, so many better options are available to an opponent (blockade, hit and run, etc.) that when he does the only thing that delivers him into your hands, there is a perceptible pause while incredulity wrestles with the facts. Battalions of intelligence experts predicted that Saddam Hussein would not be so rash as to invade Kuwait when he could achieve his political and financial objectives by sabre-rattling, and they went on to predict that he would not be so stupid as to sit still while the Allied Gulf sledgehammer was built up. But he did both. The old saying ‘bullshit baffles brains’ might be modified to read ‘the human mind is unfathomable and for as long as it directs human affairs, there is no knowing exactly what is happening on the other side of the hill’.
— Hugh Bicheno
Military and strategic intelligence includes the collecting, processing, analyzing, evaluating, integrating, and interpreting openly or covertly acquired information about foreign countries and areas, regions of actual or potential military operations, and hostile or potentially hostile forces. Military intelligence has to be related to and significant to military operations and planning; strategic intelligence is used in formulating policy on national and international levels. The intelligence community in the United States consists of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the National Security Agency (NSA); the Defense Intelligence Agency; the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the National Reconnaissance Office; the intelligence agencies of the army, navy, and air force; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).The Department of the Treasury and the Department of Energy have limited intelligence capabilities and missions as well. Almost exclusive reliance on data collected by human sources (HUMINT) was superseded in importance in the last decades of the twentieth century by signals intelligence (SIGINT), communications intelligence (COMINT), electronics intelligence (ELINT), telemetry intelligence (TELINT), and photography (PHOTINT).
Although intelligence was used in all military conflicts in which the United States was engaged as early as the Revolutionary War, the first sustained intelligence organizations were the Office of Naval Intelligence, created in 1882, and the Military Information Division (MID), established by the U.S. Army in 1885.In 1888, service attachés were appointed to U.S. missions abroad to collect information on foreign armed forces. Nevertheless, during World War I, American forces had to rely mostly on military intelligence supplied by the British and the French.
The advent of communications technology such as the telegraph in the late 1830s, the telephone in the 1870s, and the radio in the 1920s shifted intelligence collection to COMINT and to code-breaking. A Cipher Bureau was created within MID in 1917 that became the nucleus of the American Black Chamber, or MI-8, which was created in 1918 and headed by Herbert O. Yardley. It worked for the army and state departments to break the diplomatic codes of several nations. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) coordinated most of the intelligence work; integration with data compiled by other services through the Joint Intelligence Committee, however, was not satisfactory. The National Security Act of 1947 created a centralized structure with the establishment of the National Security Council (NSC) and the CIA. The NSA is responsible mostly for COMINT, cryptology, and decoding. The work of the FBI, responsible for internal security, bears on military and strategic intelligence particularly in its dealings with foreign intelligence services, and dissident or terrorist movements operating within the United States.
Since World War I, and increasingly after World War II, technology has played a significant role in collecting data. SIGINT helped establish troop movements and naval operations during World War II. Relying on wireless communications, it did not, however, detect Japanese forces (who kept strict radio silence) advancing on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
In the 1960s, PHOTINT collected by overflights of U-2 spy planes, led to the detection of military activities and missile deployment in and by the Soviet Union and other nations, and confirmed the construction of missile launching sites on Cuba. Satellites later become a major source of PHOTINT, fulfilling the same functions better without endangering pilots or invading other nations' air space. With the advent of the Internet and mobile telephony, COMINT has become an increasingly important source for intelligence.
The volume of data to be handled by intelligence services increased enormously since the 1960s, threatening to overwhelm analysis. Raw intelligence, however acquired, must be collated, scrutinized, and processed; technically procured data may require translation, decryption, interpretation, and computer analysis. The National Intelligence Estimate is the highest form of finished national intelligence. It usually reflects the consensus of the intelligence community and often attempts to predict a potential adversary's course.
During most of the Cold War, intelligence focused on the Soviet Union. Since the 1990s it has shifted to international arms and drug trafficking, to transnational crime and concentrated on so-called "rogue state" (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea among them).After the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, international terrorism has received increased attention by the intelligence community.
Failures and Oversight
Intelligence estimates, however, have hardly been fool-proof. In 1962, the American intelligence community failed to predict the movement of Soviet missiles into Cuba. The CIA's large-scale involvement in Vietnam resulted in a major dispute in 1967 between the army command in Vietnam and CIA analysts about the number of enemy troops. Coupled with the CIA's pessimism about long-term prospects for military success, it undermined the army's claim to be winning the war. CIA appraisals did not alert government officials to the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979 or to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.In the 1980s, CIA Director William Casey was suspected of slanting CIA estimates for political reasons, especially with regard to the Soviet Union and Nicaragua. Given Casey's belief and that of President Ronald Reagan that the Soviet Union was bent on subjugating the world, it is not surprising that the CIA or the intelligence community rarely argued that Soviet capabilities were much lower than projected.
Oversight of U.S. intelligence began with the establishment of a permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976 and the creation the following year of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. These committees were established following the investigations of previous congressional committees into intelligence community abuses including domestic spying and illegal and unethical programs, such as kidnappings and assassinations of foreign leaders. Both committees reviewed budgets, programs, and covert activities. The Iran-Contra investigations of 1986 and 1987, which revealed an elaborate Reagan administration plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon and the diversion of funds from these transactions to support the Contras in Nicaragua, shattered whatever progress the intelligence community had made toward regaining the trust of Congress. The Reagan administration promised a new era of cooperation with Congress, and the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton attempted to maintain cooperative relations. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s also led to questions in Congress about the enormous cost of the U.S. intelligence effort. (Criticism that increased after revelations that optimal cooperation between the CIA and FBI might have prevented the attacks of 11 September 2001.)
Persian Gulf War
The administration of George H. W. Bush enjoyed over-whelming congressional support for the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and U.S. intelligence activities during that conflict. The Gulf War was the first major military conflict following the end of the Cold War, and U.S. intelligence, both strategic and tactical, played an important role. The primary focus of intelligence operations, particularly during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was to provide the theater and component commanders with an accurate picture of Iraqi capabilities and intentions. Extensive use was made of both strategic and tactical intelligence, with U.S. commanders having access to a vast array of impressive intelligence capabilities. These officers, nevertheless, were often frustrated and dissatisfied with the intelligence support they received. Operation Desert Storm tended to blur the distinction between tactical and strategic intelligence, and commanders often found the intelligence furnished to them too broad. Frequently, tactical units were sent finished estimates rather than detailed, tailored intelligence needed to plan operations. The overwhelming military victory against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm was attributable, nevertheless, in no small part to accurate intelligence provided both to national policymakers and command theater-level decision makers. The same can be said about the Kosovo Conflict in 1999, where American intelligence provided the vast majority of military information for the operations of NATO forces.
Because of the failure of the intelligence services to predict and prevent the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush, on 6 June 2002, proposed a permanent cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
Inter-Services Intelligence

The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (also Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI) is the largest intelligence service in Pakistan. It is one of the three main branches of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
The Inter-Services Intelligence was created as an independent unit in 1948 in order to strengthen the performance of Pakistan's Military Intelligence during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. It was formerly in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which handled intelligence sharing between the different branches of the military as well as external intelligence gathering. Its headquarters was initially located in Rawalpindi but later it was moved to Islamabad. The current director of the organization is Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, who took over in September 2008.


Objectives
The objectives of ISI are:[5]
Safeguard Pakistani interests and national security inside and outside the country.
Monitor the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on Pakistan's national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy and to collect foreign and domestic intelligence in such cases.
Co-ordination of intelligence functions of the three military services.
Keep vigilant surveillance over its cadre, foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society, diplomats of other countries accredited to Pakistan and Pakistani diplomats serving outside the country.
Organization
ISI's headquarters are located in Islamabad and currently the head of the ISI is called the Director General who has to be a serving Lieutenant General in the Pakistan Army Under the Director General, three Deputy Director Generals report directly to him and are in charge in three separate fields of the ISI which are Internal wing - dealing with counter-intelligence and political issues inside Pakistan, External wing - handling external issues, and Analysis and Foreign Relations wing.[6]
The general staff of the ISI mainly come from police, paramilitary forces and some specialized units from the Pakistan Army such as the SSG commandos While the total number has never been made public, experts estimate about 10,000 officers and staff members, which does not include informants and assets.[2]
Departments
Joint Intelligence X, coordinates all the other departments in the ISI.[2] Intelligence and information gathered from the other departments are sent to JIX which prepares and processes the information and from which prepares reports which are presented.
Joint Intelligence Bureau, responsible for gathering political intelligence.[2] It has three subsections, one divided entirely to operations against India.[2]
Joint Counterintelligence Bureau, responsible for surveillance of Pakistani diplomats abroad, along with intelligence operations in the Middle East, South Asia, China, Afghanistan and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.[2]
Joint Intelligence North, exclusively responsible for the Jammu and Kashmir region.[2]
Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous, responsible for espionage, including offensive intelligence operations, in other countries.[2]
Joint Signal Intelligence Bureau, operates intelligence collections along the India-Pakistan border.[2]
Joint Intelligence Technical[2]
In addition, there are also separate explosives and a chemical warfare sections.[2]
Directors
Brig Riaz Hussain.[7] 1959 - 1966
Maj Gen (then Brig) Mohammad Akbar Khan.[8] 1966 - 1971
Lt Gen (then Maj Gen) Ghulam Jilani Khan. 1971 - 1978
Lt Gen Muhammad Riaz. 1978 - 1980
Lt Gen Akhtar Abdur Rahman. 1980 - March 1987
Lt Gen Hamid Gul. March 1987 - May 1989
Lt Gen (retd) Shamsur Rahman Kallu. May 1989 - August 1990
Lt Gen Asad Durrani. August 1990 - March 1992
Lt Gen Javed Nasir. March 1992 - May 1993
Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi. May 1993 - 1995
Lt Gen (then Maj Gen) Nasim Rana. 1995 - October 1998
Lt Gen Ziauddin Butt . October 1998 - October 1999
Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed. October 1999 - October 2001
Lt Gen Ehsan ul Haq. October 2001 - October 2004
Lt Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. October 2004 - October 2007
Lt Gen Nadeem Taj. October 2007 - September 2008
Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha. September 2008 - Present


Operations
Functions
Collection of information: ISI obtains information critical to Indian strategic interests. Both overt and covert means are adopted.
Classification of information: Data is sifted through, classified as appropriate, and filed with the assistance of the computer network in ISI's headquarters in Islamabad.
Aggressive intelligence: The primary mission of ISI includes aggressive intelligence which comprises espionage, psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage. Counterintelligence: ISI has a dedicated section which spies against enemy's intelligence collection.
Methods
Diplomatic missions provide an ideal cover and ISI centers in a target country are generally located on the embassy premises.
Multinationals: ISI operatives find good covers in multinational organizations. Non-governmental organizations and cultural programmes are also popular screens to shield ISI activities.
Media: International media centers can easily absorb ISI operatives and provide freedom of movement.
Collaboration with other agencies: ISI maintains active collaboration with other secret services in various countries. Its contacts with Saudi Arabian Intelligence Services, Chinese Intelligence, the American CIA and British MI6 have been well-known.
Third Country Technique: ISI has been active in obtaining information and operating through third countries like Afghanistan, Nepal, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Turkey and China.
Operations History
Afghanistan
(1982) ISI, CIA and Mossad carried out a covert transfer of Soviet-made weapons and Lebanese weapons captured by the Israelis during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and their subsequent transfer to Pakistan and then into Afghanistan. All knowledge of this weapon transfer was kept secret and was only made public recently.
(1982-1997) ISI played a central role in the U.S.-backed guerrilla war to oust the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s. That Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed effort flooded Pakistan with weapons and with Afghan, Pakistani and Arab "mujahideen", who were motivated to fight as a united force protecting fellow Muslims in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. The CIA relied on the ISI to train fighters, distribute arms, and channel money. The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan mujahideen between 1983 and 1997, and dispatched them to Afghanistan. B. Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group, an Indian think-tank, claims that the Central Intelligence Agency through the ISI promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to turn the Soviet troops into heroin addicts and thus greatly reducing their fighting potential.[9]
(1986) Worrying that among the large influx of Afghan refugees that come into Pakistan due to the Soviet-Afghan war were members of KHAD (Afghan Intelligence), the ISI successfully convinced Mansoor Ahmed who was the Charge-de-Affairs of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad to turn his back on the Soviet backed Afghan government. He and his family were secretly escorted out of their residence and were given safe passage on a London bound British Airways flight in exchange for classified information in regard to Afghan agents in Pakistan. The Soviet and Afghan diplomats tried their best to find the family but were unsuccessful.[10]
(1994) The Taliban regime that the ISI supported after 1994 to suppress warlord fighting and in hopes of bringing stability to Afghanistan proved too rigid in its Islamic interpretations and too fond of the Al-Qaeda based on its soil. Despite receiving large sums of aid from Pakistan, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar is reported to have insulted a visiting delegation of Saudi Prince Sultan and an ISI general asking that the Taliban turn over bin Laden to Saudi Arabia.[11] Following the 9/11 attack on the United States by Al-Qaeda, Pakistan felt it necessary to cooperate with the US and the Northern Alliance
1996:After the taliban came in power, in cooperation with ISI the taliban executed the democratic elected president of Afghanistan, Dr. Najibullah.
2001 onwards American officials believe members of the Pakistani intelligence service are alerting militants to imminent American missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. There is also evidence that the ISI helped plan the July 7th bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. This conclusion is based on signals intelligence between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants.[1]
India
(1950s) The ISI's Covert Action Division was used in assisting the insurgents in India's North-East.[12]
(1960s) In the late 1960s assists the Sikh Home Rule Movement of London-based Charan Singh Panchi, which was subsequently transformed into the Khalistan Movement, headed by Jagjit Singh Chauhan in which many other members of the Sikh diaspora in Europe, United States and Canada joined and then demanded the separate country of Khalistan.[12]
(1965) The 1965 war in Kashmir provoked a major crisis in intelligence. When the war started, there was a complete collapse of the operations of all the intelligence agencies, after the commencement of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, was apparently unable to locate an Indian armored division due to its preoccupation with political affairs. Ayub Khan set up a committee headed by General Yahya Khan to examine the working of the agencies.[12]
(1969-1974) The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and ISI worked in tandem with the Nixon Administration in assisting the Khalistan movement in Punjab.[9]
(1971) The ISI faced its major defeat during the loss of war and formation of independent Bangladesh in 1971, the arrongance of the top leadeship of the ISI was reason for the loss of Pakisthan, although heavy with funds pumped in by the government they showd there ineptidude in dealing with ground situation leading to loss in Bangladesh..[10]
(1980) The PAF Field Intelligence Unit at their base in Karachi in July 1980 captured an Indian agent. He was interrogated and revealed that a large network of Indian spies were functioning in Karachi. The agent claimed that these spies, in addition to espionage, had also assassinated a few armed personnel. He also said the leader of the spy ring was being headed by the food and beverages manager at the Intercontinental Hotel in Karachi and a number of serving Air Force officers and ratings were on his payroll. The ISI decided to survey the manager to see who he was in contact with, but then President of Pakistan Zia-ul Haq superseded and wanted the manager and anyone else involved in the case arrested immediately. It was later proven that the manager was completely innocent.[10]
(1983) Ilam Din also known as Ilmo was an infamous Indian spy working from Pakistan. He had eluded being captured many times but on March 23 at 3 a.m., Ilmo and two other Indian spies were apprehended by Pakistani Rangers as they were illegally crossing into Pakistan from India. Their mission was to spy and report back on the new military equipment that Pakistan will be showing in their annual March 23 Pakistan day parade. Ilmo after being thoroughly interrogated was then forced by the ISI to send false information to his R&AW handlers in India. This process continued and many more Indian spies in Pakistan were flushed out, such as Roop Lal.[10]
(1984) ISI uncovered a secret deal in which naval base facilities were granted by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the USSR in Vizag and the Andaman & Nicobar Island and the alleged attachment of KGB advisers to the then Lieutenant General Sunderji who was the commander of Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984.[9]
(1984) ISI failed to perform a proper background check on the British company which supplied the Pakistan Army with its Arctic-weather gear. When Pakistan attempted to secure the top of the Siachen Glacier in 1984, it placed a large order for Arctic-weather gear with the same company that also supplied the Indian Army with its gear. Indians were easily alerted to the large Pakistani purchase and deduced that this large purchase could be used to equip troops to capture the glacier.[13]
(1985) A routine background check on various staff members working for the Indian embassy raised suspicions on an Indian woman who worked as a school teacher in an Indian School in Islamabad. Her enthusiastic and too friendly attitude gave her up. She was in reality an agent working for the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). ISI monitored her movements to a hotel in Islamabad where she rendezvoused with a local Pakistani man who worked as an nuclear engineer for Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. ISI then confronted her and were then able to turn her into a double agent spying on the Indian Embassy in Islamabad.[10]
Pakistan
(1980) ISI became aware of a plot to assassinate the President of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq and then launch a bloody coup to depose the current government and install an extreme Islamic government in its place. The attempted assassination and coup was to occur on March 23, 1980 during the annual March 23 Pakistan day parade. The masterminds behind the coup were high ranking Military and Intelligence officers and were led by Major General Tajammal Hussain Malik, his son, Captain Naveed and his nephew Major Riaz, a former Military Intelligence officer. ISI decided against arresting these men outright because they did not know how deep this conspiracy went and kept these men under strict surveillance. As the date of the annual parade approached, ISI was satisfied that it had identified the major players in this conspiracy and then arrested these men along with quite a few high ranking military officers.[10]
Libya
(1978) ISI decided to spy on the residence of Colonel Hussain Imam Mabruk who was a Military Attaché to the Embassy of Libya in Islamabad as he had made some inflammatory statements towards the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq. The spying paid off as he was seen talking with two Pakistani gentlemen who entered and left the compound suspiciously. The ISI monitored the two men and were later identified as Pakistani exiles that hated the current military regime and were Bhutto loyalists. They had received terrorist training in Libya and were ready to embark on a terrorist campaign in Pakistan to force the Army to step down from power. All members of the conspiracy were apprehended before any damage could be done.[10]
(1981) In 1981, a Libyan Security company called Al Murtaza Associates sent recruiters to Pakistan to entice former soldiers and servicemen for high paying security jobs in Libya. In reality, Libya was recruiting mercenaries to fight with Chad and Egypt as it had border disputes with both nations. Only later did the ISI become aware of the plot and the whole scheme was stopped, but nearly 2,700 Pakistanis had already left for those jobs.
(1979) After the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, the U.S. media outlets such as Newsweek and Time reported that CIA agents stationed in Tehran had obtained information in regard to the location of the hostages, in-house information from a Pakistani cook who used to work for the U.S. Embassy. ISI successfully gathered evidence, and intercepted communication documents and showed it to the Iranian Chief of J-2 which cleared the cook. The Iranian chief of intelligence said, "We know, the Big Satan is a big liar."[10]
France
(1979) ISI foiled an attempt by the French Ambassador to Pakistan, Le Gourrierce and his First Secretary, Jean Forlot who were on a surveillance mission to Kahuta Research Laboratories nuclear complex on June 26, 1979. Both were intercepted and their cameras and other sensitive equipment were confiscated. Intercepted documents later on showed that the two were recruited by the CIA.[10]
Soviet Union and Post-Soviet states
(1980) ISI had placed a mole in the Soviet Union's embassy in Islamabad. The mole reported that the Third Secretary in the Soviet Embassy was after information in regard to the Karakurum Highway and was obtaining it from a middle level employee, Mr. Ejaz, of the Northern Motor Transport Company. ISI contacted Mr. Ejaz who then confessed that a few months ago the Soviet diplomat approached him and threatened his family unless he divulged sensitive information in regard to the highway such as alignment of the road, location of bridges, the number of Chinese personnel working on the Highway, etc. The ISI instead of confronting the Soviet diplomat chose to feed him with false information. This continued until the Soviet diplomat was satisfied that Mr. Ejaz had been bled white of all the information and then dropped him as a source.[10]
(1991-1993) Major General Sultan Habib who was an operative of the ISI's Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous department successfully procured nuclear material while being posted as the Defense Attaché in the Pakistani Embassy in Moscow from 1991 to 1993 and concurrently obtaining other materials from Central Asian Republics, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia. After Moscow, Major General Habib then coordinated shipping of missiles from North Korea and the training of Pakistani experts in the missile production. These two acts greatly enhanced Pakistan's Nuclear weapons program and their missile delivery systems.[9]
United States
(1980s) ISI successfully intercepted two American private weapons dealers during the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s. One American diplomat (his name has not been de-classified) who lived in the F-7/4 sector of Islamabad was spotted by an ISI agent in a seedy part of Rawalpindi by his Car's diplomatic plates. He was bugged and trailed and was found to be in contact with various tribal groups supplying them with weapons for their fight with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Another was Eugene Clegg, a teacher in the American International School who also indulged in weapons trade. One American International School employee and under cover agent Mr. Naeem was arrested while waiting to clear shippment from Islamabad custom. All of them were put out of business.[10]
(2002) Some authors allege that ISI supported the 1999 release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who was subsequently convicted of the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.[14]
Controversies
Critics of the ISI say that it has become a state within a state, answerable neither to the leadership of the army, nor to the President or the Prime Minister.[15] The ISI has been deeply involved in domestic politics of Pakistan since the late 1950s. The 1990 elections for example were widely believed to have been rigged by the ISI in favor of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) party, a conglomerate of nine mainly rightist parties by the ISI under Lt. General Hameed Gul, to ensure the defeat of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the polls.[2] Gul has denied that the vote was rigged. In early 1990s ISI became involved in politics of Karachi, it launched operation against the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) seeing its growing terrorist activities in the province of Sindh. [16] ISI's Internal Political Division has been accused by various members of the Pakistan People's Party in assassinating Shahnawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers of Benazir Bhutto, through poisoning in the French Riviera in the middle of 1985 in an attempt to intimidate her into not returning to Pakistan for directing the movement against Zia's Military government, but no proof has been found implicating the ISI.[9]
The ISI was also involved in a massive corruption scandal the Mehran bank scandal dubbed "Mehrangate", in which top ISI and Army brass were given large sums of money by Yunus Habib (the owner of Mehran Bank) to deposit ISI's foreign exchange reserves in Mehran Bank.[17] This was against government policy, as such banking which involves government institutions can only be done through state-owned financial institutions and not private banks. When the new director of the ISI was appointed and then proceeded to withdraw the money from Mehran Bank and back into state-owned financial institutions, the money had been used up in financing Habib's "extracurricular" activities. On April 20, 1994, Habib was arrested and the scandal became public.
India, on basis of data collected on Islamic insurgents in Kashmir, has blamed the ISI for training, arming and giving logistics to the separatists who are fighting the Indian security forces in Kashmir.[9] Federation of American Scientists reports that the Inter-Service Intelligence, is the main supplier of funds and arms to the separatist groups.[2] The British Government had stated there is a 'clear link' between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and three major terrorist outfits[18] The Guardian newspaper had uncovered evidence that Kashmiri separatists were openly raising funds and training new recruits and that the ISI's Kashmir cell was instrumental in funding and controlling these outfits.[19] India also accused ISI of masterminding the 1993 Mumbai bombings, with backing from Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company.[9] Aside from Kashmir, India accuses the ISI of running training camps near the border of Bangladesh in late 1990s where India claims the ISI trains members of various separatist groups from the northeastern Indian states. The ISI has denied these accusations.
In January 1993, the United States placed Pakistan on the watch list of such countries which were suspected of sponsoring international terrorism. This decision was made in part because the current head of the ISI in 1993, Lt. Gen. Nasir, had become a stumbling block in American efforts to buy back hundreds of shoulder-fired, surface-to-air FIM-92 Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen and was assisting organizations such as Harkat ul-Ansar, which had been branded as a terrorist organization by the US. Once Nasir's tenure as ISI chief ended, the US removed Pakistan from the terrorism watch list.
After 9/11, ISI was supposedly purged of members who did not support President Pervez Musharraf's stance towards the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Newsreports in July 2008, however indicate that ISI may instead have chosen to merely suppress the activities of these individuals rather than remove them from office.
Some members of the American media and political establishment have questioned Pakistan's commitment in combating the Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants in border areas. In response, Pakistan has pointed to the deployment of nearly 80,000 troops in the border areas and the arrests of more than 700 Al Qaeda members carried out by supposedly ISI members, the most high profile ones including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as proof that the ISI was serious in its commitment to fighting the War on Terrorism.[20]

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