Daily Times

The intelligence community of Pakistan faces numerous challenges, including a widespread lack of civilian support, confidence, sectarian affiliations, the war in Waziristan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan. The greatest challenge that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faces is on the national security front. In most parts of the country, intelligence information collection faces numerous difficulties as the Taliban and other militant groups have become a major threat. This is one of the greatest challenges for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and civilian intelligence agencies. There are numerous stories of intelligence agency successes and failures in these regions as the ISI faces a modern intelligence war. In fact, the wrongly designed policies of successive government in Pakistan badly affected the professional abilities of the ISI and civilian agencies as they were used against each other for political purposes.

From the 1980s, the real journey of the ISI, Intelligence Bureau (IB), Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Military Intelligence (MI) began when they tightened their belts to challenge the KGB and other European intelligence networks in Afghanistan. The ISI, IB and the MI trained and recruited Afghan, Kashmiri and dozens of other extremist and radicalised organisations from across the world. In 1989, they forced the Soviet military machine to withdraw from Afghanistan. The credit goes to ISI, MI6 and the CIA. During the Zia military regime, the process of radicalisation began in military barracks, and a major change occurred when General Ziaul Haq instructed military and intelligence units to take on combatant mullahs with them to the frontline. Soldiers and officers were also required to attend Tablighi Jamaat classes. The purpose was to indoctrinate young officers. Many of these young officers later took control of higher sensitive positions and introduced sectarian Islam into their ranks. In 1992, the decline of Pakistani intelligence agencies began when the military establishment decided to directly intervene in the Afghan civil war by providing military and financial support to specific groups. This caused deep loathing of Pakistan among Afghans. The intelligence regime of the country also divided on ethnic and sectarian bases. After the fall of Dr Najibullah’s regime in 1992, a General from the Tablighi Jamaat became the ISI’s chief. He adopted an anti-Wahabi and anti-Deobandi policy in Afghanistan. He nominated Sabghatullah Mujaddidi — a Barelvi Pir — as President of Afghanistan for a brief two months. In 1994 the Taliban emerged with their transmogrified version of religion, and later on defeated the Barelvis in the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. In 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul and established an Emirati Islami government (Deobandi) in Afghanistan. During the Taliban regime, Pakistan’s intelligence infrastructure also became radicalised, ethnicised and sectarianised. In another u-turn, in 2001, the army and intelligence agencies supported the CIA and Pentagon, and declared war against their Deobandi colleagues. In their third u-turn, from 2001 to 2014, the army and ISI again started supporting Barelvi groups to de-radicalise the intelligence and military command of the country.

Unfortunately, all these contradictory policies of civilian and military governments left negative effects on Pakistani society. Social, political and religious institutions divided and ethnic and sectarian violence ruined society. The Taliban declared jihad against the Pakistan army in FATA and Waziristan regions and still continue to ruin the lives of innocent civilians. The ISI and MI have so often proved that they are stronger than the country’s parliament; they can make parliament, and they can dissolve it. The case of Mr Nawaz Sharif is not so different from the case of former President Asif Zardari, who received serious threats from the country’s secret agencies. He was warned that an ambulance was ready to shift him to hospital. A decade-long war among civilian and military intelligence agencies has deeply impacted their professional intelligence mechanism. For example, the IB never liked receiving instructions from the ISI and military intelligence agencies. From 1977 to 1999, ISI and MI confiscated the secret record of the federal and provincial offices of the IB and police Special Branches (SB) time and again. This civilian and military intelligence war caused great anger in the police and other law enforcement agencies. In a nine-page statement before the Supreme Court, former Intelligence Bureau chief Masud Sharif Khattak revealed that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto extensively increased the budget of the IB, because the ISI was not willing to report to the Prime Minister.

There is an impression in the Pakistani media that ISI has become a state within a state, answerable neither to the military establishment, nor the civilian government. Consequently, there is no real check and balance to oversee the money circulating machine that further complicates the democratic process in the country. Newspapers in the country recently revealed that the 33 intelligence agencies have 600,000 personnel, and there are still 56,000 more vacancies available. The issue of reform has never been touched by civilian governments as they have often been dismissed by military governments. If the government wants to reform the present intelligence infrastructure, it needs the support of the international community to pressure military leaders for deep reforms. Any attempt to reform needs international support. The present National Security Policy can be considered an attempt to counter terrorism, Talibanisation and sectarianism inside the country that has ruined the lives of thousands of Pakistanis over the last few decades.

The writer is the author of Whose Army? He can be reached at, zai.musakhan222@gmail.com.