ISI praised for ‘defending national interest’
** Canadian journalist says ISI was Third World’s most efficient, professional intelligence agency before Musharraf took over as military dictator
By Khalid Hasan*
WASHINGTON: As resistance to the United States-led occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration is venting its anger against the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), according to a commentary published here.
Eric Margolis, a Canadian journalist who has visited the region several times, writes in Huffington Post that Bush administration officials even believe that the Inter-Services Intelligence may even be hiding Osama Bin Laden. He charges the administration with leaking to the New York Times, which has been acting as a “megaphone for the administration,” that the CIA had electronic intercepts proving the ISI was behind the recent bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul.
Margolis recalls that as one of the first western journalists invited into ISI headquarters in 1986. ISI’s then director, Lt General Akhtar Rahman, personally briefed him on Pakistan’s secret role in fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ISI provided communications, logistics, training, heavy weapons, and direction in the Afghan War. ISI was primarily responsible for the victory over the Soviets, which hastened the collapse of the USSR. At war’s end, Gen Akhtar and Gen Ziaul Haq, both died in a sabotaged C-130 transport aircraft. “Unfortunately, most Pakistanis blame the United States for this assassination,” he adds.
ISI most professional: Margolis writes that on his subsequent trips to Pakistan he was routinely briefed by succeeding ISI chiefs. He maintains that before Gen Pervez Musharraf took over as military dictator, the ISI was the Third World’s most efficient, professional intelligence agency. “It still defends Pakistan against internal and external subversion by India’s powerful spy agency, RAW, and by Iran. ISI works closely with CIA and the Pentagon and was primarily responsible for the rapid ouster of Taliban from power in 2003. But ISI also must serve Pakistan’s interests, which are often not identical to Washington’s, and sometimes in conflict,” according to Margolis.
He points out that Washington has been forcing Pakistan’s government, military and intelligence services through secret payments and threats of war into policies that are bitterly opposed by 90 percent of Pakistan’s people.
According to Margolis, since 2001, ISI directors have all been pre-approved by Washington.
All senior ISI veterans deemed “Islamist” or too nationalistic by Washington were purged at Washington’s demand, leaving ISI’s upper ranks top-heavy with too many yes-men and paper-passers. Even so, there is strong opposition inside the ISI to Washington’s “bribing and arm-twisting the subservient Musharraf dictatorship into waging war against fellow Pakistanis and gravely damaging Pakistan’s national interests.”
He emphasises that the ISI’s primary duty is defending Pakistan, not promote US interests. Pashtun tribesmen on the border sympathising with their fellow Taliban Pashtun in Afghanistan are Pakistanis. Many, like Jalaluddin Haqqani, are old US allies and “freedom fighters” from the 1980s. When the US and its western allies finally abandon Afghanistan, as they will inevitably do one day, Pakistan must go on living with its rambunctious tribals.
Margolis argues that violence and uprisings in the Tribal Areas are not caused by “terrorism”, but result from the US-led occupation of Afghanistan and Washington’s forcing the Musharraf regime to attack its own people. The ISI is trying to restrain pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen while dealing with growing US attacks into Pakistan that threaten a wider war. India has an army of agents in Afghanistan and is arming, backing and financing the Karzai regime in Kabul in hopes of turning Afghanistan into a protectorate.
Pakistan’s historic strategic interests in Afghanistan have been undermined by the US occupation. Now, the US, Canada and India are trying to eliminate Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. The ISI, Margolis argues, has every right to warn Pakistani citizens of impending US air attacks that kill large numbers of civilians. The agency also wants to prevent the resurgence of the Pakhtunistan demand. “Washington’s bull-in-a-china shop behaviour pays no heeds to these realities. Instead, Washington demonises faithful old allies ISI and Pakistan while supporting Afghanistan’s Communists and drug dealers, and allowing India to stir the Afghan pot, all for the sake of new energy pipelines,” he concludes.
