Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has been a whipping boy of all and sundry from Washington to Islamabad. But then this is nothing new. If one goes by all the allegations made by local politicians, journalists and foreign governments, it looks like a very efficient omni-present and omni-potent organisation.
Intelligence agencies in many countries are blamed by the democrats and human rights activists. One of the major issue is that in many countries these agencies, if encouraged and nourished over a period by the governments, start working beyond their mandate. Quite often they forget that they are there to serve the policy objectives of the sitting government and not their own agenda.
At present the problem in Pakistan is that this agency is being blamed for covertly supporting the Taliban who are fighting in Afghanistan and other militants who are bleeding India.
The basic question is: are their activities in conflict with the overall geo-strategic security policy of the Pakistan government? Is their support to the Jihadi organisations and Taliban against the real defence policy of Pakistan? Mind you, I am not talking about the stated foreign policy which says that we do not want to interfere in the affairs of our neighbours. Because all this is "stated" by the foreign office and political leaders. The fact is they are not in command when it comes to policy about India, US, Iran and Afghanistan. They are only in charge of our relations with the Maltas and Maldives of the world.
Muslims minority ruled India before the British walked out, when it was the turn of the majority to rule under a democratic dispensation. The rulers of the new state have been feeling insecure right from the first day. Their obsession to build a secure state has strengthened security forces.
Right from the first war with India on Kashmir we have relied on the flashcard of tribal Pathans. Since then the state has been encouraging such militant forces in Pakistan to interfere in our neighbour's affairs. Today thanks to the eighties' Afghan war and American support the militants network has grown to the extent that it is a Herculean task to rein them.
Pakistan's establishment no matter what they say will not cut off its links with the Afghan and local Taliban because they feel that Indians are surrounding them from the north-western front also. The fact is that the Afghanistan government is mainly headed by a pro-India camp. Even President Karzai, according to a recent book of Ahmed Rashid "Descent in Chaos", feels that ISI backed the Taliban when his father was killed in Quetta. Then he was asked to leave Pakistan by ISI on the request of Mullah Omar just a few days before 9/11. Most of the Northern Alliance leadership of Afghanistan took asylum in India. Karzai went to college there
and graduated in politics. For the Pakistani establishment which believes in building relations with power lobbies in other countries, Taliban are better allies. After all the Pushtoons are 42% of the Afghanistan population. All this leaves little choice with short-sighted policy makers but to back them and feel good that they are countering the Indian influence.
Now when the political government wants to change the foreign policy there is bound to be a struggle between the military establishment and ISI on the one hand and the political leadership. Interestingly the media is siding with the former.
The calling of the time is that we change our policy and declare that we shall not be interfering in Indian and Afghanistan affairs. This declaration has to be backed by action and should lead to all covert activities. But on the other hand India and US should also ensure that their agencies will also stop all covert activities in Pakistan. The agreement should be that we will solve all our issues on the table and not allow our intelligence agencies to play their games.
This is no easy talk and may take time. The American government should know it better where it took them ages to control 'The Invisible government.' I was referred to this book interestingly by Admiral Muzaffar, who used to be in active politics in the seventies. I remember he said to understand Pakistani politics one should understand the role played by its major intelligence agency.
"The Invisible Government" was written by a Washington journalist David Wise in 1964. CIA director John McCone called in Wise and co-author Thomas Ross to demand deletions on the basis of galleys the CIA had secretly obtained. When that didn't work, the CIA formed a special group to deal with the book and tried to secure bad reviews, even though the CIA's legal counsel had found the book "uncannily accurate."
The book's "thesis" is that the U.S. intelligence community, with the CIA at its heart, has grown so big and powerful that it threatens the democracy it was designed to defend. The CIA, they say, conducts its own clandestine foreign policy, and even the President - has been unable to control it. The State Department is powerless to exert policy direction because its ambassadors are kept uninformed and are habitually by-passed by CIA operatives. The Congress has abdicated its legislative role and votes huge secret funds without adequate knowledge of how the money is spent."
Does it sound familiar? The only difference is that Americans have since then tried to tame this dragon by making it accountable to congress and senate committees. Our parliamentarians are kept away from intelligence agencies unless they have to be pressurised to tow the establishment line.
(ayazbabar@gmail.com)