PAKISTAN'S SECRET GODFATHERS

Intelligence agencies. They are the watchers in the shadows, predators thirsty for information. They infiltrate every group, organization or operation that exists and effortlessly help their governments carry out bloodless (or are they?) coups d’état. Espionage, propaganda, cryptanalysis, sabotage; you name it and they’re behind it. They run a tight modus operandi where the strictest levels of hierarchy are maintained. But their biggest weapons are secrecy and stealth, which are of paramount importance and defection, particularly, leads to unpleasant consequences, something akin to the defector being hanged, drawn and quartered (figuratively).

I now talk particularly of the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence or, as it is commonly known, the ISI. In the minds of many, this “borderless web of killers” has almost functioned as a shadow government, one that has used its ties to drug dealers and Islamic extremists to stir up trouble, not only in surrounding countries, but also within Pakistan itself. Nestling within the bosom of the Pakistani Army, the ISI sees no substantive differences between internal and external affairs and inserts its presence whenever it feels a threat to national security. The ISI has done what the Pakistani Army could never have dreamed of achieving. It has captured the very vitals of the nation, its tentacles spreading like a noxious gas across every nook and cranny. It's agents infiltrate the ranks of many, eavesdropping, and catching hold of dissident voices, influencing them to defect. These activities are usually clandestine and conducted in absolute secrecy as the explosive information obtained is usually through illegal means. But well, the good things in life are usually illegal, immoral or fattening!

Weakening the enemy is just as important as strengthening your own ranks. The ISI followed this maxim to perfection in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. The United States’ CIA and the ISI worked in tandem with the Nixon administration to fuel the Khalistan Movement in Punjab. This covert collaboration was also directed at discrediting Mrs. Indira Gandhi's international stature by sowing the seeds of doubt and spreading disinformation about alleged naval base facilities granted by her to the USSR.  This collaboration petered out after her assassination in October,1984.

The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA.  A number of officers from the ISI received training in the US to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers.  Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.

By now you may have gathered that the ISI is definitely not an organization to be trifled with. It can trigger blasts in remote places, fuel communal riots in peaceful cities and annihilate public places in a single blast. There is not a city in the country which doesn't have either an active or a sleeper agent of the ISI. This agent can be your friendly next door neighbour or the local tailor or a businessman. They have been brainwashed or inculcated into the fold by the ISI either by financial allurement or in the name of religion. Whatever might be the provocation, the ISI agents are motivated enough to carry out the orders of their masters in Islamabad.  They are known as Pakistan’s Secret Godfathers for a reason after all.