Pakistan: Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) - a collection

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Taken from a short obituary of Major General Ihtisham Zamir Jafri, who passed away in Rawalpindi on 04 May, 2015, by hamid Hussain (SWC contributor):

His most important assignment was when he was Deputy Director of Internal Security wing of Counter Intelligence (CI) section of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) from 2001 to 2003. In the aftermath of 11 September, 2001, relation between ISI and CIA was revived on an urgent basis. Ihtisham as DDG Internal Security played an important role in the capture of many high profile foreign terrorists. He was clear in his mind about the threat faced by Pakistan and at that time period ISI was operating in full gear against al-Qaeda. Robert Grenier was then CIA station chief of Islamabad. Deputy station chief was an old Afghan hand with firsthand knowledge of the region and he made a great team with Ihtisham. All the technical data collected by CIA from a variety of sources about specific targets was shared with ISI team in Islamabad. This was then passed on to the provincial heads of ISI in each province. Local intelligence teams further investigated initiated surveillance and then conducted raids to arrest culprits.

This good relationship that lasted for a short period was due to the fact that at that time United States was only interested in al-Qaeda and focus was only on foreign fighters. Any local fish caught in the net were simply handed over to Pakistanis to take care of them while foreigners were transported o Bagram air base with onward journey to Guantanamo Bay prison. American foot print in Afghanistan was limited to few dozen CIA paramilitary and Special Forces troops and Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba were somewhere in future. In his memoirs, Grenier didn’t use Ihtisham’s name due to personal security risk but now that Ihtisham has left the world, he doesn’t need to be anonymous. Grenier used a pseudo name of “Imran Zaman” using initials of I for Ihtesham and Z for Zamir.

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In this excerpt from The Great War of our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism, former CIA deputy director Mike Morell describes the relationship with Pakistan after the US raid on Osama Bin Laden.

Link:http://uk.businessinsider.com/mike-m...-laden-2015-5?

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A retired Indian intelligence officer has reviewed a new book on ISI by a German author: Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan by Hein G. Kiesslin.

Near the start:

... which takes an incisive look into the organisation’s functioning. In Kiessling’s book, the ISI appears as a motley group of fractious and rapacious operatives with shifting domestic and foreign loyalties, whose motto swings between bluster, blackmail, acquiescence and perfidy. The ISI itself will not claim that Kiessling is a hostile writer. He lived in Quetta and Islamabad for 13 years from 1989 to 2002. For the book, Kiessling interviewed most former ISI chiefs..

Link to the review:http://thewire.in/80819/delving-into...gs-of-the-isi/

Being published by Hurst (UK) it is on:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Faith-Unity...SI+of+Pakistan

The publishers have two glowing reviews, one by Bruce Reidel (who has been cited here before IIRC):http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/...ty-discipline/

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The sub-title of a book review in 'The Guardian':

This sequel to Ghost Wars might well become the definitive account of the CIA and America’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Here is a sample passage:

Directorate S, from which the book gets its title, lies buried deep in the bureaucracy of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), Pakistan’s spy agency. Ensconced thus, the directorate works to “enlarge Pakistan’s sphere of influence in Afghanistan”. It goes about this task, Coll explains, by supplying, arming, training and generally seeking to legitimise the Taliban, the AK-47 toting terrorists who took over Afghanistan in 1992, stringing up decapitated corpses in town squares and shoving women into the confines of their homes. Nobody paid much attention then, and perhaps never would have, had the Taliban not become host to Osama bin Laden.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...e-coll-review?

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There are two reviews of a new book on the Indian-Pakistani intelligence relationship and wider issues on the Pakistani Military thread. See:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...777#post211777

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A devastating IMHO review of Steve Coll's book (see Post 37) by Edward Luttwak, although it's real focus is the CIA (the other half of the relationship). There several illustrations why:

abysmal “tradecraft”...Raymond Davis had a bank statement listing the CIA as his employer in his car when he was arrested by local police in Lahore on January 27, 2011....the linguistic incompetence of almost all CIA analysts that really matters – an incompetence that goes right to the top....secretaries of state and generals seem to have believed that the cultures of Afghanistan are flexible, fluid and malleable..

He ends with:

ntelligence is an ancillary function, so it may be that the CIA’s systemic shortcomings are irrelevant to the preordained outcome in Afghanistan. This does not diminish the virtues of Steve Coll’s excellent book – a rem#arkable feat of extended reportage soundly constructed out of telling details and a great number of effective character portraits.

Link:https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/p...-coll-luttwak/

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Our occasional contributor Hamid Hussain has provided this review.

Steve Coll’s new book is an excellent account of events of the last two decades in Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Steve has all the credentials to embark on this project. He is one of the best and well-informed journalists and his previous book ‘Ghost Wars’ is the most authentic work of the history of Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) war in Afghanistan in 1980s. For his new book, he has used important American sources from different departments of the US government who engaged with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has also used some Afghan and few Pakistani sources, but it is mainly an American perspective of the events. There is real need for work on the Pakistani and Afghan perspective which would be a far more difficult task.
The book is about events in the Af-Pak region and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) gets a lot of attention. Relations between the CIA and ISI are not black and white. In the aftermath of September 11, the majority of ISI officers were leery about too close cooperation with US and especially with the CIA. On the other hand, especially in early phase of 2001-2003, a small cadre of ISI officers viewed foreign fighters as serious threat to Pakistan’s security and wanted to use this opportunity of close cooperation with the CIA to neutralize this threat. In this period of convergence of interest the sole focus was al Qaeda, there was close cooperation and certain degree of trust between the ground operatives of both agencies. In addition to the CIA Islamabad station there were satellite facilities in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar which housed several dozen personnel from different US intelligence agencies especially technical intelligence staff. The CIA used its technical superiority in surveillance, while ISI used its human sources to dismantle al Qaeda in the region.
There were many thoughtful ISI officers who provided analysis of possible scenarios for US intervention in Afghanistan at a time when everyone was raising Champaign glasses for a victory toast. Some CIA officers agreed with this ISI point of view especially regarding the Pashtun question of Afghanistan. In the winter of 2001, CIA station chief in Islamabad Robert Grenier saw the American dilemma better than many of his colleagues. He agreed with military action but understood Pakistan’s position.
CIA Director George Tenet’s Chief of Staff John Brennan agreed with some of Grenier’s analysis. However, they were in minority and events unfolded differently. There were others like former Islamabad station chief Milton Bearden who thought that given enough time, the Taliban might give up Bin Laden thus avoiding a military mission, however there were no customers in Washington who were willing to buy this item.
Predictably, the CIA exaggerated, while ISI downplayed the role of ISI in Afghanistan and the truth is somewhere in the middle. ISI was unclear about the US mission in Afghanistan as well as feeling hurt by the CIA’s last mission and its fallout was not enthusiastic to jump on American wagon in haste. The Director General of Analysis (DG-A) at ISI then Major General Javed Alam (later Lieutenant General) admitted that less than a dozen ISI officers were working in Afghanistan prior to American invasion. He also disclosed that most of the Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan to defend the collapsing Taliban regime in the winter of 2001 were from Southern Punjab. He wryly commented that most of them died and ‘they got their just deserts’.
Later, mistrust between Pakistan and US widened and involved all the agencies. ISI had some influence in Afghanistan and some of its policies contributed to the instability in that country. However, to blame ISI for all American follies in Afghanistan is incorrect and unfair. ISI is a huge bureaucracy with a very mixed past. It is not a monolithic entity and there is wide range of opinion amongst senior and mid-level officers. The aura of playing in the ‘big league’ gives the agency a clout in internal and external policies but it comes with a price that it is also blamed for sins of others.
Steve provides details of the genuine difference of opinion on policy matters as well as turf wars of US government agencies. This provides a window into the US decision making process and the impact of institutional and personal friction on policies on the ground. We tend to generalize government policies for easy comprehension and ignore these subtle changes. Steve provides this perspective as far as the US decision making process is concerned. There is no serious attempt to understand the similar case of Pakistan. In my own work on the Pakistan army, I found similar challenges of Pakistani decision makers. The Army brass was reluctant to share details with civilian governments, especially when Asif Ali Zardari was President. In the army, there was friction between officers involved in operations against militants and intelligence officers. Professionally competent and confident officers took charge of the operations and realized that some ISI policies were detrimental to ongoing operations. These officers relied less on ISI and kept intelligence officers at arm’s length. On the other hand, officers who were less confident relied more on ISI. I found the former lot much more successful than the later.
There is a small error in caption of a 2005 picture about Pakistan on first page of pictures. Caption wrongly identifies two Pakistani army officers flanking Colonel David Smith as Lieutenant General Tariq Majid and Major General Asif Akhtar. The officers are then Lieutenant General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Lieutenant General Muhammad Yusuf.
This book should be on the reading list of anyone interested in the Af-Pak region. It is summary of major events of the last two decades that affected Pakistan and Afghanistan and Steve takes us on this journey as an informed guide. It covers events as seen from the tall citadels of power of Washington to individuals who do the “heavy lifting like mules in a big caravan.” For a thoughtful reader, it is a sober and humbling reading of limits of power.