[Assam] Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency -NYT

[Ram Sarangapani]

It is astonishing that the Western press is still surprised by the fact that
the ISI can only spew militancy, but has little or no control of such groups
operating in Pakistan.
Unfortunately, our own home-grown varieties seem downright enamored with the
ISI and Bangladesh Intelligence (an oxymoron?).

--Ram
 ------------------------------
 January 15, 2008
 Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency By CARLOTTA
GALL<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/carlotta_gall/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
DAVID
ROHDE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/david_rohde/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>—
Pakistan's premier military intelligence agency has lost control of
some
of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and
is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior
intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their
former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups,
they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a
record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at
army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly
even Benazir Bhutto<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benazir_bhutto/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.


The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al
Qaeda<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org>'s
global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan's security, as well as
NATO<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/north_atlantic_treaty_organization/index.html?inline=nyt-org>efforts
to push back the
Taliban<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert
operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are
so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.

The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan's leading military intelligence
agency — Inter-Services
Intelligence<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/interservices_intelligence/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani
intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and
suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.

The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque
agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus
attention on the ISI's role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18
and a battle for control of the government looms:

¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people
close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate
Pakistan's last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption
cases against candidates who would back President Pervez
Musharraf<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/pervez_musharraf/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.


A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to
ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the
agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging
is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.

¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after
Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the
Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured
for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan.
After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said,
it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.

¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who
trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be
expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the
late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of
being sympathetic to the militants.

None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times
agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has
gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of
Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with
much of what they said about the agency's relationship with the militants.

So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had
supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had
been ordered to do so by political leaders.

The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr.
Musharraf's eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle
for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition
political parties.

The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the
opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that
Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her
killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the
attack.

While the author of Ms. Bhutto's death remains a mystery, the interviews
with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained
unable to control the militants it had fostered.

The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is
one that Pakistan is unable to contain. "We could not control them," said
one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "We indoctrinated them and told them, 'You will go to heaven.'
You cannot turn it around so suddenly."

The Context

After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side
in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan's longtime support
for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.

In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest
Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both
claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In
the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of
dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through
the ISI, vastly increasing the agency's size and power.

Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has
received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an
interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an
agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for
the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.

Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI's relationship with the
militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police
officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several
assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of
Pakistan's counterterrorism effort.

"It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000
people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that
I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda," Mr. Musharraf
said. "These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes."

But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr.
Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and
instead carried on a "double-game." They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with
American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while
holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.

In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious
conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a
crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.

"I think he would make a decision when a situation arises," said Hasan
Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants
openly confronting the government. "But before that he would not alienate
any side."

There is little dispute that Pakistan's crackdown on the militants has been
at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.

Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials,
including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined,
like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization
acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.

A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was
covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the
government, not the agency. "That's not an ISI decision," the official said.
"That's a government-of-Pakistan decision."

But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had
ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out,
however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they
said.

One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the
government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as
insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region
and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.

"We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability," the
former senior intelligence official said.

Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf's government
sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence
officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash
against the government from the militants.

When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some
cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still
protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.

Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down
militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them.
The result was confusion.

In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been
told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani
military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes
by C.I.A.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>-operated
drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes
exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.

The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal
areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur
in October 2006 killed scores of people.

Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red
Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less
than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic
law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants
have insisted that thousands did.

Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI
employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees,
killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani
analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their
longtime patrons.

The Militant

One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once
trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency's control, turned against
the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new
networks.

In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded
Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting
Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the
Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002.
The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to
such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.

Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants
carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001.
Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant
group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands
of troops on Pakistan's border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally
televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.

"We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in
terrorism inside the country or abroad," he said. Two weeks later, a
British-born member of Mr. Azhar's group, Ahmed Omar
Sheikh<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/ahmed_omar_sheikh/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
kidnapped Daniel
Pearl<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/daniel_pearl/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr.
Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported
Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.

After Mr. Pearl's killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000
people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000
militants who had been arrested were freed. "I never believed that
government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut," said Mr.
Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.

At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went "through the motions" when it came
to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American
invasion of Afghanistan, he said.

Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on
arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from
2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant
groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.

Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading
Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based
in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI
official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its
own.

That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to
American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan's tribal areas are host to a
lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained
Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.

The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and
Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in
Britain and Germany since 2005.

Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be
hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani
security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants
who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely
affiliated with Mr. Azhar's group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in
the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a
challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts
and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.

One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar's group,
Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside
bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence
official.

Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since
2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to
Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the
Pakistani government's intentions.

Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of
the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. "It
is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just
debriefing," the diplomat said.

"There are groups they know they have lost control of," the Western diplomat
added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked
the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, "It seems very difficult for
them to write them off."

The Agency Now

Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in
December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to
retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.

"For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these
organizations," a Western diplomat said. "I don't think we should expect
this man to become an elder statesman as we know it."

That puts Mr. Musharraf's successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez
Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal
position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf
to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he
thinks Mr. Musharraf's actions are significantly undermining the standing of
the Pakistani army.

Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests
coincide with General Kayani's, they said, while the new civilian prime
minister who emerges from February's elections is likely to have far less
authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the
agency of meddling in next month's election. The Western diplomat called the
ISI "the army's dirty bag of tricks."

Since Ms. Bhutto's assassination, members of her party have accused
government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand
in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.

American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against
Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired
officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.

But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that
government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms.
Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and
politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of
domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics
and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also
acknowledged.

Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need
to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan's military
rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate
elections and support militant groups.

"Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for
domestic political purposes," said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad
station chief. "That goes without saying."

Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain
unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The
ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.

Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure
their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army
continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly
battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.

"The question is, how do you change that?" asked one Western diplomat.
"Their tentacles are everywhere."


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