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Pakistan Struggles Against Militants

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By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE

January 15, 2008 - NY Times

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — 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.

 

Islamic militants surrendered in July after Pakistani

authorities stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

Government officials reported more than 100 deaths;

militants insisted that thousands had been killed.

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.

 

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom

now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad,

presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as

well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban 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, 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.

 

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.

 

Complete story at :

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/asia/15isi.html?ex=1358139600 & en=89f6d0f\

8b3eba989 & ei=5124 & partner=digg & exprod=digg

 

 

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