A Vision of United India

Chapter 6

The Intelligence Agencies

Besides the army's institutional role in the government and in the structure of national political life, in the past two decades the intelligence services have become a major actor on the national political scene. Military Intelligence - (MI), and the Inter-Services Intelligence --(ISI), the two major services, are widely believed to have had a major hand in shaping the candidates and choices available to the voters in elections at least since General Zia's parliamentary elections in 1985. They are reliably reported to be active in today's political scene, notably by encouraging politicians to join the party that appears to be preferred by President Musharraf through manipulation of the government's anti-corruption investigations. In this role, the intelligence services are as much the tool of the individual political leader as of the army itself. This is the most undemocratic of the army's interventions in politics; it is also the role that will be hardest to weed out, assuming that a future leader wishes to do so.

The ISI in India

The ISI has become a state within a state, answerable neither to the leadership of the army, nor to the President or the Prime Minister. The result is that there has been no real supervision of the ISI, and corruption, narcotics, and big money have all come into play, further complicating the political scenario. Drug money is used by ISI to finance not only the Afghanistan war, but also the proxy war against India in Punjab and Kashmir. The ISI has the task of collection of foreign and domestic intelligence; co-ordination of intelligence functions of the three military services; surveillance over its cadre, foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society, diplomats of other countries accredited to Pakistan and Pakistani diplomats serving outside the country; the interception and monitoring of communications; and the conduct of covert offensive operations. The ISI has always been the executing arm of Pakistan's Kashmir obsession. As early as 1964, ISI-trained militants sneaked into the Gulmarg sector of Kashmir but their activities came to a standstill due to the 1965 Indo-Pak war. It was in 1988 that Pakistan dictator Gen Zia-ul Haq gave ISI its present sinister status. Operation Topac, blueprint of Pakistan's proxy war with India over J&K, to be executed by the ISI, catapulted the organisation to notoriety. Under Topac, ISI used combat methods, which the Kashmiri mind could grasp, i.e., co-ordinated use of moral and physical means other than military operations. In the first phase, local Kashmiri boys, especially those owing allegiance to Muslim United Front, were sent to camps in Pakistan for training. The ISI also established a hub for Islamic militants called Markaz Dwar with its spiritual leaders coming from Algeria, Sudan and Egypt and set up training camps in Pak-occupied Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), comprising Kashmiri boys, was the first organisation to be trained in these camps. Phase II of Operation Topac began in 1992 with the ISI training Afghans. The aim: to spread the Kashmiri cause and rally support from the Islamic world. In 1993, Indian security forces caught Mohammad Fazal-al-Haji, member of Palestine-based PFLF, in south Kashmir. The ISI soon realised that unless it had Pak-based groups operating in the Valley, it would not be in full control. Therefore, with Jamait-e-Islami's help, the Hizbul Mujahideen started taking centre stage along with Harkat-ul-Ansar, which the ISI created by merging Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islam and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. To keep a tight control on the jihadis, these groups were put together under the United Jihad Council led by the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen leader. In the early nineties, there were over 40 militant outfits operating in the Valley. At present, nine are operational. They are all Pakistan based and include Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen

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(Harkat-ul-Ansar's avatar), Jais-e-Mohammed, Al-Badr and Hizbul-Mujahideen. The ISI provides sophisticated weaponry, including automatic grenades launchers, improvised timing devices and state-of-the-art communication gadgets, including frequency checking devices, for detecting military operations (most are of NATO/OS origin capable of frequency hopping and selective broadcast.) The other weapons continue to be the tested AK-47 and AK-56 with improved firepower. With a decrease in local militants, the ISI strategy has been of suicide attacks by Fidayeen. In the past 16 months, Lashkar-e-Toiba has carried out 30 such attacks, including the ones on the 15 Corps Headquarters in Srinagar. Interestingly, several mercenaries bred in the west, especially England, are being brought in. Fund-raisers by organisations like the World Kashmir Freedom Movement and Mercy International, backed by the Jamait-e-Islami and controlled by the ISI, are collecting huge amounts in the name of the dead and dying in Kashmir. However, most of it goes to Mujahideen fighting in Kashmir.

Pakistan's internal state and jihad

Let us now look at the internal state of Pakistan and the adoption of jihad as one of the main planks of its State and foreign policy. Internally, Pakistan is facing rebellion from the different States. Sindh in particular, is demanding separation from Pakistan and complete freedom. One of the leading figures in this movement is Altaf Hussain. In London recently, Altaf Hussain spurned Partition and invited Baluch, Pashtoon and other Sindhi leaders to join him and ask for azadi or total freedom. He said what he had been hinting at for months: the creation of Pakistan was a mistake. Addressing a meeting at Acton Town Hall in London last week, Hussain departed from his usual Urdu to declare in slow, measured English. "The division of the Indian subcontinent was the biggest blunder in the history of mankind." Then in Urdu: "What did I say?" Switching over to English, he then repeated his line on Partition all over again. Hussain spoke from "a stage that had a lot of weight," points out an MQM leader. The Mohajirs were later joined by Baluch, Pashtoon and Sindhi leaders who have formed the PONM (Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement). But they call it Poonam. And for Gen Musharraf's regime it's turning into a dark night. "I don't believe that Pakistan can be saved," PONM leader Sardar Ataullah Mengal said at the meeting. The speeches were accompanied by slogans from the audience. Le ke rahenge azadi, they thundered, a throwback to the '40s cry: Le ke rahenge Pakistan. "You talk of azadi. That doesn't mean breaking a nation; if we get our rights within Pakistan, that too is azadi, and we'll have that at any cost. But then if a greater azadi comes, then you (the military rulers) will be responsible," added Mengal who today is among the most influential Baluch leaders; and whose son Naseer was once chief minister of Baluchistan. Fifty-three years after independence, Baluchis, Pashtoons, Seraikis and Sindhis are not free, Mengal declared. "We're one kind of people, our rulers are another kind." Punjabis, that is. Indeed, it is Pakistan's ruling Punjabis who have forced the rest together in a rebellious opposition. "When it comes to enjoyment it's you; when you need to test missiles and nukes, it is us," Mengal said. The bitterness seems to have wide backing among the Baluchis whose assembly had condemned the nuclear test in their state. This bitterness was also reflected in the speech of Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who heads the Pashtoon Khwa Milli Awami Party in Baluchistan. "Pakistan is heading towards destruction because of its colonial ways," he said. "It just can't go on like this. We Pathans did not surrender to the British; we certainly won't surrender to the ISI. You can't make slaves of us," he said. Ditto Sindh. "We've no rights any more," says

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Syed Imdad Shah, son of the late G.M. Syed, who was in detention for about 30 years. "Our land is occupied, our waters taken, the provincial assembly is now just a debating society." The Sindhi leader said the Sindhis would oppose the Islamisation of Pakistan. "We have always been a secular people, and we want a secular state," he said. Altaf, the maverick MQM leader, went on to say that the "Titanic of the Islamic ummah" was sinking. "The Titanic didn't sink suddenly. It sank slowly. They shot off distress flares. But nobody came. And this isn't a film, it's a fact," he said. The only way Pakistan could save itself, he said, was through a change in its attitude towards the non-Punjabis: "We didn't want to hear the truth in '71, and Pakistan broke. If you treat us like slaves, a time will come when we'll get independence and you'll be without slaves." The leaders even took on Qaid-e-Azam, M.A. Jinnah. The Mohajirs are not carving out a separate Jinnahpur within Sindh because - and Hussain almost shouted this out - "if we break the country, we will never name it after Jinnah". Hussain now says his next step will be to write a letter to Indian Muslims: "I will inform them about what is happening to us in Pakistan". Indeed, what was on display was a non-Punjabi, if not anti-Punjabi, front within Pakistan. The joint resolution adopted at the meeting spoke of Pakistan as a 'multinational entity' and said that "the majority of the Muslim population of Pakistan, divorced itself from Jinnah's Pakistan, created by the Muslims of the subcontinent; thereby the very premise of the existence of the remaining part of Pakistan was lost in '71." The resolution describes the three evils of Pakistan as the army, bureaucracy and the intelligence agencies, "all hailing from Punjab, who were responsible for the dismemberment of the country.... They invaded the Baluch, the Pashtoons, the Sindhis and finally they assaulted the descendants of the creators of Pakistan, that is, the Mohajirs." The resolution also says that Pakistan's smaller nations "have come to the conclusion that, in the existing set-up, they can't attain their fundamental rights." The underlying reasons for this anger are Pakistan's economic imbalances. The Sindhis point out that their state contributes 60 per cent of the national income but gets only six per cent from the national budget, while Mengal says that non-Punjabi provinces contribute 90 per cent to Pakistan's income but get little in return. "Even a beggar from Baluchistan can't enter Punjab as he can't beg in their language," he scoffs. The smaller provinces, the thinking goes, feel colonized and believe they are actually paying to be colonised. While politicians of the Indian subcontinent have a penchant for fiery speeches and hyperbole, what Acton Town Hall witnessed was more than just rhetoric. For, Hussain is still the leader of about 20 million Mohajirs in Pakistan. And while Sindh is pursuing its cultural distinctiveness with louder demands for political separateness, Baluchistan and the northwest are also joining the chorus. In all, there's no doubt that the cracks in Pakistan are getting wider and increasingly difficult to paper over, or even hide.

Jihad in Pakistan

Since the end of the Cold War, the Pakistani ruling classes, in search of new strategies for national security, have been inadvertently undermining the sovereignty of the state itself. The structures created during the covert war against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan were redirected by the Pakistani state to achieve the objectives of national security against India: that in the absence of strategic depth, India could be contained only with an offensive strategy that kept its Army embroiled in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan's Islamisation drive (through madrassas) and the call for jihad became a cornerstone of its policies in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Young boys from all over Pakistan, Afghan

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refugees and Kashmiris (JKLF) were indoctrinated, trained and made to fight in Afghanistan against the Red Army. Even after the Soviets' left in 1989, Pakistan did not let go of the reins in Afghanistan. After experimenting with one favourite or another, it finally backed the Taliban, which had sprung from the madrassas in Pakistan. One of the principal factors, which influenced Pakistan in cultivating the Taliban, was jihad and its stakes in Kashmir. The practice of jihad as a foreign policy objective by the militia suited Pakistan's interests vis-a-vis the quarrel over Kashmir. The concept of Islam not only ensured a steady flow of 'holy warriors' into Kashmir; it also provided justification for Pakistan's Foreign Policy. Thus, the jihadi groups became their first line of defence and India was kept militarily engaged in a proxy war without the Pakistan army getting directly involved. But these structures both at the ideological and material level actually became a threat to the state itself. Even before September 11, many Pakistani analysts expressed concern over these ominous developments. The current ruling regime had also sensed the trajectory of these developments. The military establishment had for some time been divided over its support for the Taliban and seriously concerned about the growing sectarian violence within the country. And yet, many analysts were taken by surprise when Pervez Musharraf abandoned the Taliban, when the Americans put him on notice after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He had been trying for some time to distance himself from the Taliban and curb the powers of some of the radical Islamic groups at home. That divorce was not possible without force. His half-hearted attempts were an indication that curative and incremental methods were not an answer to the problem. He needed a pretext. and September 11 provided him that pretext, support and legitimacy to carry out with force what his internal reforms were supposed to have done-restore the internal sovereignty of the state. But today, the army's jihad philosophy lies buried under the rubble of the World Trade Centre. When faced with a US bent upon bloody vengeance, an acute institutional sense of survival sent the military establishment scurrying to join the US-led coalition and take up arms against its former creation, the Taliban, and their Amir-ul-Momineen (leader of the pious). It is an irony that the radical Islamic groups that are supposed to be a threat to Gen. Musharraf today are a product of the Pakistani state. It was the abdication of the traditional developmental role by the corrupt and decaying state that created the space for political Islam. The strengths of religious extremism in its initial stages had come from state patronage but increasingly popular support for it grew in civil society. The radicalisation of Pakistani civil society started by Zia-ul-Haq in his efforts to gain legitimacy was continued by successive democratic regimes as well as by Gen. Musharraf for national security reasons. In the process, they undermined the internal sovereignty of the very state whose executive authority they wielded.