Source:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_wright#ixzz1OSn9EVbV
ISI Double Game
Founded in 1948 by a British army officer, Major General William Cawthorne, the ISI ballooned in the 1980s when the CIA entrusted it with billions of dollars of assistance for mujahideen rebels fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. It is thought to have 10,000 employees, three-quarters of whom are serving army officers on secondments from other units. The remainder is a mix of civilians and retired officers.
Its the end of the Second World War, and the United States is deciding what to do about two immense, poor, densely populated countries in Asia. America chooses one of the countries, becoming its benefactor. Over the decades, it pours billions of dollars into that countrys economy, training and equipping its military and its intelligence services. The stated goal is to create a reliable ally with strong institutions and a modern, vigorous democracy. The other country, meanwhile, is spurned because it forges alliances with Americas enemies.
The country not chosen was India, which tilted toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Pakistan became Americas protg, firmly supporting its fight to contain Communism. The benefits that Pakistan accrued from this relationship were quickly apparent: in the nineteen-sixties, its economy was an exemplar. India, by contrast, was a byword for basket case. Fifty years then went by. What was the result of this social experiment?
Milton Bearden, a former C.I.A. station chief in Pakistan, once described Gul to me as having a rococo personality:13:. In 2004, I visited Gula short man with a rigid, military posture and raptor-like featuresat his villa in Rawalpindi. He proudly asked his servant to bring me an orange from his private grove. I asked Gul why, during the Afghan jihad, he had favored Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the seven warlords who had been designated to receive American assistance in the fight against the Soviets. Hekmatyar was the most brutal member of the group, but, crucially, he was a Pashtun, like Gul. As I ate the orange, Gul offered a more principled rationale for his choice: I went to each of the seven, you see, and I asked them, I know you are the strongest, but who is No. 2? He formed a tight, smug smile. They all said Hekmatyar.
The main beneficiary of U.S. money, the Pakistani military, has never won a war, but, according to Military Inc., by Ayesha Siddiqa, it has done very well in its investments: hotels, real estate, shopping malls. Such entrepreneurship, however corrupt, fills a gap, as Pakistans economy is now almost entirely dependent on American taxpayers. In a country of a hundred and eighty million people, fewer than two million citizens pay taxes, and Pakistans leaders are doing little to change the situation.
Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. special agent who interrogated many of the Al Qaeda members captured in Pakistan, told me that the majority of them said that Lashkar-e-Taiba had given them shelter. After the battle of Tora Bora, he added, the Al Qaeda members who fled to Pakistanincluding top leaderswere greeted by Lashkar operatives and taken to safe houses. Some Pakistanis worry that Lashkar may become the new Al Qaeda.
Internally the ISI is divided into lettered sections, the most notorious of which is the S wing, which manages the relationship with Islamist militant groups. The C wing liaises with foreign intelligence services, and includes a CIA-funded counter-terrorism centre. Quite often, western spies complain, the C wing says one thing while the S does another.:13:
Theoretically the ISI reports to Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. In reality it answers to the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. It is much more powerful than Pakistan's other spy outfits, Military Intelligence (MI) and the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB).
A number of investigative reports have suggested that the I.S.I. diverted American money designated for fighting terrorism to the Taliban. According to a 2007 document released by WikiLeaks, U.S. military interrogators at Guantnamo implicitly acknowledged this problem when they placed the I.S.I. on an internal list of terrorist and terrorist-support entities.
Eight days before Osama bin Laden was killed, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the head of the Pakistani Army, went to the Kakul military academy in Abbottabad, less than a mile from the villa where bin Laden was living. General Kayani told the cadets, We have broken the backbone of the militants, Pir Zubair Shah, the reporter, told me. But the backbone was right there.:13: Perhaps with a touch of theatre, Hamid Gul, the former I.S.I. chief, publicly expressed wonder that bin Laden was living in a city with three army regiments, less than a mile from an lite military academy, in a house that appeared to have been built expressly to protect him. Aside from the military, Gul told the Associated Press, there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, the I.S.I. They all had a presence there.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_wright#ixzz1OSn9EVbV
ISI Double Game
Founded in 1948 by a British army officer, Major General William Cawthorne, the ISI ballooned in the 1980s when the CIA entrusted it with billions of dollars of assistance for mujahideen rebels fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. It is thought to have 10,000 employees, three-quarters of whom are serving army officers on secondments from other units. The remainder is a mix of civilians and retired officers.
Its the end of the Second World War, and the United States is deciding what to do about two immense, poor, densely populated countries in Asia. America chooses one of the countries, becoming its benefactor. Over the decades, it pours billions of dollars into that countrys economy, training and equipping its military and its intelligence services. The stated goal is to create a reliable ally with strong institutions and a modern, vigorous democracy. The other country, meanwhile, is spurned because it forges alliances with Americas enemies.
The country not chosen was India, which tilted toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Pakistan became Americas protg, firmly supporting its fight to contain Communism. The benefits that Pakistan accrued from this relationship were quickly apparent: in the nineteen-sixties, its economy was an exemplar. India, by contrast, was a byword for basket case. Fifty years then went by. What was the result of this social experiment?
Milton Bearden, a former C.I.A. station chief in Pakistan, once described Gul to me as having a rococo personality:13:. In 2004, I visited Gula short man with a rigid, military posture and raptor-like featuresat his villa in Rawalpindi. He proudly asked his servant to bring me an orange from his private grove. I asked Gul why, during the Afghan jihad, he had favored Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the seven warlords who had been designated to receive American assistance in the fight against the Soviets. Hekmatyar was the most brutal member of the group, but, crucially, he was a Pashtun, like Gul. As I ate the orange, Gul offered a more principled rationale for his choice: I went to each of the seven, you see, and I asked them, I know you are the strongest, but who is No. 2? He formed a tight, smug smile. They all said Hekmatyar.
The main beneficiary of U.S. money, the Pakistani military, has never won a war, but, according to Military Inc., by Ayesha Siddiqa, it has done very well in its investments: hotels, real estate, shopping malls. Such entrepreneurship, however corrupt, fills a gap, as Pakistans economy is now almost entirely dependent on American taxpayers. In a country of a hundred and eighty million people, fewer than two million citizens pay taxes, and Pakistans leaders are doing little to change the situation.
Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. special agent who interrogated many of the Al Qaeda members captured in Pakistan, told me that the majority of them said that Lashkar-e-Taiba had given them shelter. After the battle of Tora Bora, he added, the Al Qaeda members who fled to Pakistanincluding top leaderswere greeted by Lashkar operatives and taken to safe houses. Some Pakistanis worry that Lashkar may become the new Al Qaeda.
Internally the ISI is divided into lettered sections, the most notorious of which is the S wing, which manages the relationship with Islamist militant groups. The C wing liaises with foreign intelligence services, and includes a CIA-funded counter-terrorism centre. Quite often, western spies complain, the C wing says one thing while the S does another.:13:
Theoretically the ISI reports to Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. In reality it answers to the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. It is much more powerful than Pakistan's other spy outfits, Military Intelligence (MI) and the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB).
A number of investigative reports have suggested that the I.S.I. diverted American money designated for fighting terrorism to the Taliban. According to a 2007 document released by WikiLeaks, U.S. military interrogators at Guantnamo implicitly acknowledged this problem when they placed the I.S.I. on an internal list of terrorist and terrorist-support entities.
Eight days before Osama bin Laden was killed, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the head of the Pakistani Army, went to the Kakul military academy in Abbottabad, less than a mile from the villa where bin Laden was living. General Kayani told the cadets, We have broken the backbone of the militants, Pir Zubair Shah, the reporter, told me. But the backbone was right there.:13: Perhaps with a touch of theatre, Hamid Gul, the former I.S.I. chief, publicly expressed wonder that bin Laden was living in a city with three army regiments, less than a mile from an lite military academy, in a house that appeared to have been built expressly to protect him. Aside from the military, Gul told the Associated Press, there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, the I.S.I. They all had a presence there.
