New ISI Chief Appointed

By Cernig

Pakistan's military chief, General Kayani, has made several appointments to consolidate his personal control of the army and, perhaps most importantly, the shadowy ISI intelligence agency. Kayani, who was himself ISI head under Musharraf from 2004 to 2007 before becoming chief of the entire military, has picked Lt Gen Ahmed Shujaa Pasha as the new head of ISI, advancing him from head of military operations. There, he was responsible for overall control of of offensives which troops began last year against pro-Taleban militants in Swat, Waziristan and other areas of north-west Pakistan - but also in overall charge of truce deals, bribes and ceasefires negotiated with those same militants which have caused the US and other allies to question Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror".

Also brought into official question recently has been the ISI's support for the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militant groups such as the Lek and SIMI, which were blamed for the Mumbai bombings last year. There's little doubt that Kayani, as head of ISI at the time, was involved and knowledgeable about such ties.

In July, Mark Mazzetti wrote of Kayani for the NY Times:

Until late last year, when he was elevated to the command of the entire army, the Pakistani spymaster who had been running the I.S.I. was Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. American officials describe this smart and urbane general as at once engaging and inscrutable, an avid golfer with occasionally odd affectations. During meetings, he will often spend several minutes carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. Then, after taking one puff, he stubs it out.

The grumbling at the C.I.A. about dealing with Pakistan’s I.S.I. comes with a certain grudging reverence for the spy service’s Machiavellian qualities. Some former spies even talk about the Pakistani agency with a mix of awe and professional jealousy.

One senior C.I.A. official, recently retired, said that of all the foreign spymasters the C.I.A. had dealt with, General Kayani was the most formidable and may have earned the most respect at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. The soft-spoken general, he said, is a master manipulator.

“We admire those traits,” he said.

And in July this year, respected independent analyst and author Ahmed Rashid told Harper's magazine:

This lack of U.S. interest [in the Taliban, instead of Al Qaeda, after the initial invasion of Afghanistan] coincided with the interests of the Pakistani army: to go after Al Qaeda, but to allow the Taliban to resettle in Pakistan. Quite soon the Taliban was once again patronized by the ISI. The reason was that the Pakistani army was deeply offended by the Bonn agreement, which actually gave all power to the Northern Alliance–who were deemed the enemies of Pakistan and the Taliban because they had been backed in the civil war by India, Russia, and Iran (the regional opponents of the Taliban and Pakistan during the 1990s decade-long civil war in Afghanistan). Later, India asserted itself in Afghanistan by opening an embassy and four consulates in Afghanistan and then announced a large reconstruction program in Pakistan. Pakistan’s military told the West that Indian influence was undermining Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan and also subverting Pakistan by funding and supporting the Baloch insurgency in Balochistan province. Today India’s presumed influence in Afghanistan is the principle gripe of the military. I think the Americans knew quite early what was going on between the military and the Taliban, but were prepared to ignore it as long as Musharraf helped out with Al Qaeda and as long as the United States remained bogged down in Iraq.

That was the principle blindness of the Bush Administration. I describe the ISI’s two-tracked approach in my book: While part of the ISI assisted the Bush Administration, furnishing it with self-serving but at times useful intelligence, the ISI created another, covert section to run its Taliban-support operations. Those who carefully studied the situation were onto this for some time, and I detail it in my book, but the U.S. intelligence agencies have only now issued their study reaching these fairly obvious conclusions—dangerously late in the game.

Although it's only recently that the Bush administration has allowed official leaks of US intelligence misgivings about Pakistan's ISI, it seems possible that they knew a long time ago, and decided to look the other way as long as Pakistan had Musharraf in charge and in turn pretended to be a staunch ally. The bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, though, may have been a step too far.

As it stands now, Kayani has confirmed and strengthened his control of Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus. His military has led the way in strong talk (and action) against American incursions into their territory too. He has also successfully rebuffed three recent attempts to strengthen civilian control of the ISI. There's no reason to suspect that the civilian leadership has suddenly found new strength now to dictate a new ISI head to him. Instead, what I believe has happened is that Kayani has become the power behind the weak civilian government's facade. Knowing that the US and others would not tolerate another Musharraf-style dictator, Kayani has instead opted to use a democratic front to his rule.

Update: The received wisdom, however, is that Pasha will be tough on the militants. The Associated Press quotes Hasan Askari Rizvi, a noted Pakistani poliscience professor and author, as saying "Now you have a team in place that includes the new ISI chief ... who shares Kayani's view of how to deal with the insurgency in the tribal area and that is to adopt a tough line," and Ikram Sehgal, Publisher and Managing Editor of Defence Journal (Pakistan), says that Pasha "will act as a force multiplier for the Pakistan military to fight the Taliban."

The accepted narrative is to be that Pasha will help Kayani sway lower echelons of the military and ISI away from their sympathy for and allegiance to the Taliban. Which only works if Ahmed Rashid others are utterly wrong about the uses the Pakistani military have for the Taliban and other terror proxies.

Comments

[Russ Wellen]

". . . Kayani has become the power behind the weak civilian government's facade. Knowing that the US and others would not tolerate another Musharraf-style dictator, Kayani has instead opted to use a democratic front to his rule."

Thanks, Cernig. Most helpful. Meanwhile, God forbid that the US should have made dialing back India's presence in Afghanistan a condition of the recent nuclear deal, at least in back-channel terms. That might solve a lot of problems.