Stating that the ISI played a key role in the rise of transnational jihadism by cultivating Islamist militants for its own strategic purposes in Afghanistan and Kashmir, the Texas-based Intelligence analysis agency Stratfor has said that “Pakistan lacks any institutional checks that could help maintain oversight over ISI operations” Giving support to India’s long-held view that the ISI was patronising militants in Kashmir by giving them all possible help, Stratfor which is a publisher of online geopolitical intelligence in its recent report ‘Pakistan: Anatomy of the ISI’ said the ISI had cultivated Kashmir-specific Islamist militant groups.
The report also said though Pakistan was trying to maintain its status as an ally in the US war against terror, “there is evidence implicating the ISI in large-scale attacks in both Afghanistan and India”.
Talking about the Kargil war, the report said: “The ISI and the Pakistan army had been working to send Islamist militants into Indian Kashmir, a process that led to the short Kargil war in the summer of 1999 - the same year in which army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf, a key figure in Pakistan’s Kashmiri Islamist militant project, came to power in an October coup.” It said that the ISI, a centre of power in Pakistan, used the resources it had developed during the Afghan war to begin aiding these groups’ indigenous rising and cultivating Kashmir-specific Islamist militant groups _ a process which the report said started since 1989.
Stratfor said the manner in which Washington, including US President George Bush, officially came out questioning the ISI in the recent week is unprecedented.
Until now, the Bush Administra tion never directly criticised the directorate and other institutions within the army instead relying on media leaks to put pressure on the Pakistanis to rein in the ISI.
“Should things get out of hand, it is not beyond the pale that Washington could officially designate the ISI as a terrorism-supporting entity, along the lines of the October 2007 US executive order against Iran’s revolutionary guards corps, “ the report said.
It pointed out that the ISI was split into two and said the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the right hand does not know what the left was doing.
While there are those within the ISI who see militants as valuable tools in the state’s foreign policy objectives, there are many others who went native and developed sympathies for these Islamist militants, even adopting the Islamist ideology of the people who were supposed to be their tools, the report said.
It also said that though Pakistan started out as a reluctant ally of Washington in the US-jihadist war, Pakistan is now locked in its own existential struggle against religious extremism and terrorism _ a struggle which simply cannot be won without an intelligence service free of jihadist links.
Extracted from The New Indian Express
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