The intelligence and agencies of Pakistan (Part I)

[fatman17]

The intelligence and agencies of Pakistan (Part I)

By Ali K Chishti

There are visible signs. What is, however, not so visible and will not be is the role that has been played by the intelligence agencies in shaping and running of the political process in Pakistan. There are more than a dozen or so intelligence agencies working in Pakistan which is commonly referred to as “agencies”. The primary objective of these intelligence agencies is to collect intelligence and pre-empt terrorist’s attacks. While an average citizen has serious doubts and apprehensions about the working style of the intelligence agencies in Pakistan - from the assassination of the country’s first prime minister, whose assassin was once on the premier intelligence agency Intelligence Bureau’s payroll to destabilise a democratically elected government with operations like Midnight Jackal to the only recent “missing persons case” – where intelligence agencies kidnap and kill fellow Pakistanis without trial.

While there are numerous smaller intelligence and investigating agencies, like Rangers Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Special Branch, CID, FIA, etc –the big three, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence (MI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB), are at the forefront as far as “intel operations” are concerned in Pakistan and aboard. The job description of the big three intelligence organisations are pretty clear where the ISI in principle looks after the foreign threats; MI looks after the military related affairs and the IB looks after the internal affairs – but these three intelligence agencies seems to be out of control and “often cross the lines and even step on each other’s toes”, a former top intelligence official confirmed to Daily Times. In fact, according to Brigadier (r) Shaukat Qadir, former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), “the ISI, at least under Gen Mehmood in 2000-2001, completely went out of control until he was sacked. It was more of an ego problem, where Gen Mehmood, the ISI director general, considered himself unaccountable.” A trend which shows that it’s not the institution but often its personnel which goes freelance for which various intelligence agencies have made there “counter-intelligence” units more stronger for better vigilance of their own operatives.

The civilian-military distrust could also be witnessed in the intelligence community where it is part of the book by the uniformed intelligence agencies, the Military Intelligence and the ISI to seals off the K-Block or the IB’s Headquarters as a routine whenever there’s a coup which shows a thread of animosity and mistrust between the civilian and military institutions. The politicisation of the intelligence agencies could be judged with the fact that at least 4,000-5,000 sacked Intelligence Bureau officials, who were previously profiled to be “unfit for service” due to political connections, were reinstated by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government with back pays and benefits only recently. The IB often accuses other intelligence agencies of interfering in its affairs – remember only in recent years more IB operatives have gone down than anyone else. So, how do our intelligence agencies work? They send out a daily report to the president and the prime minister via COAS, titled “eyes only” mostly “googled stuff” and constantly plays up threat levels apart from nagging for more funds. While the three big intelligence agencies have received all the latest tech and surveillance equipment from the United States, including serious investments in a new field, quantum computing to break terrorist codes, it is the human intelligence which the Pakistani intelligence agencies normally rely upon but lacks training in. “They work like sub-inspectors and mostly tap phones and chase people,” confirmed a former intelligence operative. The incompetence of our intelligence agencies could be judged from the fact that they have completely failed to stop or pre-empt at least 87 percent of terrorist related crimes despite millions of dollars of funding and investment by the GoP and other allies in Pakistani intelligence network. The CIA’s former operative Jonathan Hugh confirmed to Daily Times that the CIA had only recently secured around $500 million under a covert programme to give out “carrots” to the ISI for catching top wanted terrorists. The funding, part of the intelligence agencies, is also dubious and deliberately kept murky, one example of which is how General (r) Pervez Musharraf gave out a record allocation of Rs 2.2 billion and Rs 140 million to a premier intelligence agency from the Finance Ministry funds in November 10, 2007 in an effort to manipulate the elections which were to be held in 2008. Mostly a “secret fund” is also abused for funding various operations with no records available.

There’s also a psychological warfare unit and press-handlers operated by various intelligence agencies through which they unleash targeted propaganda and plant stories through journalists on agencies’ payroll. Certain top journalists had only recently received plots and houses via the new Younas Habib of the intelligence agencies, a notorious builder and developer from Islamabad known to be close to all politicians. Only recently, news planted by an intelligence agency made sure that Qari Saifullah backed by another intelligence agency was victimised and re-arrested on the basis of the story filed. Intelligence coordination is an area which Pakistan lacks and is regarded as the prime reason why our intelligence agencies had failed. As of now, there is no practical mechanism to actually exchange information between various intelligence agencies and although the government had set up the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NCTA), now headed by Zafarullah Khan, has “fallen to the dogs” according to the sources and is practically non-functional. A top intelligence chief confirmed to Daily Times that “we need an effective and efficient institution for collection of data, assets and monitoring of activities of all national, defence and domestic intelligence organisations – right now it’s not working out well for us.”

 

[Elmo]

Revealing the secret
By Umer Farooq January 24, 2011 (3 weeks ago)
Dawn.com


Sometime in 2008, senior officials of Pakistan’s premier civilian intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), were asking themselves a basic question: should IB retain the power of arrest or forego it? The debate on the issue continued for a few months before it was concluded that the primary task of the agency was to gather actionable intelligence and that it should give up its powers of arrest; the police should handle arrests on behalf of IB.

This coincided with another internal exercise within IB to draft a law for providing legal basis to its working. “The idea was to put in some legal constraints, considering the human rights issues that had recently permeated the national discourse,” says a former senior official of IB involved in the exercise. The draft law, for instance, called for bringing the pervasive telephone tapping by intelligence agencies under judicial check. “We proposed that telephone taping would be allowed only under a judicial order and not under an executive order,” he adds.

The time was ripe for such a change. A democratically-elected government had just taken office in Islamabad after nine years of military rule. The political elite had developed a near consensus – as reflected in the Charter of Democracy – to curtail the influence and powers of intelligence agencies. What further reinforced this atmosphere of change was that the civilian government appointed Shoaib Suddle as IB’s head, the first non-military man to hold the post in nearly two decades.

The draft law was to be shared with senior officials of the newly-formed government but that proved to be a non-starter. “[The draft] needed the approval of the president and the prime minister to be tabled before the parliament,” recounts an Islamabad-based retired official who was part of the exercise. “We discussed this with some senior officials of the government. They agreed with the basic idea of the draft but then did not take it seriously.”

After receiving a cold response from the government, IB bosses did not press any further. Apparently the idea of bringing the intelligence agency within the ambit of law did not appear to the government as a move in the right direction. “The main reason was lack of understanding because nobody in the government or the intelligence establishment has an inkling of how effective a check a legislative act can prove to be,” comments a former intelligence boss.

Then in July 2008, the Pakistan Peoples Party government decided to put the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) under the interior ministry, and issued an executive order placing it under the administrative, financial and operational control of the ministry. But intelligence officials point out that it was not a move aimed at ensuring that the agencies worked as per some law. “It indicated the government’s attempt to bring them under its political control,” says a former intelligence boss. The order was reversed within hours, the government said, to dispel the impression “that there were differences between the civilian government and the army.”

Legal experts are of the firm view that defining the jurisdiction of intelligence agencies through a legislative act is a much wider issue than simply putting them under one or the other ministry. “Many problems in the present functioning of the spy agencies arose simply because there is no law defining their jurisdiction,” opines a legal expert. But the withdrawal of the order to bring the agencies under civilian control strengthened the impression that the government had failed to depart from the tradition of conducting ‘intelligence business’ without a law that could define the jurisdiction of the agencies concerned.

Has anyone seen the executive orders that created the intelligence agencies and that govern their working? “Nobody has,” says Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a historian of civil-military relations in Pakistan. In the absence of any information about them, even the most ardent scholars of Pakistan’s political and security history are only making guesses on what they could be.

Indeed, Pakistan is one of the few democracies in the world where intelligence agencies enjoy the ignominious distinction of functioning without any legal document supporting their creation or functioning. No less a person than the highest law officer of the state, Attorney-General Maulvi Anwarul Haq, informed the Supreme Court in November 2010 that there exists no such legal instrument.

But over the years intelligence agencies have invoked many laws to justify rounding up, investigating and imprisoning people they deem anti-state elements. These include the Security of Pakistan Act 1952, Pakistan Army Act 1952, Defence of Pakistan Act and Prevention of Anti-National Activities Act 1972. None of these laws, however, lays down what powers the spy agencies have and how best should they use those powers. “A law to define the jurisdiction of the intelligence services is missing from the statute books,” says Justice (retd) Tariq Mehmood, a senior lawyer, former high court judge and a human rights campaigner.

In the absence of a law it becomes easy for the rulers to arbitrarily expand the role of the agencies into domestic politics without having to bother about any legal authorisation. For instance, “the ISI was created for external intelligence but General Ziaul Haq used it for domestic intelligence-gathering. Similarly, General (retd) Perzez Musharraf used the Military Intelligence for intelligence gathering on domestic politics,” says Dr Rizvi.

The lack of any legal or parliamentary oversight for the intelligence agencies creates problems of governance that in the past have developed into full-blown crises. For instance, questions about the loyalties of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, ISI, have remained unanswered over the years and on more than one occasion have led to tensions between the civilian government and the military.

At least twice in the recent past has this flared up with disastrous consequences for democracy in Pakistan. When Benazir Bhutto appointed a retired army officer, Lieutenant-General (retd) Shamsud Rahman Kallu, as ISI chief during her first tenure as prime minister, the decision led to tensions between her and the then Chief of the Army Staff General Aslam Beg. Similarly, Lieutenant-General Ziauddin Butt, who headed ISI during Nawaz Sharif’s second term in power, was one of the reasons why tensions between the prime minister and the army chief started and persisted, culminating in Sharif’s removal from power.

Dr Rizvi believes that creating a law for the agencies will also help settle the question of who is in charge of them and thereby reduce the likelihood of tensions over appointments in them. “If you introduce a law then you will have to define whether [ISI] is a civilian institution or a military institution,” he says. Once defined, this will also decide who can appoint whom, he adds.

But Dr Rizvi also points out that there are understandable reasons for the lack of interest on the part of the incumbent government to curtail the influence and power of intelligence agencies. “The civilian governments do not want to control ISI [and other intelligence agencies] because they think it will annoy the army.”

Jutsice (retd) Mehmood agrees: “The debate about the legality of the intelligence agencies is not part of the national discourse because generally there is a sense of fear prevalent in the society [about their powers].”

Some senior bureaucrats with extensive experience of intelligence services are, therefore, of the opinion that a legislative act will hardly prove an effective check on the functioning of the spy agencies. “A legislative act may be necessary but it is hardly sufficient, given the immense powers the intelligence agencies enjoy,” comments one of them.

There is also no dearth of voices opposing any move to impose legal constraints on the functioning of intelligence agencies. Their logic is simple: the very nature of intelligence gathering militates against the concept of imposing legal constraints on the functioning of intelligence organisations. “The nature of their work is such that they have to work in deviation of the law and they have to keep it secret as well,” says former ISI chief General (retd) Hamid Gul. “This is the same all over the world and there is nothing unusual and new about it.”

A former head of IB, however, is not convinced. “The question we need to ask ourselves is what exactly our intelligence agencies are doing for which they want legal exception,” he says. To find that out, we need to first have the rules and regulations before being able to decide what exceptions could be allowed and under what circumstances.


Herald Exclusive: Revealing the secret | Pakistan | DAWN.COM

 

[Elmo]

Intelligence questions
By Umer Farooq
January 24, 2011 (3 weeks ago)


The ostensibly visible presence of external threat in the initial years of Pakistan had created enough space for intelligence agencies to work above the law (See “Revealing the Secret”). “As long as you needed an intelligence agency to meet the intelligence requirement of the army and to meet the requirements of guarding against external security threats, you did not need a law,” says Justice (retd) Tariq Mehmood, also a senior lawyer and human rights activist.

The state used external threat as a powerful tool to silence any criticism of the functioning of intelligence agencies. Legal and intelligence experts, however, point out that the criticism of the agencies exists not because of their activities to neutralise foreign threats but due to their constant meddling in the country’s internal affairs. “As long as they were dealing with external intelligence, it was fine. The controversy started when they expanded their role into domestic politics,” says Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi, an analyst based in Lahore.

While many civilian critics blame Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for setting the precedent of agencies interfering in domestic politics, a former intelligence chief tells the Herald it was more so during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. War in Afghanistan in 1970s-80s, in which Zia and his American and Saudi backers were deeply involved, “changed the nature of intelligence gathering in Pakistan,” he says. Foreign funding, an extended network of contacts across Pakistan to mobilise supports for Afghan war, and an eminent role in Afghanistan, allowed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to increase its strength, powers and functions phenomenally, says Dr Rizvi. “All this together allowed the intelligence establishment to expand its role into domestic politics,” he adds.

Until then the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI) were the main intelligence-gathering institutions, in civilian and military spheres respectively. But during the Zia era, “IB was relegated to a secondary status and army-dominated intelligence agencies, ISI in particular, assumed a pre-eminent role,” an ex-intelligence boss says.

The expansion of the role of intelligence agencies into domestic politics coincided with growing skepticism among political class and legal experts towards their functioning. The issues of some kind of a civilian control over them and the need for a law to govern their working became hot topics of debate, says Justice (retd) Mehmood.

But voices raising these issues never developed into a potent force, mainly because the military has been ruling the country both directly and indirectly, he says. “In direct military rule, the office of army chief and the chief executive of Pakistan come together in one person. This allows intelligence agencies to escape the need to have a legal cover and face accountability by claiming that they are already answerable to the highest authority in the country,” he observes. The civilian governments that follow the military ones are always so weak that they fear raising the issue and annoy the army, he adds.

The superior courts in Pakistan have also done little to change this state of affairs. Some legal experts and human rights activists claim that the courts informally granted a kind of immunity to intelligence agencies in so far as that they were never made respondents in cases dealing with the detention of individuals by them. A senior lawyer cites previous judgements in which superior courts have avoided reporting facts of cases registered under the Security of Pakistan Act and the Pakistan Army Act, in an apparent attempt to keep the working of the intelligence agencies a secret.

This continued until recently despite the fact that there is no explicit bar on the jurisdiction of the superior courts to hold any state institution answerable, says a legal expert.