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Title: Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan Author: Hein G. Kiessling Publisher: Harper Collins Price: ₹599
Despite the relative silence on the Mumbai attacks, the book offers a clear-sighted perspective on India’s bête noire
December 25, 2016:
The sage Kautilya (Chanakya) in India and the Chinese general Sun Tzu have historically been regarded as perhaps the most brilliant strategists in Asia.
While Sun Tzu focused primarily on military strategies, Kautilya focused on virtually every aspect of statecraft, which was necessary for rulers to understand and practice. He dwelt on the role of spies and espionage in the practice of statecraft. Kautilya advocated that while the ruler may delegate some covert responsibilities to trusted ministers, his spies would report directly to him on all issues of importance.
Even today, intelligence agencies in virtually all countries share highly sensitive information only with the head of the government, who then decides with whom to share the information he receives.
Exceptional exception
Pakistan is perhaps the only country in the world where the most powerful intelligence agency, the ISI, shares information it receives and the activities it indulges in, within and beyond the country’s borders, exclusively with the army chief and not with the president, or the prime minister.
General Musharraf did not share his plans for the disastrous Kargil conflict, which humiliated Pakistan and its army, even with Pakistan’s air force chief. The prime minister, who is required to approve the appointment of the ISI chief, is rarely consulted on the appointment process. More importantly, the army and ISI even conspired to deny Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and President Asif Ali Zardari information on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.
While AQ Khan’s illegal sale and transfer of nuclear technology to various countries was done with the full knowledge of the ISI, the political leadership was kept in the dark. Even narcotics smuggling across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has, in the past, been undertaken secretly, with ISI support.
Bird’s-eye view
The German historian Hein G Kiessling spent thirteen years in Pakistan (1989-2002), living in Islamabad and Quetta. He got a bird’s-eye view of developments in Pakistan, in the years following the death of its long-time military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, in a mysterious air-crash, believed by many to have been an “inside job”, planned and executed by Shia technical staff of the Pakistan air force.
In his book, Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan, Kiessling dwells at length on how the ISI emerged as a powerful organisation, shaping and controlling not only covert actions beyond Pakistan’s borders, but also seeking to influence and determine the dynamics of Pakistan’s internal politics.
Zia’s rule was marked by the advent of Wahhabi Islamic extremism. This accompanied the ‘jihad’ waged jointly by the CIA and the ISI against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Jihad against the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a new era in Pakistan’s national life.
It accompanied the ISI backing of radical Islamist political parties such as the Jamat-e-Islami and radical armed Islamic groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
These armed groups shifted their attention, with ISI encouragement, from Afghanistan to jihad in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India.
The ISI was the recipient of billions of dollars of financial and military support from the CIA, Saudi Arabia and a number of western countries, which were used to arm and train radical Islamic groups.
Three-pronged focus
The book focuses attention on three distinct areas of ISI activity. The first was its propensity and readiness to meddle in internal politics. The second was its determination to shape the course of events in Afghanistan, in the army’s quest for “a strategic depth” against India. The third was its untiring and ever-expanding quest to destabilise India, in the expectation that India would be weakened enough to hand over Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan.
I recall during my days in Pakistan a former ISI chief was asked what the principal aim of the ISI was. He replied: “Our aim is to weaken India from within. And we know we can do it”.
Shaping the politics
Kiesling focuses considerable attention on how the ISI shaped the course of internal politics in Pakistan from the days of General Zia-ul-Haq. The ISI sought to weaken and indeed decimate the relatively secular Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) of Benazir Bhutto.
It backed the armed cadres of the fundamentalist Jamat-e-Islami to physically challenge and intimidate PPP cadres.
Money was poured into elections to help defeat the PPP. A new Muslim League Party was created and patronised to mobilise right-of-centre voters.
Former ISI chief, General Ghulam Jilani Khan, who was then governor of Punjab province, undertook this action. Amongst those who emerged to prominence from this effort were Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, the initial focus of driving out the Soviet Union was accompanied by attempts to support warlords such as the fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This effort failed miserably both in Kabul and in the strategic provincial capital of Jalalabad.
Non-Pashtun warlords such as Ahmad Shah Masood and Abdul Rashid Dostum united and firmly and successfully resisted these efforts.
Interestingly, the Taliban emerged from the Deobandi seminaries of Khyber province bordering Afghanistan, thanks to the efforts of former Pakistan prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto and her interior minister, Major-General Naseerullah Babar.
It is a different matter that the ISI thereafter took over control of the Taliban, and based them near Quetta after the Americans moved into Afghanistan, post 9/11. The ISI-Taliban nexus continues to date.
The ISI wants an internationally isolated and fundamentalist regime in Kabul, one that it can manipulate.
ISI and India
There is, quite naturally, considerable material in the book on how the ISI has sought to destabilise India.
Apart from its continuing efforts to promote separatism in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, Kiessling focuses considerable attention on ISI links with northeastern separatist outfits such as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland/Nagalim (NSCN-IM).
He draws attention to how cadres from these outfits were contacted in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, and thereafter trained and armed in Pakistan before their return, to wage war in India.
While the 26/11 strike on Mumbai receives attention, one wishes that more details were included on the vast evidence that India has provided about ISI involvement in the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 and the 26/11 terrorist attack.
But, all said and done, people in India would certainly learn much more about the threats we face across the country from ISI-inspired separatism and terrorism by reading this informative and interesting book.
(This article was published on December 25, 2016)
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com...ment-in-the-mumbai-attacks/article9443489.ece
