By Sher A. Farouki
Jan/Feb 25
Many Pakistanis consider the army the root cause of all problems. However, few are aware that it’s far superior to other Pakistani institutions.
It is crucial to understand that the army is being managed or utilized by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Founded in 1948 with the contribution of three services – army, air force, and the navy – the ISI, whose director-general theoretically reports directly to both the prime minister and the COAS (chief of army staff), has evolved into a powerful juggernaut that controls all the county’s institutions, including the judiciary, bureaucracy, the private and corporate sectors, and its economy and politics.
This subtle spy organization has become so vast that its boundaries are now indiscernible. Given the popular belief that the country’s troubles are rooted in the army, only a few realize that the ISI is in control. The officers and soldiers know that it is detrimental to the army itself. The field army, including its officers, remains antagonistic and indifferent to this spy organization. This is a significant source of frustration for the entire army, for the ISI is at odds does with the field army. Not surprisingly, the current army-backed coalition government formally legalized intercepting wiretapping on July 8, 2024, giving ISI, the authority under Section 54 of the 1996 Act that gives the government broad powers to intercept calls and messages or trace communications through any telecom system in the name of national security, regardless of existing privacy protections in other laws. Ironically, collation partner Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had contested their chief, Benazir Bhutto, phone tapping in 1997, the Supreme Court had termed the Act “reprehensible, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional”. This civilian surrender despite, “since 2013, the Investigation for Fair Trial Act has mandated that phone-tapping operations must be approved by a commission or the Supreme Court on a case-by-case basis, limited to six weeks per authorization”.
No area of life is free from the influence of the intelligence agencies. On March 26, six Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges wrote to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), urging it to convene a judicial convention over the alleged interference of intelligence agencies in judicial affairs. The letter by the IHC judges’ letter came days after the Supreme Court voided the firing of IHC judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui who SJC had sacked on Oct. 11, 2018, based on a speech at the Rawalpindi Bar Association where he accused ISI of influencing court proceedings and forming benches of choice. On 1 May, the Peshawar High Court told the SC that some judges had reported direct approaches from intelligence officials seeking favors in political cases. The Sindh High Court told the SC the necessity of investigating interference in the judiciary by intelligence agencies and suggested prohibiting direct access to judges.
The Methodology
The spy organization’s unique methods enable it to hide behind the army. In fact, they resemble the East India Company’s tactics. A small entity, it controlled all that region’s 500+ princely states through blackmail. The Company stationed a resident in each state to oversee their governance. However, one of the resident’s covert jobs was to entice the rulers or maharajas into wrongdoing while secretly gathering evidence against them and converting the same into personal files. These files were then used to blackmail them into compliance.
Similarly, the ISI entices and encourages institutional heads to engage in misconduct. This includes arranging stays in five-star hotels and providing escorts and liquor, in addition to hefty bribes. The organization maintains compromising videos and corruption files on not only military officers, but also judges, bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, artists, actors, writers, and journalists.
For generals, ISI employs a different strategy. It owns and maintains numerous palace-like safehouses in various cities, with young female models and actresses on its payroll, also maintaining secret files on them to ensure their compliance. They are assured of the safehouses’ safety and secrecy. These compromising encounters – which are videotaped – typically happen on weekends under the guise of official duties to ensure their future compliance. The Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), reportedly, routinely spends weekends in ISI managed army guestrooms in Lahore Cantonment. All roads leading to the guestrooms are cordoned off, with alternative routes marked for the public.
A Political Accessory
Ironically, ISI’s political wing – headed by a brigadier within Directorate C – was established (and abundantly used) by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who became Pakistan’s “elected” prime minister by default when the country split in the aftermath of the 1971 war that India waged to carve out Bangladesh.
The India-based Indo-Asian News Service quoted defense minister Ahmed Mukhtar of then ruling Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party May 4, 2018, that ISI has always had a political wing.During Gen. Kayani’s tenure, it was stated that like the ISI, the Military Intelligence (MI) too had closed its political wing (“MI closes its political wing”, Sept. 20, 2010, The Express Tribune).
Dawn newspaper, drawing from a declassified U.S. embassy source quoted the then national security adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani telling visiting U.S. ambassador Shirin Tahir-Kheli on Nov. 28, 2018, that ISI, is an “institution that can change based on how the political leadership chooses to use it”.
Sher A. Faroukii is a freelance writer.