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Cia helped convert isi to huge organization

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http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040219-054510-8214r

U.S. seeks reform of Pakistan spy agency
By Anwar Iqbal
Published 2/20/2004 11:16 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- After the Christmas Day assassination attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani authorities found the severed head of a Kashmiri militant near the wreckage of a car that suicide bombers had used in the attack. The man was freed from U.S. custody in Afghanistan after Pakistani intelligence agencies cleared him.

Mohammad Jameel, 31, was from Rawalakot, a small town near the line of control, the de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir between India and Pakistan. He apparently went to Afghanistan in October 2001 when the United States invaded the country following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Jameel and thousands of other Muslim volunteers who went to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban regime were detained by U.S. forces and their Afghan allies after the fall of he Taliban. While many still languish in the prisons of the Afghan warlords, an undisclosed number with suspected links to al-Qaida were handed over to U.S. authorities. Jameel was one of them.

Since U.S. authorities had no information on him, they checked with Pakistani officials who said they had no record of his involvement with any terrorist group. Jameel was freed last year and apparently returned to his hometown. Nobody heard of him until his severed head was found near one of the two cars that suicide bombers used in the attempt on Musharraf.

The story, related to this correspondent during a recent visit to Pakistan, was later confirmed by both U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Western diplomatic sources in Islamabad say after the failed assassination attempt, U.S. officials, who were already urging Pakistan to reform its Inter Services Intelligence spy agency, further turned the screw.

Under U.S. pressure, the sources said, the Pakistani government decided not to allow any officer to serve in the ISI for more than 3 years. This, it is hoped, will help reduce the influence of Muslim extremists within the agency and will prevent ISI officials from developing links to the region's political and religious groups, sources said.

Although senior Pakistani military officials privately acknowledge they are implementing the new policy, they are not willing to do so in public.

"This has always been the government's policy and ISI officers were transferred out of the agency soon after completed their 3-year tenure," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan Khan, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military.

The presence of religious fundamentalists within ISI has, however, led to speculations that rogue agents may have helped in the bid on Musharraf's life.

Khan rejected those suggestions, however.

"Suicide attacks happen in many countries ... it does not mean that government officials in those countries are collaborating with the attackers," he said. "I don't think it would be wise to link this suicide attempt (on Musharraf) with any inside knowledge."

Western diplomats in Islamabad are not convinced, however.

"How one of the bombers was cleared by ISI and other Pakistani agencies? Didn't they know that he was a Kashmiri militant?" asked one diplomat.

ISI officials come from different branches of the Pakistan military. In the past, officers could stay in the agency as long as the ISI chief allowed them to.

"Some of them stayed for 10 years or even more, developing ties to various violent groups. In the process, some of them got converted to the fundamentalist ideology," says an Islamabad-based Western diplomat. "They are the ones who were helping the Taliban and al-Qaida."

Reports in the Western media have also credited ISI with creating the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. They also say the spy agency provided weapons and financial assistance to the religious militia, which once ruled Afghanistan.

Khan denied links between the Taliban and ISI but acknowledged Pakistan was the one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban regime. The regime fell when U.S. troops invaded Kabul in December 2001.

Although Musharraf severed Pakistan's links to the Taliban three years ago, U.S. intelligence sources and media reports say some in the ISI continued to maintain links to remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida. This, critics say, is one reason Pakistani agencies need to clean up.

"There's a desperate need to reform and professionalize Pakistani intelligence agencies ... taking away the enormous power of intimidation the agencies enjoy," said Ahmad Rasheed, a Pakistani journalist and author.

Rasheed, who is in Washington for meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials, said ISI was a small intelligence agency until the early 1980s. It expanded when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

"The CIA helped convert ISI into the huge organization that it is now ... with all the power it enjoys," he said.

The spy agency not only helped the Taliban, Rasheed said, but also trained Muslim militants fighting in Indian Kashmir.

After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the United States quickly withdrew from South and Central Asia, allowing the ISI to expand its network with the help of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, says Rasheed.

Western intelligence experts in Washington say by the mid-1990s, ISI was everywhere, dealing with Muslim militant groups in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and even China, which is Pakistan's closest ally in the region.

When terrorists flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, then ISI chief Gen. Mahmud Ahmad was visiting Washington. The Bush administration asked him to visit Afghanistan and convince the Taliban to surrender al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, the man believed to have masterminded the attacks.

Instead, Ahmad advised the Taliban not to turn over bin Laden. He argued the Americans were only bluffing and they would not invade Afghanistan. He was fired by Musharraf upon returning from the Taliban headquarters in Kandahar. The Pakistani president then introduced a series of changes intended to purge the ISI of Ahmed's sympathizers.

Experts are divided over how successful that purge has been.

"No efforts to purge religious elements from ISI and other branches of the Pakistani military will succeed," said Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief. "Our soldiers are religious by nature and they will remain so."

Rasheed disagreed.

"There may be some religious sentiments on the lower level but the ISI and other branches of the military are tightly controlled by the high command ... and most of them want to maintain close relations with the United States," he said.

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International



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