Inter-Services Intelligence Activities In Afghanistan

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency of Pakistan has been accused of being heavily involved in covertly running military intelligence programs in Afghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The first ISI operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975. It was in "retaliation to Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war and support to the militants against Pakistan". Before 1975, ISI did not conduct any operation in Afghanistan and it was only after decade of Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war against Pakistan, support to militants and armed incursion in 1960 and 1961 in Bajaur that Pakistan was forced to retaliate. Later on, in the 1980s, the ISI in Operation Cyclone systematically coordinated the distribution of arms and financial means provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to factions of the Afghan mujahideen such as the Hezb-e Islami (HeI) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud whose forces would later be known as the Northern Alliance. After the Soviet retreat, the different Mujahideen factions turned on each other and were unable to come to a power sharing deal which resulted in a civil war. The United States, along with the ISI and the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto became the primary source of support for Hekmatyar in his 1992–1994 bombardment campaign against the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul.

It is widely agreed that after Hekmatyar failed to take over power in Afghanistan, the ISI helped to found the Afghan Taliban. The ISI and other parts of the Pakistan military subsequently provided financial, logistical, military and direct combat support to the Taliban until the September 11 attacks of 2001. It is widely acknowledged that the ISI has given the Afghan Taliban safe havens inside Pakistan and supported the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan after 9/11 helping them, especially the Haqqani network, carry out attacks inside Afghanistan. Pakistani officials deny this accusation. Allegations have been raised by international government officials, policy analysts and even Pakistani military officials that the ISI in conjunction with the military leadership has also provided some amount of support and refuge to al-Qaeda. Such allegations were increasingly issued when Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011 while living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The beginnings : a response to Afghan interference

In his history of the ISI, Hein Kiessling claims that the Republic of Afghanistan support to anti-Pakistani militants had forced then-Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Naseerullah Khan Babar, then-Inspector General of the Frontier Corps in NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), to adopt a more aggressive approach towards Afghanistan. As a result, ISI, under the command of Major General Ghulam Jilani Khan set up a 5,000-strong Afghan guerrilla troop, which would include influential future leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Masood, to target the Afghan government, the first large operation, in 1975, being the sponsoring of an armed rebellion in the Panjshir valley.Hein Kiessling, ''Faith, Unity, Discipline: The Inter-Service-Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan'', Oxford University Press (2016), p. 34 In a polemical assessment, Afghan feminist Alia Rawi Akbar writes that Massoud, during this uprising, "by the order of ISI", assassinated the mayor "of his home city", before he "ran to Pakistan."

Another historian of the ISI, Owen Sirrs, precises how the 1973 ''coup d'état'' which brought president Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, a proponent of a Pashtunistan independent state and fiercely anti-Pakistan, helping both Pashtun and Baloch militants, convinced Bhutto to use Islamist rebels in order to fight the ethnic Pashtun or Baloch brands of nationalism, and he described the ISI plan in multiple phases, "phase one was stepping up intelligence collection in that country, including ferreting out potential Afghan allies and weaknesses in the Daoud regime. Under phase two ISI operatives contacted the exiled Afghan King in an unsuccessful bid to have him lead an anti-Daoud resistance movement. Phase three involved joint anti-Afghan operations with Iran, since both the Shah and Bhutto regarded the PDPA as a threat to the regional balance of power. Iran’s intelligence service, SAVAK, backed several anti-Daoud groups unilaterally, but ISI wanted to entice the Iranians into joint missions against the Afghans. The last phase in ISI’s game plan was also the most important: recruiting an insurgent army from the growing number of anti-Daoud Afghan exiles in Pakistan." These insurgents would include the likes of Ahmed Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Sibghatullah Mojadeddi, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaleddin Haqqani and Abd al-Rasul Sayyaf, all future political heavyweights of the country.

In 1974, the then prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said that:

"Two can play this game. We know where their weak points are just as they know ours. The Non-Pashtun there hate the Pashtun domination. So we have our ways of persuading Daoud to not aggravate our problems."

Abdullah Anas, the leading Afghan Arab and also their key ideologue, in his memoirs says that ISI supported the Tajiks insurgents "with the blessing of Pakistan's president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who hoped to use this uprising as a means to pressurise the Afghan government to resolve the border disputes over Baluchistan and Pashtunistan", while describing their first military insurrection, in 1975, as "a fiasco" : Hekmatyar, who remained in Peshawar, sent men to attack government outposts in Surkhrud, without much success, while a second group, led by Massoud, in his native Panjshir valley, took control of government buildings for few days before eventually losing them, as well as many of his men, to Daud Khan's forces, something which irritated him and made him wary of Hekmatyar, blaming him for the failed operation.

The Pakistani backed rebellion, though unsuccessful, had shaken Daoud Khan to the core and made him realise the gravity of situation. He started softening his stance against Pakistan and started considering to improve relations with Pakistan. He realized that a 'friendly Pakistan was in his interest'. He also accepted Shah of Iran offer to normalize relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In August 1976, Daoud Khan also recognised Durand Line as international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin

Summary

In 1979 the Soviet Union intervened in the Afghan Civil War. The ISI and the CIA worked together to recruit Muslims throughout the world to take part in Jihad against the Soviet forces. However the CIA had little direct contact with the Mujahideen as the ISI was the main contact and handler and they favored the most radical of the groups, namely the Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

In 1991, after the Soviets had left Afghanistan, the ISI tried to install a government under Hekmatyar with Jalalabad as their provisional capital, but failed. The Afghan Interim Government, which they wanted to install, had Hekmatyar as Prime Minister and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf as Foreign Minister. The central organizer of the offensive on the Pakistan side was Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, Director-General of the ISI. The Jalalabad operation was seen as a grave mistake by other mujahideen leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Haq. Neither Massoud nor Haq had been informed of the offensive beforehand by the ISI, and neither had participated, as both commanders were considered too independent.

After operations by the Shura-e Nazar of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the defection of the communist general Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the subsequent fall of the communist Mohammad Najibullah-regime in 1992, the Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accords. The Accords created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period to be followed by general elections. According to Human Rights Watch:

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal concludes in ''Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival'':

By 1994, however, Hekmatyar had proved unable to conquer territory from the Islamic State. Australian National University Professor William Maley writes, "in this respect he was a bitter disappointment to his patrons."

Present

Since the Afghan Presidential Elections in late 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai has increasingly become isolated, surrounding himself with members of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami. The ''Associated Press'' reports: "Several of Karzai's close friends and advisers now speak of a president whose doors have closed to all but one narrow faction and who refuses to listen to dissenting opinions."

''Al-Jazeera'' wrote in early 2012 that Presidential Chief of Staff, Karim Khoram from Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, besides controlling the Government Media and Information Center, enjoys a "tight grip" over President Karzai. Former co-workers of Khoram have accused him of acting "divisive internally" and having isolated Hamid Karzai's "non-Pashtun allies". ''Al-Jazeera'' observes: "The damage that Khoram has inflicted on President Karzai's image in one year - his enemies could not have done the same." Senior non-Hezb-e Islami Pashtun officials in the Afghan government have accused Khoram of acting as a spy for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

Afghan Taliban

Summary

The Taliban were largely founded by Pakistan's Interior Ministry under Naseerullah Babar and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1994.Hall Gardner