Inter-Services Intelligence
Relatively unknown outside of Pakistan since its inception, the agency gained global recognition and fame in the 1980s when it backed the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War in the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.[4][5][6] Following the dissolution of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, the ISI provided strategic support and intelligence to the Taliban against the Northern Alliance during the Afghan Civil War in the 1990s.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in their first ever open acknowledgement in 2011 in US Court, said that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sponsors and oversees the insurgency in Kashmir by arming separatist militant groups.In a confidential report to the Joint Service Commander's Committee, Cawthorn wrote: "In October 1948, Brigadier Shahid Hamid was assigned the task of building this organization from scratch.Despite significant challenges, such as the lack of experienced personnel and essential records, as well as continued staff shortages, he successfully developed the Directorate into a functional organization.Based on communication interceptions, US intelligence agencies concluded Pakistan's ISI was behind the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on 7 July 2008, a charge that the governments of India and Afghanistan had laid previously.[39] Three deputy director generals, who are serving two-star military officers, report directly to the director general with each deputy heading three wings respectively:[40] Military officers of the three branches of the Pakistan Armed Forces and paramilitary forces such as ANF, ASF, Pakistan Rangers, Frontier Corps, Gilgit-Baltistan Scouts and Maritime Security Agency as well as civilian officers from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Pakistan Customs, Police, Judiciary and Ministry of Defence make up ISI's general staff.[45][46][47] According to retired air marshal Shahzad Chaudhry, three to four names are provided by the Chief of Army Staff, and the prime minister selects the director general from that list,[48] and the appointed serves for two to three years.[51] Walter Cawthorn Syed Shahid Hamid[52]HJ Mirza Hamid Hussain[52] Muhammad Afzal Malik[52] Syed Ghawas[52] Sher Bahadur Muhammad Hayat Riaz Hussain[52] Muhammed Akbar Khan[53] Ghulam Jilani Khan Muhammad Riaz Khan Akhtar Abdur RahmanNI(M) HI(M) Hamid GulHI(M) SBt Shamsur Rahman KalluHI(M) TBt Asad DurraniHI(M) Javed NasirHI(M) SBt Javed Ashraf QaziHI(M) SBt Naseem Rana Ziauddin ButtHI(M) Mahmud AhmedHI(M) Ehsan ul HaqHI(M) Ashfaq Parvez KayaniHI(M) SI(M) TI(M) Nadeem TajHI(M) TBt Ahmad Shuja PashaHI(M) Zaheerul IslamHI(M) Rizwan Akhtar Naveed Mukhtar Asim MunirHI(M) Faiz HameedHI(M) Nadeem Anjum Asim Malik The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history and has always been unwilling to see its influence being compromised by any civilian leaders.Though Butt was not the preferred choice of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, he grew close with him, and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Pervez Musharraf took over important ISI files.The article detailed a presentation by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry about international pressure to crack down on Pakistan's extremist segments such as Masood Azhar, the Jaish-i-Mohmmad, Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani network.[59][60] During the October 2016 meeting, Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif allegedly revealed that, whenever action had been taken against certain extremist groups by civilian authorities, the security agency had worked secretly to free the arrested parties.[60] Pakistan's mainstream media reported on the October 2021 constitutional rift between civil and armed wings over the appointment of the director general post only after ministers spoke on the matter.Declan Walsh from The Guardian said that the entrance is "suitably discreet: no sign, just a plainclothes officer packing a pistol who directs visitors through a chicane of barriers, soldiers, and sniffer dogs".Selected candidates are then invited for an interview which is conducted by a joint committee comprising both ISI and FPSC officials, and are then sent to the Defence Services Intelligence Academy (DSIA) for six months of training.[145] A December 2011 analysis report by the Jamestown Foundation came to the conclusion that In spite of denials by the Pakistani military, evidence is emerging that elements within the Pakistani military harbored Osama bin Laden with the knowledge of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.General Ziauddin Khawaja) revealed at a conference on Pakistani-U.S. relations in October 2011 that according to his knowledge the then former Director-General of Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan (2004–2008), Brigadier Ijaz Shah (retd.As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen stated: The fact remains that the Quetta Shura [Taliban] and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity ...... For example, we believe the Haqqani Network—which has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government ... is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.[156] According to the United States diplomatic cables leak, the ISI had previously shared intelligence information with Israel regarding possible terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli sites in India in late 2008.[163][164][165] According to Grant Holt and David H. Gray, "The agency specializes in utilizing terrorist organizations as proxies for Pakistani foreign policy, covert action abroad, and controlling domestic politics."[166] James Forest says, "There has been increasing proof from counter-terrorism organizations that militants and the Taliban continue to receive assistance from the ISI, as well as the establishment of camps to train terrorists on Pakistani territory.[169] According to Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, both former members of the National Security Council, the ISI acted as a "kind of terrorist conveyor belt" radicalizing young men in the Madrassas in Pakistan and delivering them to training camps affiliated with or run by Al-Qaeda and from there moving them into Jammu and Kashmir to launch attacks.[170] Since the 1990s, the ISI began communicating with the jihadists who emerged from the conflict against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and by 2000 most militant groups operating in Kashmir were based in Pakistan or were pro-Pakistan.The compound itself, although unusually tall, was less conspicuous than sometimes envisaged by Americans, given the common local habit of walling off homes for protection against violence or to ensure the privacy of female family members.[198][199] Aljazeera reported [200] that six judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) accused the ISI of interference in judicial matters, citing abduction, torture, and surveillance.