on the longitivity of cold war monsters in the Hindukush

http://www.hvk.org/articles/1198/0022.html

maintains on the Pakistani intelligence service ISI

Title: Living in the ISI's shadow
Author: Maloy Krishna Dhar
Publication: Kashmir Sentinel
Date: September 1 - October 15, 1998


Our Political masters, Jayalalitha included, cry hoarse about the
foreign hand whenever their cup of milk sours, their favourite
targets being the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or that ogre-
next-door, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Their
noises, however, do not reflect the extent of the danger India
faces from the ISI. And no matter how loud they are in their
denunciation of the ISI, we know very little about the genie
acquiring demoniacal proportions in our backyard.
The two umbilical twins, India and Pakistan, have been kicking
and scratching at each other for five decades, fighting
disastrous wars, open and covert. Now that we have armed
ourselves with the brahmastras nuclear weapons and sophisticated
missile technology - it is presumed that the wise men in New
Delhi and Islamabad will limit their war cries to posturing and
not pound each other with the nuclear hammer.
But peace by nuclear deterrence, the cold war cliche, isn't
likely to put an end to Pakistan's strategy or proxy war and
export of Islamist terrorism. For, Pakistan understands that
another open war, strategically and tactically, will be suicidal.
And its renewed proxy war against India is being led by that
entity called the ISI Directorate.
it was conceived back in 1948 as the nucleus of the inter-
services coordination module by a British Army Officer who chose
to serve in the Pakistan Army as Deputy Chief of staff after
Partition. The Pakistan Intelligence Bureau, the separated
Siamese twin of India's Intelligence Bureau (IB), was the main
intelligence outfit, besides the military, air and naval
intelligence directorates
Starting as a low -key liaison organisation headed by a
Brigadier, the ISI coordinated the functions of the foreign
military attaches in Pakistan and their Pakistani counterparts
accredited to missions abroad. Pakistan's Kashmir war, however,
led to a sudden spurt in the activities of the ISI Directorate,
even during the lifetime of the Quaide-e-Azam, M.A. Jinnah. It
played a vital role in recruiting tribals and pushing them into
Kashmir.
As the early blossom of democracy withered away and the civil
servant-army coterie hijacked the fledgling nation, Major-General
Iskander Mirza, a Bengali by birth, started nurturing the ISI as
an instrument of governance. The extra-constitutional rulers
badly needed an extra legal instrument to perpetuate their
stranglehold and to carry out a different kind of way against its
umbilical twin in true CIA style.
With General Ayub Khan usurping power in 1958, the ISI received a
shot in the arm. Needless to say, the ISI has always been headed
by officers from the Army, the strongest wing of the armed forces
and the second pillar of the Pakistani establishment. Successive
rulers of Pakistan - Field Marshal Ayub Khan, General Yahya Khan,
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, General Zia-ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif have had their own compulsions in contributing to the
ISI's growth, even as the agency gradually incorporated within it
the characteristics of the CIA, the KGB, the Mossad, the Iranian
Savak and the Afghan Khad.
Z.A. Bhutto's Genie Becomes His Nemesis
Contrary to speculation that Zia-ul-Haq masterminded the honing
of the ISI's dirty operational edges, it was Z.A. Bhutto who
strengthened the military-dominated intelligence outfit and
legalised its involvement in domestic politics. His manipulation
of Lt. General Ghulam Jilani, Director, M, before and during the
1971 War, was part of a cynical conspiracy that culminated in the
breakup of Pakistan. Jilani survived the legal murder of the
Sindhi demagogue and enjoyed Zia's patronage. Ironically, it was
Bhutto who tried to placate the truncated, demoralised and
devastated armed forces by upgrading the ISI chief's rank to that
of a three -star general.
In 1981, Soviet Russia's involvement in Afghanistan changed the
existing geopolitical equations. The involvement of the US,
China and the Islamic nations in the new killing fields of
Afghanistan tempted Zia to involve the ISI in the Afghan
imbroglio as a shadow of Pakistan's regular forces. He had, in
fact, turned the ISI into a CIA -style organisation, adding to
its sinister arsenal, giving it unbridled power to interfere in
internal affairs, including those of his political and military
opponents. The legal murder of Bhutto, in-fact, testified to the
sinister capabilities of this genie, nursed so carefully by the
slain premier himself.
After Bhutto and Zia, there was no looking back for the ISI. It
had turned into a pseudo-political entity under Zia and the
absence of a democratic process and the Russian presence in
Afghanistan conferred upon it a halo of invincibility.
For a brief period, Benazir Bhutto and General Hamid Gul, the ISI
chief, differed on the Afghan issue. It was Gul who had cobbled
up Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), a coalition of parties opposed
to Benazir. An expert in the trade-craft of clandestine arming
and training of the mujahids, Gul had not only masterminded the
ISI's Afghan forays, but had also helped the military regime
fashion its strategic thrust into Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
After her electoral victory, however, Benazir sacked Hamid Gul
and inducted Lt. General (Retd) Shamsur Rahman Kallue. That
infuriated the army establishment as the top brass wanted to
install a serving ally. An alarm was sounded that Benazir was out
to curtail the ISI's internal political clout because of its
involvement in the harassment of PPP leaders during Zia's regime,
apart from the legal murder of her father.
Benazir made an effort, through the Zulfiqar Committee, to
curtail the ISI's sphere of influence. Following her dismissal,
Major General Asad Durrani was appointed ISI chief and was
followed by Lt. General Javed Nasir and later by Lt. General
Javed Ashraf Kazi.
With the induction of General Nasir, an officer of the Corps of
Engineers, the ISI again got embroiled in internal politics and
the export of terrorism. An Islamist fundamentalist, a member of
the Jamaat-e-Islam and Tabligh-i-Jamaat, the proselytizing
fraternity and a Kashmiri to boot, Nasir thrived on anti-India
brine. He brought in qualitative changes in the ISI's Afghan
forays, but had also helped the military regime fashion its
strategic thrust into Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir terrorists.
His tenure concluded with Benazir's second incarnation, when
state-sponsored terrorism had not only affected Afghanistan and
India, but adversely impacted on Pakistan-US and Pakistan China
relations as well.
Besides prolonged cross-border terrorism in India, the
involvement of Pakistan trained terrorists in Bosnia, Algeria,
Saudi Arabia, southern Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, the
Xinjiang province of China and even on US soil had peaked by the
end of 1992, when the US threatened to declare Pakistan a
terrorist state. Nasir's removal, after Nawaz Sharif's dismissal,
in fact, was welcomed by Washington and Beijing.
The ISI's Afghan sojourn, meanwhile, is a saga of freeboot
buccaneering. The Taliban episode is a flagrant violation of
international diplomatic fair-play, with tacit encouragement from
the US. and several Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia. For
us, ISI activities in Afghanistan are a pointer to its ability to
escalate Islamic terrorism in J&K and carry out a proxy war
elsewhere in the country, Pakistan has been emboldened by its
firm belief that renewed acts of terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir
by its 'holy warriors' wouldn't invite swift retaliation by India
inside its territory.
Besides India, Pakistan supports Islamist terrorism in the
Xinjiang province of China and CIS countries as an instrument of
ensuring its enduring centrality in the evolving regional
dynamics. Pakistan is simply trying to pick up the mantle of the
Turkish, Iranian and Saudi regimes in the Central Asian void
after the break up of the USSR. Pressure from the US. China and
Saudi Arabia, as well as internal compulsions, however, forced
Pakistan to shift its training schools for terrorists from its
soil to Afghan territory.
Significantly, the rapidly expanding terrorist training system
has been integrated with the madrasas in Pakistan and even with
selected madrasas in western UP, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and
J&K. The madrasa students ( or Taliban) are indoctrinated in the
pan-Islamist notion of Ummah-i-Wahidah, or an organic entity
transcending all boundaries.
This new doctrine of involving the madrasas beyond the borders of
Pakistan is laden with the possibility of fundamentalist
terrorist activities escalating not only in J&K, but also in
other parts of India. The ISI operations in India have always
been an extension of the strategic and diplomatic arms of
Pakistani establishment. Apart from its involvement in the North-
East insurgency. Left extremist movements in North Bengal (Charu
Mazumdar group), the Punjab turmoil, Kashmir militancy, Mumbai
bomb blasts and innumerable other acts of sabotage and
subversion, the ISI has been active; in fomenting communal riots
in northern India and, more recently, in the South as well.
Southern India, in fact, has seen a number of bombing incidents
and communal riots perpetrated by ISI motivated fundamentalist
modules, nursed assiduously since 1985, and not in the wake of
the Ayodhya tragedy, as some of our politicians would like us to
believe.
Strident Hindutva feeds the Monester
The ISI, besides operating under the cover of accredited
diplomatic and non-diplomatic officials, numbering about 30,
depend largely on : Even as the agents target military and other
sensitive secrets, a large number of operatives sponsored by the
ISI - belonging to front organisations like Islamic Mahaz, Dawaal
Islami, Al Fuqra, Muslim Mujaheedin, Al Jehad, Motammar-al-
Islami, Binnori Town Mosque in the New Town district of Karachi
(the alma mater of the Taliban movement), Jamait-ul-Mujaheedin,
Hijb-ul-Mujaheedin, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Ikhwan-ul-
Mussalmin, and so on - regularly infiltrate to launch acts of
subversion.
The thrust target areas of ISI sponsored fundamentalists are
Assam, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Bihar, parts of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar bordering Nepal, Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh, with areas of special interest being Punjab and J&K
besides pockets in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Now that our strategic capability has reached a nuclear peak, it
is natural for the ISI to reinforce its thrust, targeting our
areas of weakness. The lull between overt wars have been
exploited by Pakistan to- accelerate its proxy war. Unwittingly,
certain political groups are abetting the fragmentation of India
by indulging in blind Hindutva, and the Sangh Parivar's
ambivalence on the issue is only reinforcing the schizophrenic
isolation of the minorities. The ISI is exploiting this
alienation to its advantage. The Coimbatore blasts were
symptomatic of this painful truth.
As India gets more polarised, new points, of conflict will
provide soft targets to the ISI. Post nuclear India under the BJP
has not only invited economic sanctions, but also waved the
proverbial' red rag to the charging bull. War cries against
India have sustained crumbling regimes in Islamabad and the post-
sanctions Sharif dispensation may find it difficult to resist the
temptation.

http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/book99/ciabk.htm

maintains:

CIA peddles drugs while US media act as cheer leaders
        WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS By Alexander Cockburn &
Jeffrey St. Clair. Published by Verso, London, UK & New York, US. 1998.
pp.408. Hbk: 22.00 pounds.

By Zafar Bangash 


The US makes a big deal of its seriousness to fight drugs. It has a Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) whose agents are stationed in at least 32 countries
around the world. It also circulates a list of countries each year which are
considered not to be fighting vigorously to prevent drug trafficking. 
To be sure, there is big money in drug business. The United Nations Drug
Control Programme reported that in 1997, worldwide drug trade amounted to
more than US$500 billion. Ten years earlier, it was $85 billion; one-sixth
of what it is today. By the year 2014, worldwide drug trade is expected to
equal the total gross domestic product of the US - $7 trillion. Neither the
US nor its banks can afford to bypass such enormous sums. In fact, several
commentators have suggested that major western banks are behind moves to
legalise drug money in order to stay afloat. Similarly, western governments
want to bring this money into circulation as they see enormous tax benefits
from it. 
Be that as it may, in White Out, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
provide another dimension of the drug trade that is both startling and
informative. They start with the story of Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury
News reporter whose explosive investigative pieces in August 1996 on the
CIA's role in selling cocaine in the streets of Los Angeles led to great
disquiet in the African-American community. 
Webb's thoroughly-researched pieces were at first met with deafening silence
by the establishment media - the New York Times, Washington Post, Los
Angeles Times - and later rubbished as sensational, and without foundation.
Even more astonishing, the Mercury, far from standing up to defend its own
reporter, distanced itself from Webb's series under pressure. Webb was asked
to discontinue the series and pressured to resign. He sued the paper and
later reached an out-of-court settlement with it. 
Cockburn and St Clair point out that the mainstream media's only source for
dismissing Webb's stories was the CIA itself. The spy agency could hardly be
expected to admit that it was involved in drug peddling. Ralph McGehee, a
former CIA officer, is quoted by the authors: "We'd go down and lie to them
[US congress] regularly. In my 25 years, I have never seen the agency tell
the truth to a congressional committee" (p.110). If the CIA can lie under
oath to the US congress and get away with it, why would it not lie about its
involvement in drug trafficking to journalists? Some of them were quite
eager to print every lie churned out by the agency. 
The CIA has also carried out numerous assassination attempts on foreign
leaders. It has been successful in some - Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican
Republic (1961); Patrice Lumumba of the Congo/Zaire (1961); Ngo Dinh Diem of
South Vietnam (1963); Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran (overthrown, not
assassinated in 1953), and Salvadore Allende of Chile (1973) etc. 
In other attempts--against Fidel Castro of Cuba, for instance--it has
failed. The authors quote the former CIA director William Colby as saying
that "Castro gave [George] McGovern in 1975 a list of attempts on his life -
there were about thirty by that time - as he said, by the CIA. McGovern gave
it to me and I looked through it and checked it off against our records and
said we could account for about five or six... " (p.101). That a former CIA
director would admit to six attempts on the life of the leader of another
country in such a nonchalant manner shows brazenness of the highest order.
Imagine if Cuba had carried out six attempts on the life of a US president! 
In March 1998, nearly two years after Webb's series appeared, the CIA's
inspector general, Fred Hitz, admitted before the US house of
representatives that the agency maintained relationships with companies and
individuals that the CIA knew to be involved in drug trafficking (p. 49). 
Even more astonishing, Hitz admitted that the agency had requested and
received in 1982 clearance from the US justice department during Ronald
Reagan's first term in office as president, not to report any knowledge it
might have of drug dealing by CIA 'assets'. The word 'asset' needs
clarification. In the murky world of espionage, the CIA draws up a fine
distinction between what it calls agents - people employed full-time by the
CIA - and those whom it terms as 'assets' - people who do the agency's dirty
work on contract for periodic payouts. 
The distinction is largely academic but it allows the CIA to deny
involvement in certain operations. This is what the agency was doing in Los
Angeles where its 'assets' - Norwin Meneses, Oscar Danilo Blandon - were
involved in selling crack cocaine to raise money for the Contra rebels in
Nicaragua. 
The Contra connection was a murky affair, according to the authors. In 1981,
Reagan had signed Directive-17 to help the Contras overthrow the legitimate
government in Nicaragua headed by the Sandinista. A year later, congress
prohibited any US aid to the Contras whereupon the Reagan administration,
the CIA and the US National Security Council turned to drug traffickers to
raise funds. 
But it would be wrong to assume that the CIA entered into the drug trade
only in the eighties, or to fund the Contras only - Reagan's favourite
terrorist outfit in Central America. The CIA, as Cockburn and St Clair
reveal, had been in this business right from the beginning. In fact, even
before it came into existence, its predecessors, the OSS and the Office of
Naval Intelligence, were involved with criminals. One such criminal was
Lucky Luciano, the most notorious gangster and drug trafficker in America in
the forties. 
Luciano was plucked out of prison and sent to Italy during the second world
war to recruit people in the war against Mussolini. He was given a free hand
to liaise with the mafia, hence such a strong mafia presence in the US.
Luciano gathered all the seedy characters around him and American largesse
flowed freely. 
The second world war also brought other criminal characters in contact with
the US. Some of the most notorious nazi scientists were brought straight
from their labs in the concentration camps to work for the CIA. They not
only helped produce the atomic bomb, these scientists also worked on
mind-control drugs, and chemical and biological weapons. One Jewish
scientist, Dr Sidney Gottlieb of New York, was notorious for his experiments
that outstripped anything the others did. Klaus Barbie, the 'butcher of
Lyons', was saved from the gallows, taken to Bolivia and given a new
identity to work for the CIA. 
Cockburn and St Clair say that the CIA carried out mind-altering experiments
on blacks and used other drugs to determine their effects. These blacks, all
American citizens, were kept unaware of what drugs were being injected into
them. Some of them suffered horribly. 
The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking closely dovetails America's
adventures overseas - from Indo-China in the sixties to Afghanistan in the
eighties. As Alfred McCoy states in his book: Politics of Heroin: CIA
complicity in the Global Drug Trade, beginning with CIA raids from Burma
into China in the early fifties, the agency found that 'ruthless drug lords
made effective anti-communists.' He went on: 'During a major operation,
everything is subordinated' to the main purpose. 
This was also the case in Afghanistan, which has had disastrous consequences
for Pakistan, conduit for US arms to Afghanistan. While the authors state
that a number of Afghan leaders were involved in the drug trade, they single
out Gulbuddin Hikmatyar for special treatment. It is easy to see why. He was
the most uncompromising of all the Afghan leaders who even refused to meet
Reagan during a visit to New York in 1986. 
Despite the enormous detail, much of it fascinating, provided by the
authors, there is one area where they have clearly erred. Their claim (p.
269) that Zia was assassinated "by a bomb planted (probably by senior
military officers)" is off the mark. The fact is that it was a CIA job. 
General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), told this writer that after Zia's plane crash, the US air force came
to conduct an inquiry. He said the 'inquiry' was very superficial and a few
weeks later, Robert Oakley, then US ambassador in Islamabad, gave him a copy
of the air force report which stated that the C-130 plane had crashed
because of dirt in one of its engines. According to general Gul, Pakistan
had managed to retrieve two engines intact and when McDonnell-Douglas - the
plane's manufacturers - carried out their tests, they rejected the dirt
theory completely. 
Oakley later came to general Gul requesting that the report be returned to
him. The general refused, saying that it had already been forwarded to the
Pakistan air force. General Hamid Gul then wrote to the air force chief, air
marshal Hakimullah, requesting that the report stay in Pakistan. The air
marshal agreed. 
Given this background, one is forced to ask: is their claim about Zia's
assassination deliberate disinformation or based on faulty undertanding?
True, it forms a minor part of the book but it is important that accuracy be
maintained. While the authors have done a remarkable job in exposing the
CIA's dirty deeds, its involvement in drug trafficking and the cheer-leading
of the establishment media in the US, there are certain areas in which they
have been less than forthright. 
Similarly, they have been deliberately vague about the heroin laboratories
in Pakistan. These were set up by the CIA. In fact, there is considerable
evidence to suggest that Vincent Cannistraro, a veteran CIA operative, who
took charge of disbursing aid to the Afghan mujahideen in 1984, was
instrumental in setting up such labs with devastating results for Pakistan.
The authors treat Cannistraro with kidgloves and do not mention his role in
promoting heroin production in Pakistan. 
All this brings us to the point about relying too much on the western media.
Even the most anti-establishment journalists tend to mislead in certain
respects. Muslims would do well to remember that they have no choice but to
be very careful. As the noble Qur'an states so clearly: "O you who are
committed to Allah! When a fasiq comes to you with some news, verify it.."
(49: 13). 
Muslimedia: January 16-31, 1999