The role of intelligence agencies, particularly the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), in national politics is not hidden from anybody. Pro-military writers often claim that it was a civilian prime minister namely Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who first allowed the creation of a political cell in the ISI that ultimately led the agency to get involved in national politics in all important matters from buying the loyalties of politicians to influencing the results of the elections. However, this statement is denied by some military leaders themselves. In an interview published on October 4, 2007, President Pervez Musharraf is on record for saying that the ISI has been playing its role in domestic politics for as many as five decades. That would mean that the ISI has been actively involved in national politics at least since the imposition of first martial law in the country on October 7, 1958, if not before. At the time of independence on August 14, 1947, Pakistan had only two intelligence agencies namely the Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB). The Inter Services Intelligence was a part of the Intelligence Bureau. The MI was responsible for sharing intelligence between the Army, Navy and Air Force. On the other hand, the IB handled intelligence sharing between different branches of the military and external intelligence sources. The first war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir began in October 1947 and ended in December 1948. After the war, it was felt that both the MI and the IB had failed to make a satisfactory performance in the first Indo-Pakistan war. Therefore, the government of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan separated the ISI wing from the IB and gave it the status of an independent intelligence agency with its headquarters in Rawalpindi. All the three agencies had their own spheres of activities though they had a common goal of preserving the national security. Since there is hardly any significant political activity, national or international, which does not directly or indirectly involve national security, there was much overlapping in the functions of the three agencies. Despite that, unnecessary conflict in day to day working was avoided by all the three agencies. While the MI confined itself to matters of the military’s internal interest, the ISI concerned itself with the matters of external interest. On the other hand, the IB concentrated on domestic political activities reporting directly to the Prime Minister. Both the MI and the ISI reported to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army which was later designated as the Chief of the Army Staff. It was left to the Army Chief to bring all matters of interest to the notice of the Prime Minister through the Ministry of Defence. This arrangement continued fairly smoothly until Major General (Retired) Iskander Mirza became Governor General on August 7, 1955. Mirza rose to power with the help of General Ayub Khan. In return for his co-operation, Mirza granted Ayub four year extension as Army Chief. Ayub was beholden to President Mirza. Therefore, Iskander Mirza used the MI and the ISI to buy the loyalties of political leaders. Although the IB was still under the control of the prime minister but he could do little to stop the intervention of the other two agencies as they were being directly controlled by Mirza. President Mirza imposed martial law on October 7, 1958 and appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator and Prime Minister of Pakistan. As soon as the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Muhammad Munir legitimised martial law on October 27, 1958, General Ayub Khan took over as President and sent Mirza in exile to London. From that time onwards, all the three intelligence agencies came under the direct control of the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator. The maintenance of national Security, which was the principal function of all the three agencies, came to mean the consolidation of the Ayub regime. Any criticism of General Ayub Khan or his policies was seen as a threat to national security. Therefore, the three intelligence agencies started competing with each other in demonstrating their loyalty to Ayub Khan and his system of government. At that time neither the ISI nor the MI had their offices in the districts. Because of that limitation their domestic activities were fairly restrained. Yet they did perform specific duties in the districts to keep a watch on ‘undesirable’ politicians and civil servants. President Ayub received reports from the IB directly while the ISI and the MI reported regularly on the political situation in the country through the Army chief. He sent his reports in sealed envelopes marked ‘Eyes Only’. These reports clearly showed that the agencies were keeping the politicians, particularly the East Pakistanis, under close surveillance. The IB chief had direct access to the President and his weekly reports used to be fairly exhaustive. It was during the presidential election in l964 that the ISI and the MI became extremely active. While the IB gave the President a detailed, assessment of his prospects in the election, the ISI and the MI kept him informed of the trend of public opinion based largely on gossip. The election results showed that the three agencies had seriously under-estimated the popularity of Miss Fatima Jinnah and given Ayub Khan too optimistic a picture of his prospects. The crisis of intelligence services surfaced once again during the 1965 war. The ISI had fairly strong network at that time. It had been provided with sophisticated equipments and a huge force of operators at work. The agency claimed to have contacts inside the Occupied Kashmir and in other major Indian cities to get advance information on aggression by the Indian forces. However, when the war actually broke out on September 6, 1965, there was a complete blackout of news from all the intelligence agencies. The performance of the MI was even more frustrating. The mobile transmitter which the MI had acquired to broadcast the Voice of Kashmir conked out. After the cease-fire, Ayub Khan showed his dissatisfaction over the working of these agencies. Much later Ayub Khan set up a committee to examine the working of the agencies under General Yahya Khan. The main task of the committee was to examine the causes of the failure of intelligence agencies to get advance information on the Indian attack and to make suitable recommendations to avert such situations in future. The committee shifted all the blame for the incompetence of the MI and ISI to the IB. General Yahya Khan proposed that officers of ISI and Ml should be posted at district headquarters. He clearly wanted to involve the ISI and MI in domestic politics at lower level, taking the two agencies farther away from their constitutional role of ‘national security’. It is a matter of record that General Yahya Khan used these two agencies to get rid of President Ayub Khan after unleashing a popular campaign against him. The intelligence agencies got even more deeply involved in domestic politics after General Yahya Khan assumed power on March 26, 1969. The ISI jumped headlong into the political crisis in East Pakistan. A National Security Council was created under the chairmanship of General Yahya Khan with Major General Ghulam Umar as second in command to control the intelligence operation which was meant to ensure that no political party should get an overall majority in the general elections to be held in December 1970. An amount of Rs 29 lac was put at the disposal of General Umar for the purpose. The lavish spending of money as well as military operations failed to deliver the goods and the people of East Pakistan gave an unprecedented victory to Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman’s Awami League in the general elections. The rest is history and need not be repeated here. Since 1970, the ISI has been at the forefront of domestic politics. It is an open secret that ISI played an important role in Pakistan National Alliance’s movement against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that culminated in General Ziaulhaq’s seizure of power. Again, it is an open secret that the same agency was behind the formation and winning of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad in 1990 elections. Therefore, General (Retired) Aslam Beg’s solemn affirmation before the Supreme Court of Pakistan that the ISI got involved in the internal politics of the country only after a special cell was created by Prime Minister Bhutto in 1975 is a culpable attempt at concealing the truth and distorting the record of the operations of the military intelligence agencies since independence. There can be no stable political government in the country as long as our intelligence agencies continue their involvement in domestic politics.
Courtesy: Frontier Post, 22/2/2008
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