Abstract
There is plenty of literature available on Pakistani politics, history and civil–military relations. However, there have been comparatively fewer detailed studies on Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, especially the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Essentially, the literature on the ISI falls into two basic camps. The first seeks to demonize the agency in some form. Notable examples include Krishna Dhar’s Fulcrum of Evil: ISI–CIA–Al Qaeda Nexus, S. K. Ghosh’s Pakistan’s ISI: Network of Terror in India, Bhure Lal’s The Monstrous Face of ISI and B. Raman’s Intelligence: Past, Present and Future, which all take an Indian nationalist view of ISI’s role in Kashmir, Northeast India and Afghanistan. Moreover, these accounts lack in-depth analysis of the internal organizational structure, financial mechanism and institutional capacity of the ISI. In contrast, the second camp typically approaches the ISI in a more neutral or, at least, professional way. For example, Sean P. Winchell’s ‘Pakistan’s ISI: The Invisible Government’ and Owen L. Sirrs’s Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate expose the internal intricacies of this otherwise formidable force which has been, for decades, at the centre of policymaking in Pakistan.
Kiessling’s recent book, Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan, falls into the second category, at least in the sense that it clearly does not consider the ISI inherently evil. Importantly, the present manuscript is seemingly an improved version of his 2011 book on India’s (foreign intelligence) Research and Analysis Wing and ISI. Based on Kiessling’s 13-year (1989–2002) lived experience in Pakistan, the book is divided into small but easy-to-understand chapters (21 in number) besides introduction, postscript and appendices. Two of the appendices are provided to the author by the ISI demonstrating that it is able to communicate its perspective, especially on counter terrorism.
Kiessling begins his analysis with ISI’s origins, identifying that it was established as a small-scale organization in 1948 by Australian-born British General and spymaster Walter Joseph Cawthorne (pp. 14–15). Cawthorne, who was hired by the Pakistani Army, had already conceived Soviet Russia as a strategic threat to the British interests in South Asia and the Middle East. Thus, his desire was to establish an intelligence apparatus that could be utilized as an effective instrument to counter Russian, if not the Indian, moves in the region. Soon, however, the Pakistani Army and the ISI were indigenized organizationally and ideologically.
From July 1948 onwards, a Pakistani Army officer led the ISI. Moreover, ISI’s primary focus shifted from trans-regional geopolitics to national politics and security policy. As a result, Iskander Mirza, a general-cum-bureaucrat, and General Ayub Khan, the commander-in-chief, spied upon both Prime Minister Noon and the Opposition during the 1950s (p. 21). Once the ISI was directed towards internal surveillance of the political class, rather than just suspected enemies of the state, its more infamous role in shaping Pakistan’s political scene was only a short step forward.
As regards the country’s security policy, the agency’s capacity and role was quite limited during the 1960s. Although the ISI was involved in supporting numerous anti-India insurgencies, Generals Ayub and Yahya Khan relied more on non-ISI intelligence apparatuses such as Military Intelligence and the (civilian) Intelligence Bureau (IB). This probably explains the agency’s inability to gather enemy intelligence during the 1965 India–Pakistan War (p. 23). Although during the 1971 crisis in East Pakistan, the ISI proved to be efficient in terms of forwarding copies of General Manekshaw’s operational instructions on the forthcoming Indian invasion of Pakistani troops, the country’s military and civil leadership failed to prevent the disintegration of Pakistan.
In the post-breakup period, Zulfiqar Bhutto attempted to rejuvenate the morale of the armed forces including the ISI. To counter the Soviet–Afghan elements, the Bhutto government empowered and trusted the ISI to train and utilize around 5,000 strong Afghan guerrilla troops. Colonel Syed Raza Ali played a major role in this respect. Ironically, however, Bhutto was deposed unceremoniously in July 1977. This may have been due to Bhutto’s efforts to tamper the internal power of the ISI by creating two parallel organizations, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and Federal Security Force (FSF), to oversee the ISI. Bhutto himself certainly thought so, insinuating that ‘a possible conspiracy had been hatched against him among the military leadership and the intelligence agencies’ (p. 39).
The role, size and influence of the ISI grew immensely under its Director General (DG), Akhtar Abdul Rehman, during General Zia’s regime (1977–88). The ISI conceived, established and operationalized its Afghanistan Bureau, which trained 80,000 mujahideen, paid them millions of US dollars in cash and distributed tons of sophisticated weapons to various Afghan militias (p. 54). Of course, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collaborated with its counterpart in these efforts. With the Soviets withdrawal from Afghanistan starting in 1987, the USA re-ranked its strategic priorities in terms of the Geneva Accords (1988), effectively turning its back on the region, believing its mission complete. The ISI under DG Hamid Gul thought differently towards Afghanistan and India—the ‘Disaster in Jalalabad’, as discussed in the book, is a case in point (p. 67). Owing to his fundamentalist obsession with pan-Islamism and anti-People’s Party stance, Gul was replaced by retired General Shamsur Rehman Kallue (May 1989–Aug 1990). Through this appointment, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto attempted to ‘domesticate’ the prime agency but in vain (p. 81). Consequently, she lost her government at the hands of pro-military President Ghulam Ishaq Khan who, in the following years, dismissed the Sharif government on similarly dubious charges.
Kiessling has highlighted, with primary data, the complexities of civil–military relations in the 1990s quite candidly. Moreover, his description of ISI’s engagement with the Taliban (1994–2001) is based on his personal contact with members of the agency. However, what is not clear is the role of the ISI with respect to handing over Osama bin Laden to the USA. DG of the ISI, Lt Gen. Ehsan ul Haq (Oct 2001–04) was instrumental in Pakistan’s Afghan policy and the bilateral relations with the USA, Saudi Arabia and China. Although the agency cooperated with the American CIA under Musharraf, the ISI guarded the national interests by registering concerns over the excessive use of drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas (p. 186). The US–Pakistan relations deteriorated in the post-Musharraf period (2008–13), when the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led government urged the USA to prevent coup d’état in the wake of bin Laden’s killing by the US Navy SEALs in May 2011. The Raymond Davis Affair and the Salala incident, in the same year, halted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply via Pakistan to Afghanistan. Besides, the Gilani (Zardari) government attempted to control the ISI along with signalling friendly gestures to India. This strained civil–military relations to the extent that PM Gilani was fired by the pro-military judiciary.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government (2013–2018) continued PPP’s policy of attempting to normalize relations with India, interfering in the military and ISI’s internal matters, controlling the foreign policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, China and the USA. The Sharif government also attempted to curtail the ISI by empowering the IB institutionally. The Army and the ISI, keen to stay relevant in contemporary Pakistan, responded with its own institutional manoeuvres. The most notable result was ISI’s role in encouraging the Judiciary to disqualify Nawaz Sharif after the recent Panama Papers scandal.
In Kiessling’s view, Pakistan’s premier agency is still a powerful force in the region. It views India as a chronic enemy in illegal control of Kashmir, whereas Afghanistan is seen as an unfriendly country under Indian patronage which is instrumental in causing terrorism in Pakistan, especially Balochistan. The latter has assumed a highly significant position within the Army’s strategic calculus and the ISI is working as the Army’s trusted tool to ward off internal and external threats.
However, the strength of Kiessling’s book lies in its attempt to bridge the gap in the literature with respect to the internal structure, functions and intra-agency power relations. This objective is partly achieved as there remain questions on the role and position of the ISI within the contemporary intelligence apparatuses, politics and security/foreign policy of Pakistan. For example, the book is silent on what happened between ISI and CIA over the Raymond Davis issue and whether the ISI knows of the US Navy SEALs operation?
Another potential detraction for some readers is the author’s journalistic approach to the topic. Hence, those looking for a more rigorous academic study of the ISI and its history and current role will not find it here. Moreover, minor errors such as typos detract from its quality with even the title containing a grammatical error (‘inter-service’ is put instead of ‘inter-services’). Nonetheless, Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan is reader-friendly, very educational investigation on the subject, and thus recommended for specialists and laymen readers alike.