Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [113]
We have to worry that if we do what you say and crack down on them that some of them at least will turn to terrorism against Pakistan in alliance with the Taleban. After all, they have the ideology and the training. The last thing we need now is yet another extremist threat. And, after all, is it really in your interest either to cause revolt in Punjab? This province alone has three times the population of the whole of Afghanistan, and don’t forget that the army too is recruited from here.
These officials also do not add that one way of keeping LeT quiet in Pakistan is to allow (or even encourage) its activists to join the Afghan Taleban to fight against Western forces on the other side of the Durand Line.
In Jaish-e-Mohammed, by contrast, militants pressing for a jihad against the ‘slave’ government of Pakistan prevailed against the counsel of the group’s leadership. The suspected involvement of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) activists in the attempt to assassinate Musharraf in December 2003 (apparently with low-level help from within the armed forces) led to a harsh crackdown on parts of the group by Pakistani intelligence. On the other hand, ISI links with the group meant that other parts remained loyal to the Pakistani state – though only, perhaps, because they were allowed to help the Taleban in Afghanistan and to retain at least their potential to attack India.
Moreover, their long association with the militants, first in Afghanistan and then in Kashmir, had led some ISI officers into a close personal identification with the forces that they were supposed to be controlling. This leads to a whole set of interlocking questions: how far the Pakistani high command continues to back certain militant groups; how far the command of the ISI may be following a strategy in this regard independent from that of the military; and how far individual ISI officers may have escaped from the control of their superiors and be supporting and planning terrorist actions on their own. This in turn leads to the even more vital question of how far the Pakistani military is penetrated by Islamist extremist elements, and whether there is any possibility of these carrying out a successful military coup from below, against their own high command.
Since this whole field is obviously kept very secret by the institutions concerned (including Military Intelligence, which monitors the political and ideological allegiances of officers), there are no definitive answers to these questions. What follows is informed guesswork based on numerous discussions with experts and off-the-record talks with Pakistani officers including retired ISI officers. It is also worth remembering that even in Western democracies (notably France and the US) intelligence services have had a tendency to develop both institutional cultures and institutional strategies of their own; and also that the nature of their work can make it extremely difficult to control the activities of individual agents – especially of course after they retire. A number of retired middle-ranking ISI officers are reported to have openly joined LeT and other militant groups.
Concerning the ISI, the consensus of my informants is as follows. There is considerable resentment of the ISI in the rest of the military, owing to their perceived arrogance and suspected corruption. This sentiment was crystallized by a notorious case in 2006 when ISI officers harassed the family of a highly decorated retired brigadier after a clash between his grandchildren and the children of the head of the ISI’s political wing. However, when it comes to overall strategy, the ISI follows the line of the high command. It is after all always headed by a senior regular