NEW YORK, Feb 20: Pakistan has begun to disband two major units of its powerful intelligence service that had close links to Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, the New York Times said quoting senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials.
The paper said that the change has not been publicly announced. But the officials described it as one of the most significant shifts emerging from Pakistan’s decision to align itself with the West during the crisis in Afghanistan and to reduce ties with Islamic groups there and in Kashmir.
The officials told the Times that the move would result in the transfer of perhaps 40 per cent of forces assigned to the secretive organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which draws its manpower from the military.
The agency’s size is an official secret, but some officials said the cut could amount to at least 4,000 people, from a force of perhaps 10,000. Last month, President Pervez Musharraf pledged in a speech that his country would fight terrorism in all its forms. Since then, his government has banned several Islamic groups and has announced the arrests of about 2,000 activists.
The changes described within the intelligence service would be an even more tangible sign of his resolve. The changes were described by the officials as highly sensitive. The organization, whose headquarters here is surrounded by brick walls and guard towers, is one of the country’s most powerful forces, and quests by the American government and forces within Pakistan for its reform have until now been rebuffed.
The senior officers of Afghanistan and Kashmir units have already been transferred, and the others are being ordered to return to other military units, officials told the paper.
None have been disciplined, but the United States has requested permission to interview several dozens of them to learn more about their ties to the militants. That request is still being weighed by the Pakistani authorities, several officials said.
Working closely with the American Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan’s intelligence agency established close ties with Islamic groups in Afghanistan during the 1980s, at the time of the American-backed effort to support the Mujahideen forces working to oust the Soviet occupation force. While the Afghanistan department appears to have been shut down entirely, the officials indicated that it is proving more difficult to cut off what has been a steady flow of covert intelligence and other support for Mujahideen in Kashmir. Closing down the Afghan unit is a signal that Pakistan intends to support the new government in Afghanistan and serves Gen Musharraf’s purpose of curtailing support for the Islamic militant movements in Pakistan that provided strong support for the Taliban, the paper said.
As early as 1988, under the government of Benazir Bhutto, a commission led by the Air Force chief, Marshal Zuilfikar Ali Khan, warned that the intelligence organization had the makings of a de facto government. Over the last decade, it has been credited with making and breaking of political careers and with causing civilian governments to fall. Gen Musharraf, who took power in 1999, has long had close relations with many officers within the agency. But in October, at the time he agreed to break relations with the Taliban, he also dismissed the agency’s chief and later sidelined several others, in a first attempt to sever connections with Islamic groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir the paper said.
Our reporter from Islamabad adds: The Foreign Office has strongly refuted a report carried by the New York Times claiming that two sections of Interservice Intelligence Agency concerning Kashmir and Afghanistan has been wound up.
Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Khan, when contacted termed these reports “totally rubbish” and baseless that Kashmir and Afghanistan sections of ISI had been closed down.
The report carried by the US paper had claimed 4,000 defence personnel attached with these two sections had been sent back to their respective units. The report was based on unnamed high officials.
