ISLAMABAD, March 10: Recommendations made 23 years ago on the working of security and intelligence agencies by the Zulfikar Commission had called for keeping the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) away from formulating policies, especially those relating to foreign affairs.

The commission was appointed by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto under then Air Marshal Zulfikar Ali Khan to review the working of security and intelligence agencies and recommend measures to improve their performance. It was set up in view of serious inadequacies and shortcomings in the structure of intelligence network and their working systems.

The commission, which finalised its report in 1989, comprised then interior secretary S.K. Mahmud and M.A.K. Chaudhry.

Former Air Commodore Muhammad Yasin was its secretary.

The report, a copy of which is with Dawn, was presented recently before a three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez. The bench is hearing a 1996 petition of Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan who had requested the court to look into the allegations of ISI’s financing of politicians in the 1990 election to limit the victory of Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

The report was placed before the court in a sealed envelope by its office and was later returned and sealed again.

The principal recommendation had suggested that the ISI should neither be allowed nor encouraged to handle functions beyond its laid down charter.

The agency should also be relieved of responsibilities towards internal political matters and allowed to concentrate on its more important primary functions. Special vetting of service personnel should not be the responsibility of the ISI and this task should be performed by the respective services intelligence organisations.

The commission also suggested that the agency should not be given the blanket authority to monitor telephones of own nationals and highlighted that laws were non-existent to govern the functions of certain intelligence agencies, resulting in abuse of power and lack of an appropriate forum for redress of public grievances against such abuse.

The report noted that intelligence agencies such as the ISI and the Military Intelligence were engaged in activities not connected with military personnel, equipment or installations and interrogation of civilian personnel.

REVIEW OF CHARTER: The ISI’s charter of functions should be reviewed and redrawn so that it could only deal with operational intelligence and counter-intelligence matters relating to the armed forces as also for the security of armed forces equipment and installations.

The agency should be organised to perform the duty of external intelligence relating to defence and strategic matters having a bearing on national security and launching of special operations.

The ISI director general should be selected on merit and the post should rotate between the three services, the report said, adding that the DG should also have two principal deputies with the rank of Maj-Gen or equivalent who should be fully conversant with and privy to all operational matters to enable them to project their service view on matters or operational matters.

The ISI chief should be placed under the functional control of chairman of the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) who could be a whole time cabinet level appointment. The JIC should work under the National Security Council (NSC) to be headed by the prime minister.

The NSC would help provide unified policy direction to and coordination between different intelligence agencies.