ON SPIES AND SUBTERFUGE

Recently, a story on Pakistan’s spymaster agency, the ISI, has been making waves in the blogosphere. It has been rated World’s best intelligence agency by a renowned website , leaving CIA, MOSSAD and MI-6 scrambling.

But rather than discussing the credentials of the website, let’s take the claim on face-value: that the ISI has to its credit crumbling the former superpower Soviet Union into pieces and no on camera defectors. Although these claims alone could be harshly scrutinized, let’s just weigh them against its admitted failures.

On the external front, ISI has been blamed for the botched military operations against India; namely Operation Gibraltar of 1965 War and the Kargil War of 1999. ISI also planned and led the failed 1989 Battle of Jalalabad, with intent of installing a pro Pakistan radical militant group in Afghanistan. And the fifteen year long attempt to stir armed uprising in Indian held Kashmir, with no fruits.

On the internal front, ISI is one of the few agencies in the world to have carried out killings of its own people. The failure to outdo rebel Mukti Bahani sabotage and the reprisal killings of Bengali civilians in the 1971 Civil War, extra judicial killings of ethnic Balochs in 20 years of armed conflict (intermittent) in Balochistan, 5 years of military operations against ethnic Mohajirs in Karachi, and last but not the least, the failure to contain the rise of religious terrorism, failure to provide security in public life against the ominous threat of suicide bombing, and the classic case of the Lal Masjid uprising right under ISI’s nose.

Among the agencies rated by the website, ISI is the only one retaining a “political cell” with an official intent of keeping an eye on anti federation elements (read politicians). Far from debating the merits of a security agency meddling into politics, the potential of such cell being misused by those in power is massive.

With such credentials, one can’t help but think of alternate explanations: “a ‘failed’ publicity stint by a ‘failed agency,’” makes sense.