Pakistan's courts take on the
ISI By Malik Ayub Sumbal
Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency to
close a notorious cell that focused on monitoring
internal politics, in a direct challenge to the
ISI's ability to operate as a "state within a
state".
In a judgement that puts
pressure on the agency to be more accountable to
the prime minister, the country's highest court
declared its political cell "'void ab
initio" (null and void from the start).
The ruling revolved around a petition that
alleges the intelligence cell directly manipulated
the 1990 general elections, known as the "Asghar
Khan" petition. This document alleges the
distribution of funds by former chief of army
staff Mirza Aslam Beg and ex-ISI chief Asad
Durrani to politicians during the 1990 elections
in order
to prevent the Pakistan
People's Party (PPP) from coming to power.
Despite repeated orders by the court, the
Ministry of Defense also failed to produce a
notification establishing the ISI’s political wing
that was issued some 39 years ago.
"If
there exists no notification, then how can the
[political] wing of the agency operate?" Supreme
Court Justice Jawwad S Khawaja asked in late June.
At the court, Commander Shahbaz,
representing the ministry, said that it did not
have a copy of the notification, adding that
former director-general of the ISI Asad Durrani
had "said that a friend of his had shown him a
copy of it".
The court's ban is the latest
in a series of judicial challenges to the ISI
since judicial powers were restored in 2008,
following the sacking of 60 members by President
Pervez Musharraf a year earlier. In February, the
Supreme Court reprimanded the directors general of
the ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) for the
custodial killings of four civilians. It also
ordered them to immediately produce seven
remaining suspects being grilled for their alleged
role in several acts of terrorism, especially the
2009 fidayeen (suicide) attack on the
General Headquarters of the army in the garrison
city of Rawalpindi.
A three-judge bench of
the court, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar
Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and
Justice Jawwad S Khawaja also last Wednesday
accused the paramilitary Frontier Corps of
involvement in the disappearance of a third of all
the missing persons in the country’s restive
southwest.
The international image of the
ISI has plummeted in recent months over
allegations over its links with the Afghan Taliban
and that it knew Osama bin Laden was hiding in
Pakistan before the May 2, 2011, operation in
Abbottabad by the United States' Marine Forces
that killed the al-Qaeda chief.
Questions
have increasingly been raised about how the ISI
actually functions, with the agency facing daily
criticism from journalists, international
human-rights organizations and United States
officials over its opaque dealings.
The
ISI is Pakistan's supreme intelligence agency and,
owing to its influence, some international experts
describe it as a "a state within a state". The
institution was formed shortly after the
independence of Pakistan in 1947, along with the
the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the MI. The MI's
poor performance in sharing intelligence among the
army, navy and air Force during the
Indo-Pakistan's 1947 war led to the creation of
the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) in 1948.
In late 1950s, then
president Ayub Khan tasked the ISI and MI with
monitoring politicians' activities, with a view to
prolonging his military rule.
The ISI was
reorganized in 1966 after intelligence failures in
the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and again reformed
in 1969. Ayub Khan entrusted the ISI with
responsibility for the collection of internal
political intelligence in East Pakistan. Later on,
during the Baloch nationalist revolt in the
country's southwest during the mid-1970s, the ISI
was tasked with performing similar internal
intelligence gathering operations.
It has
also launched several joint operations with
various intelligence agencies around the world on
the basis of the intelligence-sharing contracts
and agreements, particularly with America's
Central Intelligence Agency in the "war against
terror".
Is it unclear if the Supreme
Court's order will impact on the ISI's huge
monitoring network, which includes telephone
tapping wings, Internet monitoring and press
divisions. It is certain, however, that Pakistan's
military and the ISI will not happily accept being
denied access to the corridors of power. ISI
activities extend too far into the country's
politics.
Malik Ayub Sumbal is a
freelance investigative journalist based in
Islamabad, Pakistan. He has worked for more than
nine years for a number of national and
international newspapers, magazines, journals,
wire services and television channels. He can be
contacted at ayubsumbal@gmail.com
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