Word: isi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When she was elected to power last year, many wondered whether Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would dare confront the nation's military establishment. Last week she did so, ordering the transfer of Hamid Gul, 52, the powerful head of the ISI, Pakistan's military-intelligenc e agency. A protege of the late President Zia ul-Haq, Gul has wielded enormous power ever since his appointment in 1987. Besides keeping tabs on Zia's political foes, including the Bhutto family, the ISI also distributed foreign money and arms to the mujahedin rebels fighting the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Afghanistan...
...addition to mutual distrust, Bhutto has valid reasons to sideline the intelligence chief. An ISI-orchestrated attack by Afghan rebels on Jalalabad, has degenerated into a protracted struggle and a propaganda victory for Najibullah. Bhutto was particularly enraged by what appeared to be ISI disinformation blaming her for the mess. Gul has also defied Bhutto by openly siding with the fundamentalists among the mujahedin. Bhutto has called the ISI's emphasis on a mujahedin military victory a "fundamental mistake." Gul's exit opens the way for a more flexible approach to helping resolve the Afghan...
...Soviet army has gone, Najibullah has begun harping on how much the rebels are run by Pakistan and the U.S. His case has been helped by recent news accounts that Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had ordered Lieut. General Hamid Gul, head of Pakistan's military intelligence organization (ISI) to launch the bloody Jalalabad assault. Gul and the ISI are unmistakably doing their best to direct the mujahedin operations, but it seems likely that he told Bhutto of the impending attack rather than the reverse. Although the mujahedin cause remains popular, Pakistan's role in the rebel campaign, whether...
Because the U.S. has largely operated through the ISI, it is seen as endorsing Pakistan's vision of a friendly Islamic regime in Kabul. The rebel leader who most closely fills that bill is Hekmatyar, head of the best- disciplined guerrilla organization, Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party). Some ; Western experts are uncomfortable with Hekmatyar's plan to turn Afghanistan into a Muslim state governed by shari'a (Islamic law), which could take an anti-American course. Should Washington be supporting someone with the potential to be a U.S. enemy? Defenders say Hekmatyar, despite his Islamic zeal, is also a pragmatist...