Word: isi
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...Kayani replaced the head of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency and elevated a slew of handpicked generals to key positions in a major shake-up of the military leadership. The most striking appointment is the promotion of Lieut. General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha to head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), one of the world's most powerful spy agencies - routinely described, and decried, as a "state within a state." Pasha, who had headed military operations in the tribal areas, replaces Lieut. General Nadeem Taj, an appointee and relative of recently departed President and ex-army chief Pervez Musharraf...
...armed military. In the Bajaur tribal agency along the Afghan border and in the Swat Valley, it is locked in fierce and enervating operations against the Pakistan Taliban. At the same time, the army's relations with its sponsors in Washington have sunk to a fresh low after the ISI was accused of aiding Taliban militants, and the ensuing breakdown in communication between the U.S. and Pakistan saw a flurry of unauthorized American air strikes that targeted militants in the tribal areas. U.S. special operations forces also mounted their first known ground assault within Pakistani territory this month...
Some observers in Pakistan criticized the personnel shake-up as a response to U.S. pressure. The changes came just weeks after Richard Boucher, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, publicly demanded that reform of the ISI be carried out. They also followed last weekend's secret meeting between Pakistan's recently elected President, Asif Ali Zardari, and CIA head Michael Hayden about what the U.S. intelligence agency called the "double game played by Pakistan's spy agency." While in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, Zardari told Roger Cohen...
...Soviet forces. Pakistani government support for the Taliban officially ended after 9/11, when Pervez Musharraf, an army general who had seized power in a 1999 coup, pledged to assist the U.S. war on terrorism. But not everyone was on board. Some in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) played a double game, turning a blind eye when members of the Taliban leadership and al-Qaeda escaped to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the border with Afghanistan. FATA's ungoverned spaces provided the ideal sanctuary for militant groups on the run. Musharraf made a halfhearted attempt...
Though Pakistan has lost several thousand soldiers in the war against the Islamic insurgency, many U.S. lawmakers believe it is not doing enough. Western military leaders in Afghanistan have accused the ISI of actively supporting the terrorist groups that are behind attacks on foreign forces and civilian targets, such as a suicide blast at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 54. Zardari will have to rein in the ISI and work with the Americans to minimize collateral damage from attacks on militants inside Pakistan. Most difficult of all, he will have to convince his populace that such attacks benefit...