Word: isis
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Since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf threw in his lot with the U.S. after Sept. 11, he has been wrestling to gain control over the 10,000-strong ISI, a group of soldiers, field agents, sneaks and tens of thousands of additional informers so formidable and independent its critics call it "a kingdom within a state." The stakes for Musharraf and the U.S. are high. Transforming the organization from one that has abetted Islamic militancy to one that combats it is fundamental to both Washington and Islamabad as they struggle to impose moderation on a radicalized part of the world...
...ISI to sign on to Washington's war against terrorism is quite a switch. Until Sept. 11, the organization was suspected of propping up the Taliban and by extension its al-Qaeda guests in Afghanistan, although Pakistan hotly denies this. As Washington mops up after the war in Afghanistan, pursuing the surviving remnants of bin Laden's terrorist web, the ISI's cooperation is particularly critical. Western intelligence sources in Islamabad say hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives are still hiding out in Pakistan. Last week, according to tribal elders, some 40 U.S. commandos set up base in the Pakistani town...
...course, the ISI helped create that extremist danger. Since becoming a nation in 1947, Pakistan has tried with war and guile to pry away the part of Kashmir, a former princely state with a Muslim majority, that is in India's hands. Borrowing a page from the cia's proxy war against the Soviets, which used the mujahedin in Afghanistan, the ISI in 1989 began encouraging Islamic-militant outfits inside Pakistan to cross over the mountains and snipe at Indian troops in Kashmir. As a guerrilla tactic, it was brilliant. On any given day, more than 300,000 Indian troops...
...provided al-Qaeda agents a network of safe houses in Pakistan to facilitate their transit in and out of Afghanistan. They also vetted new recruits for al-Qaeda and laundered terrorist funds through a global network of illegal money changers. It was no surprise to foreign spooks that the ISI let the Egyptian-Canadian Khadr escape from Peshawar. He knew too much, they say, about the ISI's alleged ties with al-Qaeda...
Similarly, the ISI had no interest in catching bin Laden before Sept. 11. According to U.S. officials, in early 1999 the U.S. pressed the Pakistanis to establish a snatch team that could go into Afghanistan to grab the al-Qaeda chief. The Pakistanis did set up a commando unit, under the aegis of the ISI and with training by the cia. But a U.S. official familiar with the operation says that in the end the Pakistanis didn't do "squat...