Word: isis
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Most startling was the premature retirement of trusted friend Lieut. General Mahmoud Ahmad, chief of the formidable Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, widely regarded as the country's invisible government. As a staunch patron of pro-Taliban policies, Ahmad is thought to have opposed Pakistan's new alliance with the U.S. Musharraf had reason to fear that segments of the ISI might thwart promised cooperation with U.S. intelligence. And it is said that Musharraf hit the roof when an ISI-linked jihad group devoted to wresting Muslim Kashmir from Indian control took responsibility for a blast in the Indian city...
...boss of ISI, Lieut. General Ehsan ul- Haq, is regarded as moderate, professional and without political ambition. But some wonder if he is ruthless enough to overhaul an agency still filled with Islamic sympathizers. ISI, says a diplomat, "has to be cut down to size...
...acquire such "ground truth," the U.S. has to rely on the services of others. "What the CIA does well," says an intelligence official, "is give money to foreigners in exchange for information." So success may depend largely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, a tough outfit that has racked up a formidable reputation as a state within a state. With more than 40,000 officers and staff whose headquarters are in a drab military compound in Islamabad, the ISI puts tentacles deep into Afghanistan through thousands of Pashtu-speaking Pakistanis and hundreds of free-lance Afghan spies...
That's the problem. Though Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, offered swift declarations of full intelligence sharing, some U.S. officials tell TIME they aren't sure which side the ISI is really on. The CIA and the Pentagon have long been split on ISI's reliability. Islamabad pleased the CIA by extraditing three key terrorists in recent years. But as TIME reported 18 months ago, a 1999 CIA plot to train 60 Pakistani commandos to snatch bin Laden went nowhere when the ISI dragged its feet. "They didn't do squat," says an American close to the operation...
...Many ISI men harbor bitterness too, over the way the U.S. built them up as a useful tool in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, then turned away when the war ended. A sizable portion of ISI rank and file embraces Islamic fundamentalism, and even if the top brass promise help, spooks on the ground may thwart them by withholding information or spreading disinformation. "The ISI has excellent intelligence about bin Laden," says a former Defense specialist on the region. "I find it doubtful they will give...