The army’s image has been dented by a number of setbacks starting with the killing of Osama bin Laden last month by US special forces on Pakistani soil. Traditionally seen as untouchable, Pakistan’s generals now face strong public criticism.

Asma Jahangir, a leading human rights campaigner and head of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said the mood in the country provided an opportunity to start correcting a lopsided balance of power between the army and the civilian government.

“I am hopeful that public opinion will finally embolden civil society, including politicians. But it’s not going to happen tomorrow morning,” she told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“It’s going to be a perpetual struggle. They are not just going to hand over and say ‘thank you very much we are now under civilian control’. But at least they know that’s what people want now.”

The military has ruled nuclear-armed Pakistan for more than half of its history. Generals set security and foreign policy, even when civilian governments are in power, as is the case now.

The 600,000-strong army also runs a vast business empire that includes oil and gas interests, cereals and real estate.

“Our parliament has to strengthen itself for anyone to change because nobody hands over power just voluntarily,” said Jahangir.

“The parliament will have to be more forceful and also begin to realise that they (the army) can’t hold the economy of this country hostage, foreign policy hostage.”

Pakistan’s civilian leaders don’t seem willing to stand up to the military in a country prone to army coups. Generals often orchestrate Pakistani politics from behind the scenes.

“They have selfishly overlooked the interests of the people of Pakistan. We think that it’s time to change,” said Jahangir.

The army says it does not interfere in politics and reiterated its commitment to democracy in a statement issued this month.

Jahangir said she is hopeful of change because the military has been on the defensive. The United States kept Pakistan in the dark over the raid that killed bin Laden, humiliating the army and then piling pressure on it to crack down harder on militancy.

About 25 percent of government expenditure flows to the defence budget, according to some estimates, in a country with widespread poverty and social inequalities.

“The government needs to make legislation on intelligence agencies. They need to debate the defence budget. They don’t need to cut it but at least they need to debate it,” said Jahangir.

“There are parliamentary committees that are oversight structures for them. And there needs to be more parliamentary committees which are more effective.”

To make matters worse for the military, suspicion fell on its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency after a prominent Pakistani journalist was tortured to death and dumped in a canal. The ISI said it played no role in his death.

Then the killing of an apparently unarmed man by paramilitary forces which was caught on videotape further eroded what little public confidence remains in Pakistan’s security forces.

Jahangir said politicians and Pakistanis should move swiftly, but cautiously, to try and strengthen civilian institutions while the military seems vulnerable.

“Momentarily they are a bit worried. They are vulnerable to the extent that people are besieging them to change. It is critical,” she said.

“They have a way of overcoming it too. They know that this is momentary. They will soon start getting their civilian counterparts to change public opinion to confuse the issue, to demonise people. We have seen it happen before.”

Retired and serving officers interviewed by The Associated Press spoke of seething anger within army ranks over the secret strike the Americans carried out on May 2, undetected by Pakistan’s military.

The US helicopter-borne operation set off a nationalist backlash: The usually untouchable army was sharply criticized in the press and on television talk shows, people demonstrated here in the capital demanding accountability, and open calls were made for the resignation of Gen. Asfaq Parvez Kayani, the military chief.

The army is Pakistan’s strongest institution, and Kayani the nation’s most powerful leader, but he ”has to be very careful,” said retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood.

Like others interviewed, he doubted Kayani’s underlings would try to unseat him in an intra-army coup, but he noted occasions in the past when disgruntled officers were found to be plotting against their chief.

These rumblings generally occurred after the army suffered an embarrassing defeat, most notably Pakistan’s 1971 loss of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, when India took 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war who weren’t released for a year.

Last month’s raid on the al-Qaida leader’s Abbottabad compound resurrected public comparisons to that Bangladesh debacle.

In one sign of dented military prestige, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the withdrawal of a two-star general after his men were caught on video killing an unarmed youth. The court took the unusual action ”in light of the hostile environment in the society toward the military,” said defense analyst Hasan Askar Rizvi.

The public disquiet weighs heavily on the officer corps and down through lower ranks, Masood said.

”It could all result in loose talk,” he said, but he thought it wouldn’t go beyond that. He noted that within days of the bin Laden raid, Kayani met with key corps commanders in an effort to assure his ranking officers they had not been humiliated.

There’s ”quite a lot of anger” within the military, retired Gen. Jehangir Karamat, a former chief of staff himself, said in a telephone interview from the eastern city of Lahore.

”Maybe there is talk,” he told the AP. ”Maybe anti-US feeling has gone up in the army. But actually there is in the country a whole lot of anger over the way it happened and the humiliation suffered, and it is inevitably reflected in the army.”

But, he added, ”all this talk of him fighting for his job, his survival, I don’t see any signs of that.”

Kayani is consistently described as a ”professional soldier” by his own men and knowledgable foreigners. But the general, who as a younger officer did some training in the US, may face criticism because of the Pakistani army’s close past cooperation with the US military and dependence on US aid.

At the same time, the Pakistanis have come under sharp criticism in Washington for having apparently missed bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.

Knowledgable observers here said the fracture with Washington could set back military-to-military relations between the two countries by years, as the Americans seek to step up the joint fight against al-Qaida and other militant groups in the Afghan border area.

”There is a very strong resentment, a very strong sense of betrayal of being discredited in the eyes of our own public. What our enemies have not been able to do they (the US) have done to us,” said a senior military official, who asked that his name not be used to speak candidly.

Pakistan has already sent home nearly 100 US military personnel, most of whom were training the Frontier Corps, the tribal force that patrols Pakistan’s long and porous border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan is holding up visas for CIA officials waiting to come here, and Pakistan’s intelligence agency has arrested alleged CIA informants said to have helped lead the Americans to bin Laden.

In Washington last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of State chairman who has been to Pakistan to try to patch up differences, said letting the relationship with this nuclear-armed nation deteriorate isn’t an option.

If the relationship crumbles or ”were we to walk away, I think it’s a matter of time before the region is that much more dangerous and there would be a huge pull for us to have to return to protect our national interests,” Mullen added.

An Indian naval ship and a Pakistani naval vessel brushed against each other Thursday.

Pakistan protested Friday, saying the Indian warship undertook dangerous maneuvers, and a day later India said it was the Pakistani ship that had jeopardized safety.

The spat comes less than a week before Indian and Pakistani officials are to meet in Islamabad for peace talks on a range of issues, including their long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region and the threats posed by terrorism.

The talks between Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart, Salman Bashir, would mark the first formal talks between the South Asian rivals on Kashmir since India broke off peace negotiations in 2008 after terrorist attacks in Mumbai killed 166 people.

The two days of discussions starting June 23 are in preparation for peace talks at the level of foreign ministers scheduled for next month.

Thursday’s incident occurred while the Pakistani ship was escorting a merchant vessel, MV Suez, that had been threatened by Somali pirates. The MV Suez had been freed from the pirates on June 13 after a ransom of $2.1 million was paid. As it sped to safety, it was again threatened by pirates.

After Pakistan lodged a protest, India’s external affairs ministry issued a statement countering the charge. India’s defense ministry had summoned a naval attach at the Pakistan embassy in New Delhi to protest against the incident, the statement said.

Both countries also accused each other of violating international regulations for prevention of collisions at sea.

The two nuclear-armed rivals have been working toward the resumption of a full-fledged peace dialogue over the past year.

India is going ahead with the talks despite testimony from a Pakistani-American who said in a trial in Chicago last week that Pakistani intelligence was directly involved in plotting and funding the Mumbai attacks. Islamabad denies the charge.

India wants Pakistan to show it is serious about reining in militants who operate out of Pakistani territory. India blames the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba for carrying out the Mumbai attack.
Pakistan wants an early settlement of its dispute with India over Kashmir, which lies at the heart of hostilities between the countries and was the trigger of two of their three wars.

During the talks, India will raise its concerns over terror attacks directed against it from Pakistan, a top government official said Sunday.

”Our concerns about terror have not, in any way, diminished with the resumption of the dialogue,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The federal government has written a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan asking him to nominate a Supreme Court judge to head the probe body to investigate US raid which killed al Qaida chief, report said. The letter, which has been handed over to the Supreme Court Registrar by the law secretary on Sunday, requests the Chief Justice to appoint a judge of its own choice. The government had earlier constituted a five members commission headed by SC Judge Justice Javed Iqbal in the light of the joint resolution passed in the incamera session of the parliament to probe the Abbottabad incident.

Retired and serving officers interviewed by The Associated Press spoke of seething anger within army ranks over the secret strike the Americans carried out on May 2, undetected by Pakistan’s military.

The US helicopter-borne operation set off a nationalist backlash: The usually untouchable army was sharply criticized in the press and on television talk shows, people demonstrated here in the capital demanding accountability, and open calls were made for the resignation of Gen. Asfaq Parvez Kayani, the military chief.

The army is Pakistan’s strongest institution, and Kayani the nation’s most powerful leader, but he ”has to be very careful,” said retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood.

Like others interviewed, he doubted Kayani’s underlings would try to unseat him in an intra-army coup, but he noted occasions in the past when disgruntled officers were found to be plotting against their chief.

These rumblings generally occurred after the army suffered an embarrassing defeat, most notably Pakistan’s 1971 loss of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, when India took 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war who weren’t released for a year.

Last month’s raid on the al-Qaida leader’s Abbottabad compound resurrected public comparisons to that Bangladesh debacle.

In one sign of dented military prestige, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the withdrawal of a two-star general after his men were caught on video killing an unarmed youth. The court took the unusual action ”in light of the hostile environment in the society toward the military,” said defense analyst Hasan Askar Rizvi.

The public disquiet weighs heavily on the officer corps and down through lower ranks, Masood said.

”It could all result in loose talk,” he said, but he thought it wouldn’t go beyond that. He noted that within days of the bin Laden raid, Kayani met with key corps commanders in an effort to assure his ranking officers they had not been humiliated.

There’s ”quite a lot of anger” within the military, retired Gen. Jehangir Karamat, a former chief of staff himself, said in a telephone interview from the eastern city of Lahore.

”Maybe there is talk,” he told the AP. ”Maybe anti-US feeling has gone up in the army. But actually there is in the country a whole lot of anger over the way it happened and the humiliation suffered, and it is inevitably reflected in the army.”

But, he added, ”all this talk of him fighting for his job, his survival, I don’t see any signs of that.”

Kayani is consistently described as a ”professional soldier” by his own men and knowledgable foreigners. But the general, who as a younger officer did some training in the US, may face criticism because of the Pakistani army’s close past cooperation with the US military and dependence on US aid.

At the same time, the Pakistanis have come under sharp criticism in Washington for having apparently missed bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.

Knowledgable observers here said the fracture with Washington could set back military-to-military relations between the two countries by years, as the Americans seek to step up the joint fight against al-Qaida and other militant groups in the Afghan border area.

”There is a very strong resentment, a very strong sense of betrayal of being discredited in the eyes of our own public. What our enemies have not been able to do they (the US) have done to us,” said a senior military official, who asked that his name not be used to speak candidly.

Pakistan has already sent home nearly 100 US military personnel, most of whom were training the Frontier Corps, the tribal force that patrols Pakistan’s long and porous border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan is holding up visas for CIA officials waiting to come here, and Pakistan’s intelligence agency has arrested alleged CIA informants said to have helped lead the Americans to bin Laden.

In Washington last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of State chairman who has been to Pakistan to try to patch up differences, said letting the relationship with this nuclear-armed nation deteriorate isn’t an option.

If the relationship crumbles or ”were we to walk away, I think it’s a matter of time before the region is that much more dangerous and there would be a huge pull for us to have to return to protect our national interests,” Mullen added.

Talking to media outside the parliament, he said the law enforcement agencies are conducting operation against illegal immigrants, adding, the people who are living in Pakistan despite their expiry of visa have also been deported.

He urged the people to stand with national security agencies and criticism on them without any evidence is unjustified as they are fighting for the survival of the country.

He disclosed that timely reporting about 1100 cases by the agencies saved the country from terrorists activities.

Rehman Malik termed the news about deleting of Saleem Shahzad’s data as totally wrong and added that a commission has been formed to probe the killing of Saleem Shahzad.

To another question, he said to maintain the law and order situation is the responsibility of the provinces. Law and order situation in Karachi was under control, he said.

“Rangers were deployed in Karachi on the request of Sindh government to assist the police force. The police strength was not enough to control the law and order situation in Sindh. It will be unfair to blame the whole Rangers personnel for an individuals action”, he said.

He said during the last five month about 48 police personnel have embraced ‘Shahadat’ while taking action against the criminals.

He said all the checkposts in the capital have been restored and the police forces deployed at the checkposts have been directed to check people without any discrimination.

“The government will take all possible measures to protect the live and propriety of the people,” he said. To a question, he replied that IG Police in Islamabad will be appointed soon.

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court on Friday sent seven accused, including six Rangers personnel, to jail over the killing of Sarfaraz Shah, DawnNews reported.

Earlier on Monday, six personnel of Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, and a civilian were remanded in police custody by the administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts in Karachi for their involvement in the June 8 shooting to death of the unarmed young man.

Widely televised footage showed the youth, Sarfraz Shah, being shot at and then left to die by the Rangers personnel in the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park within the remit of the Boat Basin police station.

The Rangers had earlier claimed that the youth was armed and killed in an encounter.

However, the video footage aired by television channels clearly showed that the unarmed youth was shot to death by the Rangers personnel at point-blank range as he first pleaded for mercy and later begged to be taken to hospital.

ISLAMABAD: Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to eradicate militant sanctuaries at “detailed” talks Saturday about a peace process with the Taliban that inaugurated a joint peace commission.





Karzai and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani led the first meeting of a joint commission for reconciliation and peace, pledging that the body would meet again in October and a sub-committee in 20 days to a month.
In another effort to improve ties, a much delayed transit trade agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was signed last year, is due to come into effect on Sunday, Islamabad said.
The Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan is now into a 10th year with violence at record levels. Pakistan is also fighting a home-grown Taliban insurgency in its northwest and there are near daily militant bomb attacks.
“The facts are so bare and the wound is so clear and hurting that it requires both of us to work diligently and extremely aggressively and effectively to curb terrorism and radicalism in the region,” Karzai said.
Asked about swarms of militants attacking Pakistani troops close to the Afghan border, Karzai said the attacks were “all the more reason for us to work harder to remove radicals from both countries and to remove sanctuaries”.
Gilani insisted that Pakistan wanted a stable, peaceful, prosperous, independent and sovereign Afghanistan, saying that Islamabad was ready to provide “whatever support they want” in the Afghan-led peace process.
“We have discussed in detail the peace process, with all stakeholders and certainly what happened in our capacity is a readiness,” said Gilani.
But when asked if the Haqqanis or Pakistan’s arrest last year of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said to be the Taliban second-in-command, could be part of the reconciliation process neither leader went into detail.
The Taliban have rejected peace overtures in public, although some experts believe the death of bin Laden, whom Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar refused to surrender after the September 11, 2001 attacks, could be a spur.
Pakistan was a main ally of the Taliban until it joined the US-led “war on terror” following the attacks on New York and Washington and subsequently started fighting a home-grown Taliban insurgency along the Afghan border.
But its intelligence services are thought to maintain links to Afghan insurgents with strongholds on its territory, namely the Haqqani network, one of the staunchest US enemies in Afghanistan, and Afghan Taliban leaders.
Fighting between the Taliban and US-led Nato troops in Afghanistan has become deadlier each year since the 2001 invasion.
The 130,000 international troops today in the country are due to start limited withdrawals from July with the Afghan police and army scheduled to take control of security gradually before the end of 2014.
In Pakistan, more than 4,400 people have been killed in attacks blamed on Taliban and other extremist networks based in the tribal belt since 2007.

Even as Pakistan finds itself in the midst of a conflagration that has killed at least 30,000 civilians and more than 5,000 soldiers and law enforcement officials, Pakistanis are still questioning whether it is our war on or not. Given that we are not sure if it is our war to begin with, it should come as no surprise that we are not sure who the enemy really is either.

The enemy is within the gates, not easily identifiable and growing increasingly capable of carrying out audacious and well-planned attacks. The latest was the 16-hour siege of the naval air base PNS Mehran in Karachi, similar in style and execution to the attack on the Pakistan Army’s General Head Quarters in 2009. The vulnerability of Pakistan’s armed forces has never been brought as sharply into focus.

The 48 hours of silence after Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbotabad by the CIA and US Seals, from both the civilian and military authorities were deafening. Then came the recriminations, the parliamentary resolutions and the thundering and moaning on the airwaves about intelligence failures. But no substantive action was taken.

“We have no focal point,” says former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. “We have had no foreign minister in five months and the PM is occupied with other matters. The world cannot wait for you. They need action and reactions.”

It took the attack on PNS Mehran and murmurs about the safety — or lack thereof — of Pakistan’s nuclear installations to finally wake up the prime minister, and the Defence Committee of the Cabinet ordered law enforcement agencies to take all necessary action to combat domestic terrorism. So once again, we are going to rush into military action without taking the critical steps of gathering intelligence, analysing the data and proceeding with a coherent multi-pronged strategy. The PPP government’s inevitably short-sighted and kneejerk reactions are unlikely to establish any sense of direction.

“The position of the government is compromised,” says PML-N legislator and spokesman Ahsan Iqbal. “Because they sought US and UK assistance with the NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance), they have to follow their policies. We need indigenous solutions presented by a government that has the trust of the people.”

But an informed policy needs a strong foundation. The biggest loophole in prosecuting the war in Pakistan is the complete lack of a national security agenda, a key element of which is integrating intelligence information effectively. “Within the national security framework, intelligence is crucial,” says former national security adviser General (retd) Mehmood Ali Durrani. “If you don’t have proper intelligence, other actions cannot take place.” The concept of integrating intelligence efforts, he says, has been missing for years. “We need this now in a complex world where national security needs to involve defence, foreign affairs, finance and internal security.”

And Pakistan has a gaping void when it comes to coordinating intelligence amongst different agencies. Pakistan’s largest intelligence gathering network is the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) whose primary function is to deal with external threats to the country. Maintaining internal stability is theoretically the purview of the civilian agency known as the Intelligence Bureau (IB). However, there are several other intelligence agencies operating in the country, including Military Intelligence (MI) the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and provincial intelligence departments known as the Special Branch of the Central Intelligence Department. (see ‘The Agencies’)

“Every intelligence agency has a specific purpose,” says Durrani. And each agency jealously guards its turf.

Durrani held the critical position of national security adviser (NSA) for only seven months, during which time he says he sought to build up the level of the IB to the same as the ISI. Reporting directly to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, Durrani soon ran into bureaucratic hurdles with one minister even questioning if Durrani was trying to create a ‘super ministry’. It’s not just the agencies who have turf wars.

“There is something we call an intelligence cycle ­— collection, collation, interpretation and dissemination,” says General Durrani. Former intelligence officials say every intelligence agency follows this cycle. But the inherent flaw is that without centralising the information either in raw data form or at the interpretation stage, key information is either not communicated up the chain of command or someone fails to connect the dots.

“We work in tight compartments and information is analysed before it can be presented as intelligence,” says a senior army official. He agrees that a centralised system is required, pointing out that the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) was envisioned with this goal in mind. “Having someone like General Durrani as national security adviser is also a workable solution,” the senior official says.

“Agencies work in vertical silos,” says Ahsan Iqbal. He argues for the need to coordinate data at the low, mid and senior levels for effectiveness.

But the lackadaisical attitude of the government towards this critical function can be gauged by the fact that the well-respected Tariq Pervez who was appointed as the first Chairman of Nacta resigned within the year and the organisation never got off the ground. “Nacta exists only on paper,” says Shah Mehmood Qureshi. “The interior minister seems preoccupied with other matters and is not focused on this issue.”

“Nacta should be activated,” says PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira. But he maintains the role of Nacta was in terms of combating terrorism and developing policy, not just coordinating intelligence. Whatever the rationale, the government in the midst of fighting a major war is without a national security adviser, a foreign minister or a system like Nacta.

The system itself is flawed in many respects, dependent on individuals to function adequately. According to Qureshi, when he was the foreign minister, there was no institutionalised system of sharing information or intelligence and he did not routinely get intelligence briefs. “At times, I had to take the initiative myself to get input and engage with the ISI. I personally had a good relationship with them and they were very cooperative. But there was no institutionalised mechanism.”

This virtually ensures that key information required to formulate policy is going to be ignored. A large amount of data is generated every day, says former IB chief Masood Sharif Khattak. “Data is focused into points of interest and this is filtered and developed into leads,” he explains. The military, he says, has mechanisms set in place but this is missing in the civilian administration. “There is nothing in the prime minister’s secretariat to deal with all the reports coming in and no assessment is done. The final picture should be presented to the boss but it doesn’t always happen. Systems need to be created.”

According to former president General Pervez Musharraf, when he was president and army chief, all intelligence coordination was handled by the Director General of the ISI. “The heads of the ISI, IB and MI would meet once a week, led by the DG ISI.  A fully developed factsheet with intelligence developed from confirmed information would be provided to me,” he says.

The system worked, says Musharraf. “I would even call up the heads of the ISI, IB and MI and call them in for meetings. The direction was clear from the top and there was unity of command.” But that worked when Gen. Musharraf wielded absolute power – the system was dependent on one man.

Masood Sharif Khattak agrees there was uniformity of command in the Musharraf years but there is a tendency by military rulers to treat civilian agencies with less respect. The military agrees there is a divide between the military intelligence apparatus and their civilian counterparts. Intelligence gathering has to be at the thana level, Khattak says. But the police needs to be handled better. “Political whims result in the appointment of IGPs. There is no merit or professionalism.”

The military agrees this is a problem. “We have to depoliticise the police,” says a military official. The army, he says is trained to deal with insurgents and countering terrorism in cities and towns is best handled by local law enforcement.

There seems to be a general consensus that Pakistan needs a national security adviser, Nacta or an organisation like Homeland Security. But just creating the office on paper will not be enough. The first Nacta chairman did not have any staff or resources to do his job. Durrani says his office was never properly established with the right mix of people. “The leadership didn’t understand this. They did not have the vision,” he says.

There are however differences of opinion on the constitution of an organisation such as Nacta. Musharraf argues that the system is ingrained and creating a supra-intelligence agency may be counterproductive. Ahsan Iqbal suggests that any such organisation should be a sub-committee of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet with a permanent secretariat. He points out there are no rules or framework for intelligence agencies at all.

But there are mixed opinions on civilian oversight of intelligence operations. While politicians believe civilian oversight is a must, much of that seems to be predicated on the fact that intelligence agencies have been drawn into spying on opposition politicians over the years and playing an unsavoury role in the political landscape. And the military is downright reluctant when it comes to civilian oversight. “Intelligence is secretive by nature. Our legislators have to be backed up by think tanks and given briefings. We cannot afford to have our assets compromised,” says a senior military official, pointing out that details of the in-camera session of Parliament in the wake of the bin Laden killing were being broadcast on national television even as the session was in progress.

Musharraf is even blunter. “Theoretically it is a good idea to have parliamentary oversight. But intelligence agencies lack confidence in Parliament. Confidentiality is not maintained and this is a problem.”

With or without civilian oversight, it is clear that the government needs to act fast on the intelligence front if it is going to tackle terrorism effectively. The military seems to be comfortable working with a civilian head of any such supra agency — such as Nacta — that reports to the prime minister. But it has a rigid mindset and the bureaucracy is just as set in its ways.

So the ball is now in the court of the political leadership to create not just an effective equivalent of a national security agency, that combines the efforts of the country’s myriad intelligence agencies, but also to staff it with people who can wargame unconventional strategies, offer solutions and work on breaking new ground in combating terrorism. Without it, we may find that this failure to communicate may lead to a failure of the state itself .

The Agencies

There are at least a dozen intelligence agencies and federal investigation units operating in Pakistan.

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)

Mandated to coordinate intelligence services and conduct counter-espionage, Pakistan’s most powerful spy network technically comes under the government’s ministry of defense headed by federal minister Ahmed Mukhtar. However, the ISI Director General Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha is widely believed to report directly to Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani only.

Military Intelligence (MI)

The Directorate for Military Intelligence is mainly concerned with identifying threats and anti-state agents working to sabotage the armed forces. This intelligence agency theoretically reports to the Ministry of Defense, but is in fact answerable only to the Army chief. Air Intelligence, Army intelligence and Naval intelligence are all branches of the MI

Intelligence Bureau (IB)

This civilian intelligence agency comes under the Ministry of Interior’s direct control. Its mandate is limited to gathering intelligence and identifying internal threats to the country. It liaisons with the Pakistan police force and passes on critical security-related information to civilian law enforcers.

Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation, Inland Revenue

This is the Federal Board of Revenue’s intelligence wing, it gathers information on evasion of customs, federal excise duties, sales tax and smuggling of contraband

Financial Monitoring Unit

Also known as the Financial  Intelligence  Unit, this body assists domestic  law  enforcement  agencies and regulators in detection and prevention of threats emanating from money laundering and terrorist financing activities. It comes under the Ministry of Finance and is headed by a director general.

Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)

The Federal Investigation Agency comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior. It deals with counter terrorism, anti-corruption, human smuggling and copyright infringement operations.

Crime Investigation Department (CID)

This is a specialised unit of the provincial police departments that investigates high profile terrorism and criminal cases. Each CID unit is headed by the provincial Inspector General of Police. Many urban centres also have a separate specialised unit apart from the CID that operates directly under the command of the Capital City Police Officer.

Anti Narcotics Force (ANF)

The Anti Narcotics Force comes under the Ministry of Defence and is headed by a senior military officer. Its main concern is drug trafficking, eradication of drug supply and trafficking and organising rehabilitation programmes.

Airport Security Force (ASF)

This is the first line of defence at airports throughout Pakistan and is handled by the Ministry of Defence.

Coordinating intelligence



The United States – greater centralisation after 9/11

To counter what was seen as a massive intelligence failure in the US after 9/11, the Office of the The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created in 2004. The DNI is now the leader of the United State’s large intelligence community. Before the office of the DNI was created, the intelligence community was led by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), who was also the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA is now coordinated by the DNI, which reports directly to the President.

The agencies he coordinates are: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Defense (DOD) Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Agency (NSA), National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Air Force Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Department of State, Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Treasury, United States Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security and The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DNI also oversees the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is staffed by terrorism experts from the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon; the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board; and the National Counter Proliferation Center.

The United Kingdom – ministerial oversight

The UK has three intelligence and security services, collectively known as the Agencies – the Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Security Service, sometimes known as MI5.

The agencies operate under the immediate control of their respective heads who are personally responsible to ministers.

However, the Prime Minister has overall responsibility for intelligence and security matters and is supported in that capacity by the Secretary of the Cabinet. The Home Secretary is responsible for the Security Service; the Foreign Secretary for MI6 and GCHQ, and the Secretary of State for Defence for the DIS. There is also a Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services (CIS), whose Terms of Reference are: “to keep under review policy on the security and intelligence services”.

The Prime Minister is its chairman and the other members are the Deputy Prime Minister, Home, Defence and Foreign Secretaries and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Part of the Cabinet Office, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), advises the government on priorities for intelligence gathering and for assessing its results. The JIC provides regular intelligence assessments on issues of national interests, like security, defence and foreign affairs. Intelligence reporting from the Agencies is also used to support field operations by the Armed Forces and by law enforcement agencies. Relationships between the Agencies and those who use their intelligence are close and as transparent as possible.

India – Executive control

In India, the National Security Council (NSC) looks into the country’s strategic concerns. The NSC comprises the Strategic Policy Group, the National Security Advisory Board and a Secretariat represented by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). It is the JIC that is responsible for analysing intelligence data from India’s main intelligence units: the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing (commonly known as RAW), and the Directorates of Military, Naval and Air Intelligence. The JIC has its own Secretariat that works under the Cabinet Secretariat, and critics of the system say that because of this, the JIC is mostly not answerable to the Cabinet.

The Intelligence Bureau is responsible for internal intelligence, and RAW is responsible for external intelligence. In contrast to the British method of sharing intelligence, the structure and operations of RAW are said to be kept largely secret from Parliament, and the agency operates directly under the Prime Minister.

ISLAMABAD:  Only 30 members of Parliament admit to having assets outside the country, according to revelations made by the government in the National Assembly question hour on Monday.

Law Minister Maula Baksh Chandio made the disclosure in a written reply to a question, based on data collected from the self-declarations of assets submitted by parliamentarians to the Election Commission of Pakistan every year. Chandio’s information was based on data for financial year 2010.

Among the parliamentarians who admit to having assets abroad are National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza, Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Babar Khan Ghauri from the MQM, Senator Ishaq Dar from the PML-N, Senator Tariq Azeem from PML-Q and former minister Azam Khan Sawati from JUI-F.

The issue of legislators maintaining assets abroad has been raised by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf head Imran Khan, who, while not holding any elected office, has publicly declared that he has sold off all of his assets abroad and brought the proceeds to Pakistan, in a bid to show that his loyalties are not divided. Several television commentators have also picked up on the issue.

Of the ten Senators who admitted to having assets abroad, only four have declared any details: Ishaq Dar (AED 153,038 in the UAE), Abdul Hafeez Sheikh (the equivalent of Rs2.5 million in the United States and Rs5 million in the UAE), Tariq Azeem Khan (£2,172 in the UK), and Azam Khan Swati ($487,000 in the United States).

Similarly, of the 20 members of the National Assembly who declared foreign assets, only four provided details.

Meanwhile, a written reply submitted on behalf of the human rights ministry claimed that the ministry had taken up 3,753 cases of human rights violations during fiscal year 2011 and had resolved 1,278 cases up to May 31, 2011.