“Pakistan’s Intelligence Monster”

Under this heading, the Khalid Hasan writes in the Daily Times of Pakistan that today many Pakistani journalists fear their government’s intelligence agencies more than any Islamic militant.

“The roughing up of New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall by intelligence hoods in her Quetta hotel room on 19 December and the despicable treatment given her photographer has brought shame to Pakistan. I have been speaking to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York as to what response their protest to the interior minister Aftab Sherpao has received. As of Friday 12 January, CPJ had heard nothing and was not expecting to hear anything either. That sums up the gangsterland that parts of Pakistan have become.

“The intelligence establishment in Pakistan is now a government within a government, a dread entity that has gone rogue, that recognises no law, respects no rules, is bound by no code of conduct and brings the people of Pakistan, in whose name it acts, nothing but disgrace. In the last sixty years there has been only one attempt to look into the state of the intelligence establishment in Pakistan and to see how it could be reformed.”

There are also regular allegations that Taleban and al Qaeda have powerful supporters/well-wishers in the Pakistani intelligence establishment. Hence the US/NATO forces have little chance of achieving any breakthrough in Afghanistan.

While doing Google search on the subject I came across an article written in 2001 that presents another dimension of the role of the Pakistani intelligence establishment.

Then there is the recent testimony by the new Director of National Intelligence in the US Senate about Pakistan’s doubtful role in the war against terror, as reported in The Washington Post.

“In testimony before the Senate yesterday, the new Director of National Intelligence retired Admiral John M. (’Mike’) McConnell, was as careful as all U.S. officials, lauding Pakistan’s ‘ongoing efforts,’ but also highlighting many of America’s concerns and disappointments.

“One can’t help but read the annual ‘threat’ assessment from the intelligence community and come to the conclusion that for all of the American honor involved in “victory” in Iraq, the real danger of terrorism, and the country with the greatest potential for a world-shattering implosion, is not Iraq or Afghanistan or even Iran: it is Pakistan.”