Pakistan's Isi

PAKISTAN’S INTER SERVICES INTELLIGENCE


1. It was a sunny morning in Mumbai that day in Mar 1993. The busy Victoria Terminus was bustling with activity. Thousands went about their daily work with speed and gusto. Just outside the station, Saiyad Ali Mohammed walked briskly to the crowded bus stop. A tall, thin, intense looking man, he clutched in his right hand, a leather briefcase, which he placed carefully near the inner corner of the bus stop structure. Within seconds, a bus screeched to a stop. Moments later, Saiyad had boarded the bus leaving his briefcase behind. As the bus turned the next corner, he heard the explosion. The bus stand was ripped into shreds, with millions of pieces of shrapnel, reducing at least 15 people into shapeless masses of flesh, even as countless others lay bleeding on the sidewalk. Within hours, news of at least ten more bomb blasts reached the bewildered police headquarters. Mumbai’s day of reckoning had arrived. Saiyad smiled to himself. Minutes later, a ringing telephone was answered in Islamabad. The caller from Mumbai was praised for a job well done.

2. This event added yet another feather to the cap already bristling with feathers. The Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan had once again managed to pull off a well-orchestrated dance of death in India, its magnificent obsession. Hardly a day passes when newspapers do not scream about some or the other sinister plot hatched against India by the ISI. With alarming regularity, the social fabric of India continues to be attacked by the sponsors of Islamic Jihad. With vast and endless funding, with complete freedom of operation ISI is an organization of nightmarish lethality. Indeed, a secret regime that is far more powerful than any government ever produced by Pakistan, with more bloodshed to its credit than any army in the subcontinent.

Conception of a Monster: The Creation of the ISI

3. In 1947, an independent Pakistan had in its jurisdiction a body known as...