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| War on Terror | |
| 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| ISI flip-flop: Anatomy of defective decision-making | |
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BY NASIM ZEHRA
Khaleej Times Online 2 August 2008 Prior to the Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's departure to the US, a detailed meeting on Pakistan-US relations covering the security matters was held at the Prime Minister's House. For a more effective response to the acute internal security crisis and to external pressures, the participants agreed on the need for better coordination among various intelligence agencies.
But there was no discussion at all on altering the reporting line of the ISI.
Shortly after the meeting the government decided that the ISI and IB would, with immediate effect, be placed under the control of the Interior Ministry.
The matter was not discussed in any Cabinet meeting, it was not put before the Parliament or any Parliamentary or Senate Committee and none of the coalition partners were consulted. Similarly, the justification to alter the reporting line was not discussed with the Ministry of Defence or the three services chiefs or the Chairman Joints Chief of Staff Committee who are directly involved in the operations and the output of the ISI.
Also in violation of a basic rule of hierarchy and reporting lines that requires individuals and institutions with narrower mandates to report to authority with a broader mandate, the PID circular announced that ISI would report to the Interior Ministry which constitutionally has a narrower mandate than that of the ISI. The ISI's mandate is to provide strategic intelligence, including external threat perceptions and covert operations, to the Prime Minister, the three Armed Forces and to the Joint Services Headquarters. It is also engaged in counter-intelligence to undermine intelligence assets of the adversary countries deployed within Pakistan. A section deals with Pakistani politics too. Hence, the ISI's mandate is far broader than that of the institution the PID notification was instructing it to report to.
The ISI also has a complex inter-institutional web it functions through including the Prime Minister's secretariat, the Defence Ministry, the three Armed Forces, the GHQ and the Foreign Office. ISI currently functions with a 65 army and 35 civilian ratio of staff with almost 90 per cent of the 65 per cent are serving officers. With such a complex institutional arrangement placing the agency under the Interior Ministry was quite simplistic.
Then how and why the July 26 decision was made? Perhaps the defence of decision by the PPP co-chairperson is a revealing one.
The Press quoted him as saying that the decision was made to deflect international pressure on the ISI and enable the elected government to effectively defend the ISI. Indeed against the backdrop of the deadly attack in Kabul on the Indian embassy, the rising attacks inside Afghanistan on the ISAF forces, the firing along the LoC and increase in attacks inside India, the increasingly harsh criticism of the ISI by the US, Indian and Afghan trio is unceasing.
As for external criticism the governments managing CIA, Mossad, MI5 and Raw seldom seek external popularity for their intelligence agencies! On advice from relevant individuals, Zardari did reverse the decision. Subsequently, a private channel quoted him saying that the earlier notification "had made it clear that the role of the Ministry of Interior would be of an assistance in the affairs looked after by the ISI, adding that the second notification had clarified all ambiguities in this regard."
The critique of the elected government's shoddy decision-making notwithstanding, there are specific issues regarding the management of the ISI that need to be addressed. The ISI of the post-80's especially needs to be streamlined. The CIA-ISI nexus through the anti-Soviet Afghan war under an army dictator's leadership that catapulted ISI into an intelligence supremo with its unaccountable spread of activities. Its foreign patrons of the past are its harshest critics, and internally its political masters of yesterday want it cut down to size. As an institution that must promote and protect Pakistan's interests abroad, ISI abroad must remain a secret and feared organisation, but at home it should be accountable to an elected and responsible body of people.
There must be four-fold strategy to streamline ISI's workings. One, for more regular reporting to the Prime Minister, a regularised system of ISI and IB reporting to the Prime Minister must be evolved. At present, the initiative to report on the strategic environment and threat perceptions to the elected PM, based on media reports, has mostly been taken by the agencies.
The elected authorities appear more proactive on issuing instructions to agencies on the domestic political front. Two, for greater control of the workings of the ISI and other intelligence agencies, these should be put under the parliamentary review and oversight through in-camera briefings to the Defence Committees of National Assembly and Senate.
The creation of Intelligence Subcommittees of these two Defence Committees is long overdue. This would enable parliamentarians with security clearance to receive briefings on sensitive issues. Three, greater coordination among intelligence agencies and the key policy makers are required.
Four, the elected government must arrive at a consensus to disband the notorious political department of the ISI's internal security wing.
For decades this department, through manipulation, has countered genuine political evolution of Pakistan.
Nasim Zehra is an Islamabad -based national security strategist
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Islam and the West 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com Will Bush Bully Maliki Into Backing Off a Withdrawal Timeline -- Again?
By Gareth Porter, IPS News.
Posted July 31, 2008.
Now is not the first time the Iraqi Prime Minister sought a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Tools
WASHINGTON, Jul 28 (IPS) -- Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.
But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.
The context of al-Maliki's earlier advocacy of a timetable for withdrawal was the serious Iraqi effort to negotiate an agreement with seven major Sunni armed groups that had begun under his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari in early 2006. The main Sunni demand in those talks had been for a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Under the spur of those negotiations, al-Jaafari and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaei had developed a plan for taking over security in all 18 provinces of Iraq from the United States by the end of 2007. During his first week as prime minister in late May, al-Maliki referred twice publicly to that plan.
At the same time al-Maliki began working on a draft "national reconciliation plan", which was in effect a road map to final agreement with the Sunni armed groups. The Sunday Times of London, which obtained a copy of the draft, reported Jun. 23, 2006 that it included the following language:
"We must agree on a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq, while at the same time building up the Iraqi forces that will guarantee Iraqi security, and this must be supported by a United Nations Security Council decision."
That formula, linking a withdrawal timetable with the build-up of Iraqi forces, was consistent with the position taken by Sunni armed groups in their previous talks with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, which was that the timetable for withdrawal would be "linked to the timescale necessary to rebuild Iraq's armed forces and security services". One of the Sunni commanders who had negotiated with Khalilzad described the resistance position in those words to the London-based Arabic-language Alsharq al Awsat in May 2006.
The Iraqi government draft was already completed when Bush arrived in Baghdad June 13 without any previous consultation with al-Maliki, giving the Iraqi leader five minutes' notice that Bush would be meeting him in person rather than by videoconference.
The al-Maliki cabinet sought to persuade Bush to go along with the withdrawal provision of the document. In his press conference upon returning, Bush conceded that Iraqi cabinet members in the meeting had repeatedly brought up the issue of reconciliation with the Sunni insurgents.
In fact, after Bush had left, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, said he had asked Bush to agree to a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign forces. Then President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, released a statement of support for that request.
Nevertheless, Bush signalled his rejection of the Iraqi initiative in his June 14 press conference, deceitfully attributing his own rejection of a timetable to the Iraqi government. "And the willingness of some to say that if we're in power we'll withdraw on a set timetable concerns people in Iraq," Bush declared.
When the final version of the plan was released to the public June 25, the offending withdrawal timetable provision had disappeared. Bush was insisting that the al-Maliki government embrace the idea of a "conditions-based" U.S. troop withdrawal. Khalilzad gave an interview with Newsweek the week the final reconciliation plan was made public in which he referred to a "conditions-driven roadmap".
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius further revealed in a June 28 column that Khalilzad had told him that Gen. George Casey, then commander of the Multi-National Force -- Iraq, was going to meet with al-Maliki about the formation of a "joint U.S.-Iraqi committee" to decide on "the conditions related to a road map for an ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops". Thus al-Maliki was being forced to agree to a negotiating body that symbolized a humiliating dictation by the occupying power to a client government.
The heavy pressure that had obviously been applied to al-Maliki on the issue during and after the Bush visit was resented by al-Maliki and al-Rubaie. The Iraqi rancor over that pressure was evident in the op-ed piece by al-Rubaei published in the Washington Post a week after Bush's visit.
Although the article did not refer directly to al-Maliki's reconciliation plan and its offer to negotiate a timetable for withdrawal, the very first line implied that the issue was uppermost in the Iraqi prime minister's mind. "There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq," wrote al-Rubaie, "but no defined timeline has yet been set."
Al-Rubaei declared "Iraq's ambition to have full control of the country by the end of 2008". Although few readers understood the import of that statement, it was an indication that the al-Maliki regime was prepared to negotiate complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2008.
Then the national security adviser indicated that the government already had its own targets for the first two phases of foreign troop withdrawal: withdrawal of more than 30,000 troops to under 100,000 foreign troops by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of "most of the remaining troops" -- i.e., to less than 50,000 troops -- by end of the 2007.
The author explained why the "removal" of foreign troops was so important to the Iraqi government: it would "remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the resistance in the first place"; it would also "allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbours that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance …" Finally, al-Rubaie asserted, it would "legitimize the Iraqi government in the eyes of its own people."
He also took a carefully-worded shot at the Bush administration's actions in overruling the centrepiece of Iraq's reconciliation policy. "While Iraq is trying to gain independence from the United States," he wrote, "some influential foreign figures" were still "trying to spoon-feed our government and take a very proactive role in many key decisions."
The 2006 episode left a lasting imprint on both the Bush and al-Maliki regimes, which is still very much in evidence in the present conflict over a withdrawal timetable. The Bush White House continues to act as though it is confident that al-Maliki can be pressured to back down as he was forced to do before. And at least some of al-Maliki's determination to stand up to Bush in 2008 is related to the bitterness that he and al-Rubaie, among others, still feel over the way Bush humiliated them in 2006.
It appears that Bush is making the usual dominant power mistake in relations to al-Maliki. He may have been a pushover in mid-2006, but the circumstances have changed, in Iraq, in the U.S.-Iraq-Iran relations and in the United States. The al-Maliki regime now has much greater purchase to defy Bush than it had two years ago.
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Asadullah Syed
9:02 AM
Sultan Shahin
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