[lbo-talk] 'Who killed Daniel Pearl?'

[Ulhas Joglekar]

DAWN

03 May 2003

'Who killed Daniel Pearl?'

By Irfan Husain

Last week when President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad, he handed over a
list of Taliban commanders who had allegedly been given shelter in the
Pakistani tribal areas and were staging cross-border attacks in his country.

For years, the Indian government has been pressing Pakistan to hand over a
number of its citizens accused of terrorist attacks on its soil, including
the bombing of the Mumbai stock exchange a few years ago which left scores
dead. In fact, sections of the Pakistani press have published investigative
stories about some of these alleged criminals, who originally belonged to
the Indian underworld, but have apparently been given sanctuary and
protection in Karachi, where they enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. At least one
reporter who has pursued this story was kidnapped, beaten up and warned to
lay off.

The Americans have their own list of Al Qaeda and Taliban holy warriors who
are suspected to be hiding in Pakistan. At regular intervals, one or more of
these terrorists are arrested, proving that the FBI is looking in the right
place. For our part, the government takes great pride in these operations,
crowing that it proves our staunch support for 'the war on terror.'
Actually, it also proves that we have created the environment for them to
find sanctuary here in the first place.

Given our neighbours' as well as western concerns about terrorism they see
as emanating from our territory, as Pakistanis we need to ask how and why
our country has been turned into a nest of armed zealots and criminals who
are creating mayhem abroad as well as within our borders. And more to the
point, who is responsible for this state of affairs? No prizes for guessing
which Pakistani agency is at the top of the list of suspects.

Since the Afghan war, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has
acquired the reputation of being a state within a state; a loose cannon
beyond the control of the political leadership; and an unguided missile that
has been damaging the national interest while pursuing its own narrow
agenda.

In actual fact, however, as successive army chiefs have stated on the
record, the ISI reports to them, and as it is staffed at the senior level by
serving military officers, who return to their respective units after
serving for a fixed period, they are clearly answerable to the chief of army
staff which is where the buck must stop.

Civilian leaders are out of this loop: when Benazir Bhutto tried to bring in
her own man, a retired general, to head the ISI, he was bypassed by his
deputies who apparently reported directly to the army chief of the day,
General Aslam Beg. Despite this absence of any political control, the ISI
has long been meddling in civilian affairs, making and toppling governments;
rigging elections (as established before the Supreme Court when General
Durrani, ex-director of the ISI, confirmed that he had handed over millions
to several well-known politicians to keep Bhutto's PPP out of power); and
breaking the laws of the land with impunity.

Had these shenanigans been confined to Pakistan, the rest of the world could
not have cared less. But when the ISI's ambitions, fuelled by success
against the Soviets in Afghanistan, led it to seek fresh victories abroad,
it overreached itself: it forgot that in its Afghan jihad, it had the full
backing of the United States. Now it is universally viewed as a dangerous,
out-of-control agency that is a menace to the West as well as to
neighbouring countries.

In his recent book called 'Who Killed Daniel Pearl?', the famous French
philosopher and historian Bernard-Henri Levy has blamed the ISI for the
murder. Basing his conclusion on several weeks of investigations in
Pakistan, he alleges that the Wall Street Journal correspondent in Mumbai
was invited by the 'double agent', Omar Saeed Sheikh, to investigate the
links between Pakistani intelligence and Richard Reid, the notorious 'shoe
bomber', who has been convicted of attempting to blow up a jetliner in
mid-air.

According to a recent Guardian story, Levy has termed Pakistan "the most
delinquent of nations", and says that "an odour of apocalypse"floats over
cities in Pakistan. The report goes on to state that according to Levy,
Pakistan had transferred nuclear secrets to Iran and was helping North Korea
develop the atomic bomb. Levy also claims that "Pakistan was the real key to
all Islamic-led terrorism."

When this book is translated into English, I have no doubt our government
will put out a flood of denials, but the damage will have been done. Even if
the ISI is innocent of this particularly gruesome crime, the perception
abroad is that it is certainly capable of it. Living in London, I have
frequently been asked by well-informed people whether Pakistan's premier
intelligence service is really as dangerously autonomous as it seems from
here.

I realize that it is difficult for Pakistani ultra-nationalists to grasp,
but in the West, at least, people are not willing to make any distinction
between 'freedom fighters' who kill and maim innocent civilians and
terrorists. Another fact that our super-patriots have trouble understanding
is that the world has changed after 9/11, and there is now far less
tolerance of politically-motivated mayhem, no matter how just the cause.

Quite apart from its role outside our borders, the ISI has frequently been
accused of interfering in internal politics, as well as beating up and
threatening journalists and politicians. Raja Sanaullah, a member of the
Punjab Assembly, has twice been kidnapped briefly and subjected to the third
degree after having criticized the army in the provincial assembly.

In this space, Ardeshir Cowasjee has written about a member of his domestic
staff being locked up for weeks and grilled by intelligence operatives. The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Hyderabad representative was whisked
away and roughed up. The list goes on. Now it is possible that some of these
crimes were committed by other agencies but were laid at the ISI's door;
however, this is only because the ISI has acquired a reputation of
omnipotence.

There must be some intelligent people at senior levels in the ISI (despite
the old dictum of military intelligence and intelligence being a
contradiction in terms) who realize that their agency's internal and
external activities are bad for the country's image as well as for political
stability.

Ultimately, an army is only as strong as the country. What the ISI is doing
is progressively weakening the fabric of the nation, apart from gaining a
terrible reputation for itself as well as the Pakistan army. Every country
maintains a secret service, but few of them flout the laws of the land as
freely as the ISI seems to do.

© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2003