Everybody does not love Raymond

First published in The Islamabad Dateline on 24.02.2010

Raymond Davis has been on the front-page of newspapers for quite sometime now. He will remain to be, till the parties involved extract their ulterior motives out of the issue and us, the ignorant sheep will dance to the tune of the shepherd, as planned.

The British newspaper that broke the news of Raymond being a CIA spy quotes: The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other media outlets reported for the first time that Davis is a CIA employee. They said they had been aware of his status but kept it under wraps at the request of US officials

The American media outlets, who cry about “freedom of press” every now and then, only gathered the audacity to report the same after London-based newspaper had broken the story.

American media’s mum-ness and Pakistani media’s hue and cry over Raymond Davis’s CIA links puts a big question mark on freedom of press, both here and in the US.

Youth all over Pakistan are disgruntled and angry over Raymond Davis. Protests are being planned out throughout the country, and if set free, the government will find it hard to control the street agitation. But some important points to be considered before coming out on streets:

Do we seriously think the mighty Intelligensia of Pakistan was un-aware of Raymond Davis and others working within our borders?  I mean, a British newspaper is more ‘intelligent’ than the agencies that need to be checking exactly the likes of Raymond? Are we sharing Intelligence and receiving billions of dollars for signed contracts and only way to make those who become a nuisance, flee is by creating public backlash by orchestrating such drama, on the street?  Do we think that our boys are not monitoring diplomats, and that too of Raymond’s history and profile?

More puzzling is the Raymond’s link with banned terrorist outfits and his potential link to drone strikes. America is striking Taliban with drone attacks, but their top spy in the country has links with Taliban and has been visiting them quiet often? The riddle is yet to be fully solved, one wonders if it ever will be solved as American media still had the guts to acknowledge it with-held information, our media still cries of being “free”.

We are living in troubling times of wars between intelligence agencies and our collective energies need to be directed at finding common grounds in rallying for democracy, in trying to infest democratic norms in our society, in working for freedom of judiciary and media, in rallying against extremism and in finding peace within, before aspiring to have peace outside.

Let us not be carried away by “spy-games” as not everybody loves Raymond, in that world.

Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi is an aeronautical engineer by force, an activist by mind, a wanderer by soul & a lover by heart.

Geo News released today: Davis row creates rift between ISI, CIA

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Of Blackwater and ISI: Is ISI Impotent?

There’s a new fashion of blaming every ill in our society on Blackwater/Xe/DynaCorps or other intelligence agencies from God knows where.  

No one denies foreign intelligence working in Pakistan, for American presence everywhere from FIA to Air/Military bases across Pakistan is known to everyone who has been there. So, for those of you who think the famous drone base gifted to US in Baluchistan, where scores of UAV’s are parked, only to take off and bomb our own people or other military and civil establishments (including Airbases, sharing of logistics/intelligence at all levels) gifted to USA after 9/11 is an evil Hindu-Zionst scheme to take over Pakistan, think again. Because no one can enter your home and work inside it, without you not knowing and approving of it.

 

 

I am pasting below, the “known” Operations History of the mighty ISI during the Afghan Jihad and relating to countering RAW, just to show my friends, that ISI is not impotent. (Copied from Wikipedia)

Afghanistan

• (1982) ISI, CIA and Mossad carried out a covert transfer of Soviet-made weapons and Lebanese weapons captured by the Israelis during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and their subsequent transfer to Pakistan and then into Afghanistan. All knowledge of this weapon transfer was kept secret and was only made public recently.

 

ISI Director, Akhtar Abdur Rahman who was the architect of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union.

• (1982-1997) ISI are considered Godfathers of Taliban and believed to have access to Osama bin Laden in the past.^[8].ISI played a central role in the U.S.-backed guerrilla war to oust the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s. That Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed effort flooded Pakistan with weapons and with Afghan, Pakistani and Arab “mujahideen”, who were motivated to fight as a united force protecting fellow Muslims in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. The CIA relied on the ISI to train fighters, distribute arms, and channel money. The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan mujahideen between 1983 and 1997, and dispatched them to Afghanistan. B. Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group, an Indian think-tank, claims that the Central Intelligence Agency through the ISI promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to turn the Soviet troops into heroin addicts and thus greatly reducing their fighting potential.
• (1986) Worrying that among the large influx of Afghan refugees that come into Pakistan due to the Soviet-Afghan war were members of KHAD (Afghan Intelligence), the ISI successfully convinced Mansoor Ahmed who was the Charge-de-Affairs of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad to turn his back on the Soviet backed Afghan government. He and his family were secretly escorted out of their residence and were given safe passage on a London bound British Airways flight in exchange for classified information in regard to Afghan agents in Pakistan. The Soviet and Afghan diplomats tried their best to find the family but were unsuccessful.
• (1994) The Taliban regime that the ISI supported after 1994 to suppress warlord fighting and in hopes of bringing stability to Afghanistan proved too rigid in its Islamic interpretations and too fond of the Al-Qaeda based on its soil. Despite receiving large sums of aid from Pakistan, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar is reported to have insulted a visiting delegation of Saudi Prince Sultan and an ISI general asking that the Taliban turn over bin Laden to Saudi Arabia.^[11] Following the 9/11 attack on the United States by Al-Qaeda, Pakistan felt it necessary to cooperate with the US and the Northern Alliance
• (2001 onwards) American officials believe members of the Pakistani intelligence service are alerting militants to imminent American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. There is also evidence that the ISI helped plan the July 7th bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. This conclusion is based on signals intelligence between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants.

India

• (1950s) The ISI’s Covert Action Division was used in assisting the insurgents in India‘s North-East.

• (1960s) In the late 1960s assists the Sikh Home Rule Movement of London-based Charan Singh Panchi, which was subsequently transformed into the Khalistan Movement, headed by Jagjit Singh Chauhan in which many other members of the Sikh diaspora in Europe, United States and Canada joined and then demanded the separate country of Khalistan.

• (1965) The 1965 war in Kashmir provoked a major crisis in intelligence. When the war started, there was a complete collapse of the operations of all the intelligence agencies, after the commencement of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, was apparently unable to locate an Indian armored division due to its preoccupation with political affairs. Ayub Khan set up a committee headed by General Yahya Khan to examine the working of the agencies.

• (1969-1974) The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and ISI worked in tandem with the Nixon Administration in assisting the Khalistan movement in Punjab.

• (1980) The PAF Field Intelligence Unit at their base in Karachi in July 1980 captured an Indian agent. He was interrogated and revealed that a large network of Indian spies were functioning in Karachi. The agent claimed that these spies, in addition to espionage, had also assassinated a few armed personnel. He also said the leader of the spy ring was being headed by the food and beverages manager at the Intercontinental Hotel in Karachi and a number of serving Air Force officers and ratings were on his payroll. The ISI decided to survey the manager to see who he was in contact with, but then President of Pakistan Zia-ul Haq superseded and wanted the manager and anyone else involved in the case arrested immediately. It was later proven that the manager was completely innocent.

• (1983) Ilam Din also known as Ilmo was an infamous Indian spy working from Pakistan. He had eluded being captured many times but on at 3 a.m., Ilmo and two other Indian spies were apprehended by Pakistani Rangers as they were illegally crossing into Pakistan from India. Their mission was to spy and report back on the new military equipment that Pakistan will be showing in their annual Pakistan day parade. Ilmo after being thoroughly interrogated was then forced by the ISI to send false information to his R&AW handlers in India. This process continued and many more Indian spies in Pakistan were flushed out, such as Roop Lal.

• (1984) ISI uncovered a secret deal in which naval base facilities were granted by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the USSR in Vizag and the Andaman & Nicobar Island and the alleged attachment of KGB advisers to the then Lieutenant General Sunderji who was the commander of Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984.

• (1984) ISI failed to perform a proper background check on the British company which supplied the Pakistan Army with its Arctic-weather gear. When Pakistan attempted to secure the top of the Siachen Glacier in 1984, it placed a large order for Arctic-weather gear with the same company that also supplied the Indian Army with its gear. Indians were easily alerted to the large Pakistani purchase and deduced that this large purchase could be used to equip troops to capture the glacier.

• (1985) A routine background check on various staff members working for the Indian embassy raised suspicions on an Indian woman who worked as a school teacher in an Indian School in Islamabad. Her enthusiastic and too friendly attitude gave her up. She was in reality an agent working for the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). ISI monitored her movements to a hotel in Islamabad where she rendezvoused with a local Pakistani man who worked as an nuclear engineer for Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. ISI then confronted her and were then able to turn her into a double agent spying on the Indian Embassy in Islamabad.

• (1988) ISI implemented Operation Tupac a three part action plan for covertly supporting the militants in their fight against the Indian authorities in Kashmir, initiated by President Zia Ul Haq in 1988 after the failure of “Operation Gibraltar“.

 

The mighty ISI, who single handedly managed to oust USSR from Afghanistan and countered MOSSAD, RAW and other intelligence agencies around the globe with utmost efficiency is impotent all of sudden to counter Blackwater?

 

Do you think PC Peshawar and other castles gifted to US based intelligence networks are not under the vigilant eyes of ISI? Do you think the mightiest of Intelligence Agencies, IN ALL OF KNOWN WORLD, is simply helpless in countering some paid mercenaries who are in Pakistan and can be spotted by the press quite often?

 

And for those of you who still believe, ISI is impotent. Try reading history before tuning to TV screens and paying heed to paid anchorpersons and conspiracy theorists blaming “foreign elements” for every bomb that goes off in Pakistan and leaves Pakistani streets blood soaked, in echoes of cries.

 

Some of my activist friends might have had the pleasure of knowing ISI’s capabitlies during the Emergency rule of 2007, when even emails and text messages were a reason of intelligence agents bugging you before the protest/rally took place.

 

This is Pakistan, ISI’s homeground, have you seen Indians play cricket in India?

 

No ‘Chiria’ flaps its wings in Pakistan without our intelligence not knowing. Derive your conclusions yourself.

 

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