Pakistan appointed a new head of intelligence on Friday, injecting
some uncertainty in America's dealings with an agency crucial to its
hopes of negotiating a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban and keeping
pressure on al-Qaida.
Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam replaces Lt. Gen.
Ahmad Shuja Pasha, who had been in the post since 2008 and was due to
retire on March 18th. The scion of a military family who is currently
army commander in the city of Karachi, Islam was considered a likely man
for the job.
Islam, who between 2008 and 2010 was the deputy head
of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, will be a major player in
any Pakistani efforts to get the Afghan Taliban to enter peace
negotiations to end the war. ISI agents helped build up the Afghan
Taliban in the 1990s, and its leaders are believed to be based in
Pakistan. The ISI is considered to have some influence over them.
While
there remain doubts over its loyalty, the ISI also works closely with
the CIA in tracking and capturing members of al-Qaida, which retains a
global command and training center close to the Afghan border.
Relations
between Washington and the United States have been strained since the
U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year and have all but
collapsed since November, when American troops mistakenly killed 24
Pakistani troops on the Afghan border. Intelligence cooperation between
them has continued despite the tensions, officials from both nations
have said.
The ISI falls under the control of the army, which sets policy in consultation with the elected government.
As
such, the appointment of Islam is not expected to immediately, or
significantly, change Pakistani policy, but having a new man at the helm
inevitably brings a measure of uncertainty in American dealings with
the spy agency. The current head of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani,
is due to retire in October 2013.
"There is now a variable.
Except for his close relations, who knows what he believes in? When he
comes under stress, how will he react?" said Moeed Pirzada, a political
commentator.
A U.S. official said Islam had traveled to America
during his career to attend U.S. military sponsored training programs,
and was familiar with his American counterparts.
"It would not be a
surprise to see a brief transition period as the new head of the ISI
gets up to speed, but that shouldn't have much impact on counter
terrorism cooperation," said the official, speaking anonymously to talk
about intelligence matters.
Islam has also served as head of the
ISI's internal security wing, which deals with militants and
counterintelligence. As army chief in Karachi, he would have intimate
knowledge of the militant groups in the city, which has been frequently
hit by terrorist attacks since 2001.
Pasha headed the spy service during a tumultuous time, especially after the bin Laden raid in May.
Abroad,
bin Laden's presence in the military town of Abbottabad only heightened
suspicions that elements of the ISI may have been protecting him. At
home, the military establishment was criticized for failing to track him
down, as well as not preventing the unilateral American airborne raid.
Shuja
Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the U.S.-based Atlantic
Council, said the change of ISI chief "wouldn't makes a great deal of
difference" in Pakistani policy.
"Instructions will continue to
come from the army chief. However, there are always the personal likes
and dislikes of the individual who takes over the ISI because the army
chief is not supervising every micro detail," he said, speaking before
Islam's appointment was announced.
Militants attacked ISI offices
several times over the last four years, and Pasha had to ramp up the
agency's fight against them. During his tenure, the CIA dramatically
expanded its drone strike program against militants along the Afghan
border, allegedly with the support of the ISI.
Earlier Friday, an
American missile attack killed 12 militants in South Waziristan, a
rugged militant stronghold where the Pakistani army has staged
offensives in the past, intelligence officials said. The attack was the
eighth this year, which represents a drop in frequency over the past two
years. In 2011, there were an average of two strikes a week.
The
strikes, which began in earnest in 2008, have killed scores of
militants, including foreign al-Qaida members involved in plotting
attacks on the West. Their tempo increased in 2010, when they hit
militants widely seen as being proxies of the Pakistani army, causing
friction between the U.S and Pakistan.
Also Friday, an al-Qaida
video released on the Internet confirmed the death of militant commander
Badr Mansoor in a missile attack in February. Mansoor was believed to
be behind many of the suicide attacks inside Pakistan in recent years,
and so his death could be cited by supporters of the campaign in
Washington and Islamabad as an example of how drone attacks benefit both
countries.
Mansoor was from Pakistan's largest province, Punjab,
and moved to North Waziristan in 2008, where he led a faction of some
230 fighters, local insurgents have said. The enlistment of Punjabis in
the Pakistani Taliban has been a serious concern for the government,
because it makes it easier for the militants to export violence from the
border to the heart of the country, where most Punjabis live. AP
