As noted Monday, elements within Pakistan's dysfunctional Inter-Services Intelligence agency (or ISI) continue to support the Taliban and al Qaeda inside Afghanistan. The ISI also supports the extremists inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence and the leadership of the ISI plan to dismantle the extremist support network inside Pakistan, according to the Asia Times. The main targets are former ISI chief Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who is considered the father of the Taliban, and Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja, a retired ISI official:
High-level meetings between US intelligence and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have already been held at different levels to devise plans to cripple the support systems of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Two prominent names came under discussion at these meetings: retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul and a former ISI official, retired Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja.
Gul, a former head of the ISI, is suspected of providing political and moral support to the Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan. Last year, former premier Benazir Bhutto named him as a suspect for the October 18 attack on her life in Karachi. She was subsequently assassinated in December.
Khawaja was the first person in the country to assist the displaced families of Arab fighters who fled to Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. He fought their cases in court, arranged temporary housing for them and assisted them in departing to their countries. Khawaja is active in the cause of missing people (those detained without trial for years) and wants to register cases against the former chief of army staff and president, General Pervez Musharraf, and his military aides for abuses allegedly committed during their eight years in power.
While the removal of Gul and Khawaja, two senior former ISI officials who have been eyeballs deep in extremist activates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would likely help the effort, the idea of working with the ISI to take them down is fraught with risk. The ISI remains riddled with officers with competing loyalties. The ISI purges conducted by the Musharraf regime and the Zardari goverment largely targeted the high-level officers in bed with the Taliban. Lower-level officers, many loyal to Gul, Khawaja, and others are still in the ranks, and will sabotage these efforts.
The ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda nexus is quite capable of killing those who oppose them. Just yesterday, Major General Amir Faisal Alvi, the former commander of the Special Services Group, was gunned down while driving to Islamabad.
The Special Services Group is Pakistan's elite counterterrorism force that conducted the assault on the Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. While police are unsure if this attack was an assassination or a criminal act, good money is on the latter.
The Taliban and their allies have pulled off several high profile assassinations, including the murder of Pakistan's Surgeon General in Rawalpindi, the supposed secure garrison city adjacent to Islamabad. Another suicide strike in Rawalpindi occurred right outside the military general headquarters; the target was a bus carrying ISI personnel. There have been numerous attacks like these throughout Pakistan, in areas only those with assistance from the ISI or the military should be able to access.
