‘ISI not in Pakistan government control’

Mansoor Ijaz, the man who stirred Pakistan’s ‘memogate’, has alleged that Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), especially its ‘S’ or strategic wing, was not in government control and was interfering in Afghanistan’s political affairs.

There was considerable evidence available on the spy agency’s involvement in setting the political stage in Pakistan by manipulating election results, the Pakistani-American businessman told CNN in an interview. ISI also interferes in the political affairs of Afghanistan by using the Haqqani network, he said.

“The ISI has two critical branches in it, one is called CT for counterterrorism, and the other is the S branch for strategic – it’s sort of the arm of the ISI that does everything from political interventions in other countries, for example, Afghanistan, which is what they’re doing through the Haqqani Network and the Taliban right now,” Ijaz said.

“They do a lot of political interventions in their own country. You know, there are many times when it has been reported in the past and authentically reported and authoritatively reported by the Pakistani press that S Branch was involved in manipulating elections and doing things of that nature inside Pakistan,” he said.

“So it’s an organ of the state that nobody can control, and it is essentially the organ of the state that the army and the intelligence wings are using to shall we say coordinate or obstruct what it is that the political side of the government, the civilian side of the governments do in Pakistan,” Ijaz said.

Asked about the effect of his op-ed that stirred the memogate Ijaz said: “There will never be a time in my view where the military is subservient to the civilians in our lifetime. It may take 30, 40 years for that transformation to come.

“But when it does come, at least what we did was make sure the civilian government has an equal shoulder to the military and the judiciary.”