The Roots

The roots of terror go back to the U.S.-backed guerrilla war to oust the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s. That CIA-backed effort flooded Pakistan with weapons and zealous Afghan, Pakistani and Arab "mujahideen", who fought under the name of Islam. In order to train fighters, distribute arms, channel money, the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) relied on the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).

During the Soviet invasion from 1979-1989, the ISI monitored the activities of and provided advice and support to the mujahidin, and commandos from the Army's Special Services Group helped guide the operations inside Afghanistan. The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan Mujahideen between 1983 to 1997 and dispatched them to Afghanistan.

When the Soviet Union left the region in 1989, the CIA pulled out, too. But the Islamic extremists remained, and Pakistan's own intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence bureau or ISI took over as their primary sponsors. After the American, the ISI was left unreigned and continued to use Islamic fundamentalism to achieve Pakistan's own goals.

The Taliban

Over the next decade, the ISI continued to actively participate in Afghan Civil War, supporting the Taliban in their fight against the Rabbani government. The ISI continued to train and arm pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is widely know by intelligence and media agencies worldwide:

"We have enough weapons to fight an uninterrupted war for 60 years," says Mullah Mohammed Omar, the spiritual head of the Taliban movement.

"If the Afghans continue to fight for another 100 years," claimed an ISI operative two years ago, "they would not need to import weapons, thanks to the Soviet Union and the western allies who left behind huge arms dumps in Afghanistan."

Al-Qaeda

Along with Taliban, the ISI helped nurture al-Qaeda, the notorious terrorist network responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. In fact, Osama Bin Laden would have been killed by a missile strike ordered by American president Bill Clinton in 1998. Clinton later admitted, "The best shot we had at him (bin Laden) was when I bombed his training camps in 1998. We just missed him by a matter of hours, maybe even less than an hour." However the real reason that bin Laden escaped was that the U.S. informed Pakistan that it would be striking that terrorist training camp to make sure that the Pakistani's would not mistake it as an Indian nuclear strike. This early warning quickly leaked through to the ISI who informed bin Laden, allowing him to escape from danger safely.

Kashmiri Militancy

Other than the supporting the Taliban, the primary objective of the ISI is to destabilize India and to facilitate the Pakistani occupation of the Indian side Kashmir. Using the same basic strategy of militancy the ISI has attempted to accomplish these goals.

The ISI, which basically runs the state's insurgency, recruits Afghans (mostly Taliban members) and youngsters from madrassas (Muslim fundamentalist schools) across Pakistan. It provides these recruits with military training before pushing them across the porous line of control (LoC) that divides the disputed state between India and Pakistan. When militancy began to arise in 1989 in Kashmir, the majority of militants was indigenous Kashmiri citizens but as the local support for militancy has been steadily decreasing the number of foreign militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan has been increasing. By now the majority of militants operating in Kashmir are by far foreigners.

The Kashmir conflict has in the past decade caused the deaths of 30-80,000 of who are mostly civilian. The ISI strategy for militants to attack non-Muslim civilians (ethnic cleansing) in Kashmir has worked for the most part because there are now approximately 300,000 Hindus who have fled from the region in fear of their lives. Under pressure from international powers, President Musharraf banned the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed -- the two terrorist outfits responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13th, 2001 but has not taken significant action against them.

Other Groups

In order to destabilize India and surrounding nations, the ISI has funded separatist and extremist movement against the government of India.

ISI has been reported to operate training camps near the border of Bangladesh where members of separatist groups of the northeastern states, known as the "United Liberation Front Of Seven Sisters" [ULFOSS] are trained with military equipment and terrorist activities. These groups include the National Security Council of Nagaland [NSCN], People's Liberation Army [PLA], United Liberation Front of Assam [ULFA], and North East Students Organization [NESO].

During the height of the Sikh separatist movement (Khalistan) in the early 1990's, the ISI supported Sikh militancy. The ISI continues to try to revive the militancy though the movement has subsided.

Besides India, Pakistan supports Islamic terrorism in the Xinjiang province of China as an instrument of ensuring its enduring centrality in the evolving regional dynamics.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the ISI has as for the past two decades incited, supported, funded and participated in militant movements that destabilize countries surrounding Pakistan in the Central and South Asia in an attempt to achieve power in the region through violence and terrorism. The reach of the ISI is far. It's terror network indirectly is the cause of violence ranging from the US to Philippines. Any efforts to eliminate terrorism will be unsuccessful until the ISI is eliminated…

Fact Sheet:

What is it? The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) is a secretive intelligence agency that is considered a "state within a state"

What have they done? ISI is responsible for the training, arming, organizing and creation of several miltant groups within Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangldesh. They have armed more than 100,000 fighters in the past 20 years. The ISI also controls the Pakistani political system and has backed several coups including the current dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. The ISI are also the creators of the Taliban.

How are they linked to terror?
The ISI has direct ties to the following terrorist orginizations:

• Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)
• Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT)
• Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
• Hezb-ul-Mujahedin
• Harakat-ul Ansar
• Harakat ul-Mujahedin
• Al Umar
• Al Barq
• Muslim Janbaz Force
• United Liberation Front Of Seven Sisters [ULFOSS]
• National Security Council of Nagaland [NSCN]
• People's Liberation Army [PLA]
• United Liberation Front of Assam [ULFA]
• North East Students Organization [NESO]
• Khalistan Commando Force (KCF-P)
• Babbar Khalsa International (BKI)
• International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF)

Links:

ISI (South Asia Analysis Group)

ISI Article (New York Times)

Directorate for [ISI] by Federation of American Scientists

The ISI Role in Pakistan's Politics

Pakistan's ISI Trying To Revive Militancy in Punjab

ISI & the War on Terror [MSNBC]