ISI-CIA ties hit rock bottom

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ISI-CIA ties hit rock bottom


ISLAMABAD (Agencies) - Cooperation between the American and Pakistani spy agencies has been scaled back because of an incident involving a CIA contractor shooting two Pakistanis, Pakistani intelligence officials said on Thursday.

A senior intelligence official in Islamabad said the case of Raymond Davis had strained but not broken relations between the CIA and the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligences (ISI) because the ISI didn’t know about Davis before he shot and killed two Pakistanis on January 27 in Lahore.

“It’s not business as usual; it’s not open war,” the official told Reuters. “Cooperation and operations together will continue at a lesser scale.”

Another intelligence official denied rumours that the two agencies were not working together.“We are not ready to split,” he said. “There has been a patch up because we have both realised that in the larger interest of the region and the war on terrorism, CIA and ISI must work together.”

The case of 36-year-old Davis, a former US special forces officer, has strained the already-uneasy alliance between the United States and Pakistan, who are supposed to be united in the face of militants waging a war in Afghanistan. Davis’ killing of two Pakistani men in Lahore has inflamed anti-US sentiment in Pakistan, effectively giving the government little choice but to prosecute him in court. His trial for murder begins on Friday.

Davis has been revealed to be a CIA contractor. The United States says the assignment gives Davis diplomatic immunity and he should be released immediately.The US embassy in Islamabad declined to comment.

The possible presence of more CIA contractors like Davis worries the ISI because they don’t know how many there are, their identities or their duties. Officials say there could be “hundreds.”

“We are concerned,” the first official told Reuters. “We don’t know how many and we have asked them (CIA) to give this information to us. But they haven’t done that yet.”

It is widely thought the CIA is running a network of spies in Pakistan for a number of reasons: identifying militant targets for a campaign of strikes by unmanned drone aircraft, gathering intelligence on militant groups and on Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

Signs of strain were evident in a letter the ISI sent to the Wall Street Journal in response to an article the newspaper published on the tension between the agencies.

“It is regrettable that CIA leadership on many occasions has failed to show respect to the relationship of the two agencies and has acted with arrogance towards ISI which has resulted in weakening the relationship on which it is entirely dependant,” the ISI said, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

“Involvement of CIA with Raymond Davis is beyond any shadow of doubt. Post incident conduct of CIA has virtually put the partnership into question.
The ISI is now scouring thousands of visas issued to US employees in Pakistan. The ISI official said Davis’ visa application contains bogus references and phone numbers. He said thousands of visas were issued to US Embassy employees over the past five months following a government directive to the Pakistan Embassy in Washington to issue visas without the usual vetting by the interior ministry and the ISI. The same directive was issued to the Pakistan embassies in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, he said.

Within two days of receiving that directive, the Pakistani Embassy issued 400 visas and since then thousands more have been issued, said the ISI official. A Western diplomat in Pakistan agreed that a “floodgate” opened for US Embassy employees requesting Pakistani visas.

The ISI official said his agency knows and works with “the bona fide CIA people in Pakistan” but is upset that the CIA would send others over behind its back. For now, he said, his agency is not talking with the CIA at any level, including the most senior.

To regain support and assistance, he said, “they have to start showing respect, not belittling us, not being belligerent to us, not treating us like we are their lackeys.”

Nato and US operations in Afghanistan could be adversely effected by a split between the ISI and the CIA. Washington complains bitterly about Pakistan’s refusal to go after the Haqqani network, which is believed to be the strongest fighting force in Afghanistan and closely allied with al-Qaeda.
The ISI official said Pakistan is fed up with Washington’s complaints, and he accused the CIA of planting stories about ISI assistance to the Haqqani network.

Irrespective of the commonality of objectives in this war on terror, it is hard to predict if the relationship will ever reach the level at which it was prior to the Davis episode.”

Relations between the two agencies has been on a downward slide since December when the CIA station chief in Islamabad was forced to leave the country after his name was published in a court filing over drone attacks.
The ISI resents US suspicion over its commitment to fighting militancy.

“We are fighting not at the behest or for the Americans. We are fighting a war for ourselves, for our future,” the first intelligence official said. “We just have common interests. For both of us to succeed, we need each other.”

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