TIME TO DESIGNATE ISI AS A GLOBAL TERRORIST GROUP

Former dictator Pervez Musharraf recently said that, in his time, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies used terrorist outfits to carry out bomb blasts in India, and the Jaish-e-mohammad (JEM) was one of them. He knew, but did not stop them. The JEM was working for the Pakistani intelligence then, essentially Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), and does so now, along with other terror outfits such as the Lashkar-e-taiba, which have carried out attacks in India, and the Haqqani Network, which has targeted Afghanistan and the Us-led international forces there. It may even have had a role in the Pulwama attack, either directly by helping it plan or facilitate, or indirectly, by being generally supportive of the JEM and others.

The ISI is the parent terrorist organisation, a mother lode that feeds them, keeps them in business and uses them to disrupt peace initiatives and regional stability. But the time may have come to hold it accountable, designate it as a global terrorist organisation as its proxies, or, at least, name, shame and sanction officials linked to these groups or individuals.

The ISI’S role in terrorism has been a matter of public record for long, affirmed and acknowledged even by Pakistanis such as Musharraf. India, the United States and other countries have known it for longer. At a US congressional hearing in 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said: “The Haqqani Network (a Pakistan-based wing of the Afghan Taliban proscribed by both the US and the UN) acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI.”

India has repeatedly been the target of such groups. David Headley, the Pakistani-american who confessed his role in the Mumbai massacre, told the American and Indian prosecutors that two ISI officers — Major Ali and Major Iqbal — helped plan the attacks. And when Omar Sheikh — the Pakistanibritish terrorist, who was released with the JEM founder, Masood Azhar, in 1999 in exchange for passengers of the IC-814 flight — was being hunted for kidnapping American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, he gave himself up to his former handler from the ISI, by then a senior government official.

There is a case for the terror designation for the ISI, or its personnel. But who is going to litigate it? India has considered and dismissed proposals to designate Pakistan a State-sponsor of terrorism because it does not want to shut down avenues for talks to normalise the relations, according to multiple national security officials. But what about the ISI? A retaliatory pronouncement from Pakistan will surely follow. But is that really such a bad thing?

The US toyed with the idea of designating Pakistan a State-sponsor of terrorism in the 1990s, but did not go through with it, though a number of lawmakers and experts continue to press for it. The suggestions to list the ISI a terror organisation is several decades old now. It may be the time now for the US to take another look at those proposals.

The US does target departments of foreign governments. It sanctioned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation in 2017 for less, it can be argued.

Just a few weeks before Lisa Cutis joined President Donald Trump’s national security team in 2017, she wrote a paper with Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the US, urging the new administration to adopt a new and tougher approach to deal with Pakistan for its continued support of terrorism.

The Trump administration’s objective must be, the authors argued, to make it “more and more costly for Pakistani leaders to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies”. Among their many suggestions was the option of declaring Pakistan a State-sponsor of terrorism, though they had then cautioned that it would be unwise do so in the first year of the administration. It’s the third year now.

They had also recommended holding Pakistani military and ISI officials accountable. “The US should consider compiling a list of Pakistani military and ISI officials, current and former, who are known to have facilitated acts of terrorism — including supporting the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network — and barring them from travel to the US.” Blacklisting by the US for links to terrorism could impact their travels to other countries as well. And that would be good start, with sanctions on individuals and entities to follow.

THE ISI’S ROLE IN SPAWNING TERRORISM HAS BEEN A MATTER OF PUBLIC RECORD FOR LONG, ACKNOWLEDGED EVEN BY PAKISTANIS SUCH AS PERVEZ MUSHARRAF