Relations between ISI and CIA souring?

3 Aug 2008, 0804 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
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WASHINGTON: In BBC correspondent Mohammed Hanif's partly fictional book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, set during the Zia era, the then CIA Director Bill Casey and a Saudi prince race to Pakistan in their respective jets because they feel like eating a dish of mutton curry and bitter gourd cooked by Mrs Zia. Casey is received at a Pakistani airbase by his fawning ISI counterpart General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, who addresses him as “Field Marshal” in response to the “Generalissimo” title the American spymaster has given him. On the drive into Islamabad, Rahman produces a bottle of Royal Salute whisky in the car so the CIA chief can tank up before meeting the teetotaller military dictator.

Those chummy days now seem to be over. Last month, when CIA's No.2 official Stephen Kappes flew to Pakistan to confront its leaders with evidence of the ISI’s role in terrorism, including the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, there was no bitter gourd or mutton curry. The meat-and-drink days had been replaced with plain bitterness and recrimination. A few days later, Kappes boss Michael Hayden personally presented Pakistan's visiting PM Gilani with what some reports say was irrefutable evidence of ISI's role in bombing.

On Friday, the White House declined to get into the specifics of the exchanges, which some accounts say have become testy, but acknowledged that the “overall issue of counter-terrorism cooperation between our military and our intelligence services was discussed' ' in the meeting between Gilani and Bush. “It would be inappropriate for me to talk about intelligence matters here, so I'd refer you to the intelligence community, if in fact they would like comment on it,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The intelligence community has been commenting on the issue aplenty- in private, background conversations as is in the norm. And what they are saying is the ISI, or elements in it, may well be on the way to being named a terrorist organisation.

The overall narrative is complicated. One view is that sections of Pakistan's ISI has turned rogue and is out of control. Telecom intercepts and intelligence obtained separately by US and Indian agencies show the ISI elements aided militants in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

“The Indians are absolutely convinced it's true, and they're right,” an unnamed US official told the Wall Street Journal . It’s the first time US has publicly backed an Indian intelligence account, which were previously viewed with scepticism.

While it is not clear if the US and India worked together on this case (New Delhi has long been leery of CIA's close ties with ISI), the big question facing both sides is whether Pakistan's still powerful military establishment is complicity in the attack, which comes at a time when things have also heated up in J&K and on the border, and to what extent. The ISI is headed by General Nadeem Taj, who is related to the eclipsed military ruler Musharraf through marriage, and was handpicked by him, having been at his side during the coup.

Shortly before his Washington visit, Pakistan's new civilian government headed by PM Gilani tried to bring the ISI under its administrative control. The move, however, was rebuffed by the military, reportedly by the orders of Musharraf and his chosen army chief Pervez Ashraf Kiyani, Nadeem Taj's predecessor who closed ranks.

While some analysts say the move by the civilian establishment - Gilani and his party boss Asif Ali Zardari - to reign in ISI was at Washington's instance, others suggest it was more a domestic decision aimed at firewalling ISI from international criticism.
Pakistan's civilian leaders publicly said as much, implicitly conceding that a military-controlled ISI was in effect a terrorist organization and needed to be brought to heel.

In Washington, Pakistan's new civilian government appointed envoy Hussain Haqqani, blamed the previous military government for the “several outstanding problems in the relationship between the US and Pakistan' ' including “issues of trust between our two intelligence services.” The statement was also a poke at Washington's partly-eclipsed and still favoured dictator Musharraf and his ''nephew' ' Nadeem Taj.

But here's the catch: even as the Bush administration is turning the screws on ISI, it is still protecting Musharraf, who in turn still controls the ISI, which in turn runs the country behind the civilian facade.