Islamabad: The former chief of Pakistan's top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul, believes that the Mumbai attacks are part of a greater conspiracy to discredit the body for being an extension of the Pakistan Army, and eventually the country's nuclear programme by declaring it unsafe.

"Eventually they [US and India] are targetting the ISI being an extension of the Army, and once the Army and the ISI are demolished - they already stand discredited in the era of [former president] Musharraf as we are engaged in fighting our own people [in the tribal areas] in someone's else war - then they will reach out to our nuclear capability saying it is not is safe hands.

"Our excuse and pretext so far has always been that this [nuclear arsenal] is in safe hands, and what we mean is that there is a strong institution like the Army, and there is a strong protection force like the ISI which takes good care that this [nuclear assets] does not fall in wrong hands," Gul told Gulf News in an exclusive interview at his Rawalipindi residence.

"The ultimate goal of the game being played with Pakistan is to declare us an ungovernable state that should not posses the nuclear arsenal.

"This scenario will give security to Israel, weaken China, and give relief to India for becoming a dominant power of the region and establish its hegemony. Only Pakistan is holding India from establishing its hegemony in the region," he says.

The former master spy has his own thinking on what he terms as a great game being played in this region.

"Who is providing security to Nepal and Bangladesh? Amazingly, it is Pakistan. Around 60 per cent of the world's trade passes through the Indian Ocean. The Indians believe they should have hegemony not only over Pakistan but the entire Indian Ocean. That means the Arabs will suffer, Iran will suffer and Gulf oil, bound for China and Japan, will be under the shadow of India's sole nuclear power," he said.

Gul says Pakistan provides a balance of power in the region unconventionally. "Conventionally, we can't aim to provide a balance of power. Therefore, it is in the interest of the region and Pakistan that there should be a balance of power between the South Asian neighbours. But Americans and Israel is and hell-bent that India should be given pre-eminence in the region."

It was his stint at the helm of ISI that earned Gul fame in and outside Pakistan. He was considered a hawk in uniform, an outspoken supporter of the Afghan mujahideen and Kashmiri militants. An advocate of jihad then, the general remained chief of the most dreaded spy agency of the region from 1987-89. Even after putting away his uniform and living a retired life, he is a vocal supporter of the Taliban resistance against the US occupation in Afghanistan, and Iraqi resistance fighters, on public forums.

Once considered a "good friend" of the Americans, he is blamed by Indians and Americans for starting the Kashmir militant struggle in 1989, and for flaming the Khalistan movement in mid-1980s. But it was the abandoning of Afghan mujahideen by the US as soon as the Russians left, that really turned Gul against the Americans who had by then become the sole super power. Till date a section of Pakistani opinion blames Gul and people of his ilk for going too far in weakening the USSR and creating a unipolar world by default.

Retired 20 years ago as head of ISI, he still makes headlines in Pakistani and international media. He was recently told by Pakistani officials that the US has put his name on the terror watchlist for being a strategist for the Taliban and Lashkr-e-Taiba, but Gul says he has been threatened to be placed on the sanctions list. President Asif Ali Zardari recently termed him as 'political ideologue of terror", but former spy chief takes it lightly, saying he instead sees himself as a "political ideologue of jihad".

The general has a history of bitter relations with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) under the slain Benazir Bhutto during his ISI days largely because the deceased former prime minister believed he was the architect of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) that gave stiff political resistance to Bhutto in the 1988 elections and eventually defeated her in the 1990 elections when former prime minister and her then arch rival Nawaz Sharif became prime minister with the full backing of the military establishment. "What to talk of Zardari sahib...if he had said that I am an ideologue of jihad, then this would have been valid. But when he says that I am an ideologue of terror, then he does not understand this. So one can only forgive him for this."

Progressive and secular Pakistanis may hate his political jihadi thoughts, but a sizeable number of right wing elements dominant in the middle and lower middle classes of Pakistani society, praises Gul, and his predecessors like General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, for their services.

Analysts believe events like Mumbai and its aftermath reinforces those people who think Pakistan and India cannot co-exist peacefully. "I am a political idealogue of jihad, but that is an injunction from the Quran, it is not my dogma. And it is absolutely in line with Article 3 of the UN Charter that oppressed and enslaved nations have a right to rise in arms," he says.

"I support the Afghan jihad in this sense and every Muslim should support it. We don't want to conquer anyone, this is purely self defence. Every human being has been given the right of self-defence by Allah and the UN charter," he says.

The general charges that the Zardari-led government has taken over power on the basis of a deal. "Those who think that this PPP government has come on the basis of elections, are simply unaware. "No... it came as a deal which had earlier taken place. and so these people had been handed down an agenda. They are moving in accordance to that agenda.

"Zardari has come through a deal, Nawaz Sharif at least didn't strike a deal - it seems so. Americans are still angry with him [Sharif] for conducting the nuclear tests in 1998. They will keep him on ice and when they will think Zardari is failing, they will give Nawaz a chance."

Surprisingly, Gul was named in a letter written on October 16, 2008 and sent to the then President Pervez Musharraf by the slain former premier Benazir Bhutto as she feared General Gul was also part of a conspiracy to assassinate her. Two days later, on October 18, on the eve of her return Bhutto narrowly survived a huge bomb attack which killed dozens from amongst thousands of supporters that had gathered in Karachi to greet her return after 10 years in self-imposed exile.

ISI and Indian Muslims

General Gul says it has been a cardinal principle in ISI and Army not to do anything in India that will flare the passions of militant Hindus against the Muslims. "I left the ISI 20 years ago but I think the principal still stand good. They Indian Muslims are already downtrodden, miserable, living a wretched life. Every now and then, hardline Hindus fall upon them, kill them, massacre them, rape their women, throw their children into fire. We are very sensitive about the Indian Muslims."

Asked what should be Pakistan's best course of action in the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, he said: "We have to clean the house from inside, but that does not mean we crackdown only on Lashkar-e-Taiba and call them non-state actors. There are non-state actors like the American CIA operating freely in Pakistan. I don't know what game they are playing. For all you know, they may have used their clout here, trained some people and launched them in Mumbai. The Special Service group, Spider group, India's RAW [Research and Analysis Wing], Israeli Mossad - everybody is playing their games here. We also have Blackwater here to train us. You think they will only train our people or train some people who act on their behalf too. Who has gained from Mumbai aftermath?"

ISI and civilian head

Commenting on a recent report of a US working group set up by President elect Barak Obama which suggests that ISI should have a civilian head, Gul said when they removed him in 1989 as head of the spy agency and installed Lt Gen Kalu (Shamsur Rehman), they had the same agenda then - ISI had to be clipped, ISI had to be cut to size. "This is because ISI protects Pakistan, protects our nuclear programme, protects many things. Armies fight once in a while but ISI is constantly at work, it is part of our defensive system and when you scuttle the ISI, weaken it, or you confuse its state of mind, then actually your defence system is weakened and that's what they [US and west] are aiming at.

"They might say one day that head of the Army should be a civilian because this army is a rogue Army so a civilian should head it. This is a strange demand regarding ISI and I think we are paying a huge price of our friendship with America."

Great regional game

American neoconservatives, Gul says, believe that India has to be made the bulwark in this area to provide protection to the state of Israel. "That is the role that they have in their mind for India," he says. Pakistan, he acknowledges, cannot match India in conventional weapons. "That why the Americans want our unconventional power to cease to exit.

"That's why India, for the first time, has broken its neutrality and inducted 6000 troops into Afghanistan. But America wants more Indian commitment in Afghanistan. This agenda has been set by the neocons and Zionists, that Pakistan must not possess nuclear capability".

Obama and Afghanistan

Gul thinks the US is undergoing an economic meltdown.

"In my assessment, by late 2009, Obama would realise that either he has to abandon his agenda of change or find a way out for disengagement from external commitments [military operations]. Not entirely but partially."