Operations That Recast Regional Politics—The ISI’s Footprint

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, is one of the world’s most potent and secretive intelligence services. Not only in Pakistan, but its repercussions are felt in the region and the world. Founded in 1948 to safeguard the young nation of Pakistan, the ISI has developed into a capable organisation that carries out defensive and offensive intelligence work. Thus, its domestic and global aspects impact its political power.rank as a strong player in South Asian geopolitics.
The ISI is unique for not only repositioning Pakistan's interest and security but also for being at the centre of joint operations that generated much controversy and shaped impact well beyond the region. Supporter and destabiliser mechanism at the same time; running forth covert operations in state parties, playing party politics, within Pakistan
This article will discuss ten of these operations, explaining their contentious nature and their consequences for Pakistan’s standing in the international community and the South Asian region in general, where these operations occurred.

The Afghan Jihad 979–1989

Pampering the Mujahideen
One of the ISI's earliest and most controversial operations was aiding the Afghan-Soviet War. In this context, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and directly threatened Pakistan’s eastern borders, the ISI got involved in cooperation with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other international partners to counter tough Soviet aggressors.
The ISI made waves; it was overseeing the arming and training of the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan who were fighting a Soviet invasion. It sought to undermine its Cold War rival by drawing it into a long and costly war in Afghanistan. The ISI provided logistics, weapons, and training to a number of mujahideen factions, the most notable of whom were the leaders who would eventually form the heart of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
But the operation, which succeeded in pushing Soviet forces out of Afghanistan by 1989, set the stage for many of the region’s later wars. The ISI-trained fighters, some deeply ideologically committed, would be instrumental in future insurgencies, including the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan and the formation of Al-Qaeda. The blowback of the Afghan Jihad for the ISI would prove to be a double-edged sword in that many of these former fighters would go on to turn their arms upon Pakistan itself.

The 2008 Mumbai Attacks

: Rung the Al-Khurasani Bell
The attacks, one of the highest-profile and deadliest terror acts in recent history, have raised serious questions over the ISI’s links with militant outfits that have terrorised South Asia over the years. On this day in 2008, ten gunmen from the Pakistan-based extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) carried out a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India. The attacks killed more than 170 people and wounded hundreds.
While Lashkar-e-Taiba was blamed publicly for the attacks, the investigation found evidence that the attackers were in constant contact with their handlers back in Pakistan, some of whom did have links with the ISI. The fact that these militants were able to mount such a complex operation—apparently with logistical and operational support provided by the Pakistani intelligence service—led many analysts and officials to accuse the ISI of complicity in the attacks.
While Pakistan denied ISI’s involvement, the attacks tipped relations even further down and increased scrutiny of ISI and its supposed support of terrorism. It muddied the distinction between state-sponsored terrorism and failure to control violent non-state actors

operating from within Pakistan.

Another group of people: the Quetta Shura and the Taliban
When the Taliban regime fell in Afghanistan in 2001, many of its leaders fled to Pakistan, primarily to the city of Quetta, where a Taliban leadership council, known as the “Quetta Shura,” was formed. This led to a near panic in the West, with the USA and Afghanistan pointing the finger at Pakistan and the Pakistani ISI for giving sanctuary to the Taliban leaders.
The Taliban itself felt the hand of Pakistan when it took power in Afghanistan. It had long been suspected that the I.S.I. propped up the Taliban in one way or another, whether for influence in Afghanistan or in the name of Pakistan’s strategic goals to counter India’s growing footprint in the region over the years. The ISI’s alleged covert support for the Taliban, meanwhile, added to tensions with Pakistan’s Western beneficiaries, especially the United States, which viewed the Taliban as one of the most calamitous destabilising agents in Afghanistan.
The mere existence of the Taliban leadership, living there in the provincial capital of the western Balochistan province, has been a subject of contention, despite repeated denials from Pakistan, and has added to the dynamics between Pakistan and the world regarding the war on terror.
The Capture of Osama Bin Laden—The Abbottabad Raid 2011
Late on May 1 and in the early morning of May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs carried out a covert mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The news of the discovery of bin Laden, living only a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s preeminent military academy, shocked the world and raised fundamental questions about Pakistan’s complicity in harbouring one of the world’s most wanted terrorist leaders.
Bin Laden had been living for several years in the compound, and the intensive security surrounding it raised suspicions that some official in Pakistan’s

military or intelligence services knew he was there.

While the ISI has categorically denied any knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts, the Abbottabad raid exposed serious fissures in U.S.-Pakistan relations and called into question the credibility of Pakistan’s intelligence bureaucracies.
The operation offered a microcosm of the contradictions of Pakistan’s dual role in the War on Terror, which involved cooperating with the United States while being accused of harbouring people essential to the very terrorism they were trying to defeat.
Kashmir Insurgency: Support for Militants Across the Border
The ISI has long been accused of backing militant groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, which has been a site of friction between the two countries for decades. The ISI has long been complicit in ground zero terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, providing training, funding, and logistics, which has resulted in thousands upon thousands of attacks against Indian security forces and civilians for decades.

Pakistan wants to destabilise

India further and has used the territories given to it by the United Nations for this purpose as well. Numerous major attacks, including the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the Uri attack in 2016, have been linked to militant groups with suspected ties to the ISI. These operations have put a strain on relations between India and Pakistan and led to significant loss of life on both sides in the years since.
The ISI’s involvement in Kashmir has frequently been a point of contention in global diplomacy, with many calling upon an end to cross-border militancy. Pakistan has denied these charges repeatedly while saying that it pursues the peaceful resolution of Kashmir.