Essay on “ISI – A Threat to India” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

ISI – A Threat to India

The intelligence community of Pakistan consists of ‘the Intelligence Bureau (IB) formed by the division of pre-partition IB of British India and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) formed after the unsatisfactory performance of IB (Pakistan) in 1948 in the first Indo-Pak War (1947-48) over Jammu and Kashmir. The ISI is manned by officers from the three services to specialize in the collection, analysis and assessment of external intelligence-military and non-military with the main focus in India. Originally meant for the collection of external intelligence, ISI developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procure of denied technologies as also to work as a sheet anchor for the terrorist world over.

The ISI is responsible for proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir and for the control of Afghanistan through the Taliban. It controls the army of Islam consisting of organisations like Osama bin taden’s Al Qaida, the Herkatul Mujahidin, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Al Badr and Maulana Azhar’s Jaish-a-Mohammed. Lt. General, Mohammed Aziz, presently a Corps Commander at Lahore, is the clandestine chief of staff of the army of Islam. It also controls entire opium cultivation, heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistan and Afghan territory. It also shoulders the responsibility to oversee the clandestine nuclear and missile cooperation as also the clandestine shipping of missiles, production and testing facilities to North Korea and training of North Korean scientists in the nuclear establishments of Pakistan.

General Musharraf believed in achieving his objective at any cost without worrying about the means used. In his anxiety to control the province of Sindh nationalist, he through the ISI, created a new Frankenstein which might someday lead to Talibanistan of Sindh. In recent past in the regime of General Musharrat, the activities of 151 to create panic and disorder not only in Jammu and Kashmir but the whole of India assumed larger and larger dimensions. For a man who wanted to live an extraordinary life splashed with risk, violence and danger accompanied with high expectations and promise of bright future. Pakistan’s 1st became a natural choice for him. Indian youth given each opportunity in the name of Islam fall an easy prey to such temptations and are recruited into the agency. These recruits not only help accomplish terrorist activities but also exploit their knowledge and relations in obtaining secret information and plans and hand them over to ISI personnel. Sheikh. a young man of 27 years of age and resident of Srinagar, was recruited into the agency who turned operative geared to kill and destroy. He ran a handicraft business in Bangalore and kept in touch with ISI bosses in Pakistan. Through him a plan for blowing up Indian Space Research Organisation building in Bangalore was finalized which came to an abrupt end when Sheikh was arrested by Delhi police.

Trained men like Sheikh are ISI modules which comprise one or more operatives and over years have taken root all over India. These modules are among the biggest sustainable source of terrorism in India. Over 250 such modules are under observation and as many have already been busted in operation in various states between January 1998 and 2009. It is not an easy fight. The adversary is invisible but powerful, its penetration is deep, its missions are back rolled by 151 and its coordination is perfect. The ISI has integrated individual operators to function as deadly unit gun runners in Karachi, fundamentalist preachers in Behawelpur, hawala operators in Lahore, explosive experts in Peshawar and underworld dons like Dawood Ibrahim.

The terrorist attacks on India’s Parliament. Kashmir Assembly, Akshardham Temple, Mumbai blast, hijacking of Indian Airlines plane, attack on Raghunath temple of Jammu attempt to blast Vaishno Devi Shrine and everyday bloodshed in Kashmir Valley are all conspiracies planned by ISI. During the past five years, a clutch of modules operating in various parts of India have been busted all finked to 151-backed militant groups like Al-jehad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahidden. Alfateh Force, Jem, Al Qaida, SIMI, Herkut-ul-Ansar, Al-Badr, Deendar Anjuman, Khalistan Zindabad Force, Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-johad-e-Islami, Khalistan Liberation Force, Babbar Khalsa International and Jamait-ul-Mujahideen.

Traditionally, the ISI and jehadi persons have a sole motive to keep the Indian State on the boil. Gujarat became their first choice to use as a transit point for weapons and explosives of Pakistan origin to be used in India. But the security agencies are in high alert because of the realisation that radical Islamic movements like Deobandi, its affiliate Tableigh Jamat, Dawate-e-Islami and Alil-e-Headers are flourishing in Gujarat. Local sympathisers and relatives of the miscreants are a great hurdle in the way of exposing their activities. There is a need to point out senior intelligence officials to tackle the problem at national level, not at the local police stations where intelligence is limited.

Most of the modules deactivated by IB-led investigations have taken months of hard work, penetration and follow-up in various pails of the country and sometimes with counterparts in other countries. The nature of crime has changed. Money extracted by kidnappers can be used for a terrorist strike anywhere in the world. Distinction between underworld crime and terrorism has to be crashed as members of Dawood gang are being used by ISI for planning and executing terrorist strikes in the country. They are also a source of financing the terrorists. Members of such gangs’ keep the wheels of gangland moving even from behind the bars what to say of their extensive network spread all over the country.

Some people are of the opinion that in order to effectively counter the ISI activities against India, we should have an Indian version of the ISI with extensive powers for clandestine intelligence collection, technology procurement powers and court action and such Defence Intelligence Agency should be patterned after Pakistani ISI rather than after the DIA of U.S.A. or the Defence Intelligence Staff of Great Britain which are destined for clandestine intelligence collection only during times of war or when deployed in areas of conflict with power for covert action.

The principle of civilian primacy in the intelligence community is widely accepted in all successful democracies. The discarding of this principle by Pakistan is responsible for the present state of affairs there. Hence, in our anxiety for better results against 151 we should not abandon and sacrifice time-tested principles as to how intelligence agencies should function in a democratic society. During ’70s. Indian policy-makers had decided that Indian Intelligence should not get itself involved in clandestine procurement of denied technologies as the exposure of any such procurement Would damage the credibility and trustworthiness of the Indian scientific and technological community in the eyes of the world and would also damage the self-confidence of our own scholars.

This is what Pakistan is facing. Its intelligence networks did some spectacular work in clandestine procurement and theft of technologies from abroad. But once the details of this network were exposed, postgraduate students of Pakistan in science subjects, its academicians, research scholars and scientists are looked down upon with suspicion. Research laboratories for higher studies and research work refuse to accommodate them their chance to get jobs on establishments dealing in sensitive technologies have gone remote. They are less frequently invited to seminars. In its anxiety to catch up with India in short term. Pakistan has damaged its long-term potential in science and technology.

In order to incapacitate ISI modules, the multi-agency centre needs to .be legally empowered. Internal terrorism cannot be tackled by civilian police or by a single police station. As India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Bajpayee himself stressed, all efforts must be made to “sharpen intelligence capabilities and improve the multi-disciplinary efforts’. After the September 11 incidents the U.S. has set up the Department of Homeland Security to analyse intelligence from multiple sources under one roof. This should help identify threat perceptions and vulnerabilities. Similarly, the European Police Officer with its headquarters at Hague. is tasked with combating terrorism on behalf of all member nations.

The ISI modules do not work in isolation. Hence, a far more coordinated approach will be required on the part of Indian Intelligence agencies to decimate their network. There are some 12,500 Pakistani citizens overstaying their visa period and nearly 15 million Bangladeshis are living in India. They are potential ISI operatives and need to be tackled, identified and neutralized. Moreover, 151 is now very active along Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangladesh border besides North Eastern states. Bangladesh has some 50 camps of Al Qaida being run with active assistance and indulgence of 151. Their main objective is to sever our NE states from sensitive fifty kilometer Siliguri corridor besides rapidly changing demographic balances in West Bengal and North Eastern state.