Archival: Infra-red footage of Afghani attacks

Music

00:00

Corcoran: For the Americans, it is a ground war of ghostly images – the further they venture into this foggy infra-red world – the harder it is to distinguish friend from foe.

00:15

Islamabad

An appropriate metaphor for Pakistan’s capital Islamabad - America’s pivotal ally in the conflict.

This is a planned, monumental city - not unlike Canberra. For a nation of 135 million it is strangely devoid of people, apart from the sandbagged soldiers now standing lonely vigil. The biggest threat here is not terrorism but from a murky force within the Pakistan establishment itself.

00:30

Pakistan Parliament building

Corcoran: It is now two years since the Pakistan army seized power here in a bloodless coup, and the gates of the Parliament building remain firmly locked. But there is another shadowy presence here - a so called ‘Hidden Government’ that even the army has trouble controlling. It is the ISI - or Inter Services Intelligence Agency - a ten thousand strong security monolith that openly defies governments here. The ISI has allegedly been involved in drug running, political assassination and state sponsored terrorism. It was the ISI who helped guide the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. And while Pakistan may have officially signed up with America’s war on terrorism, it appears the ISI has other ideas.

01:07

Hamid

Hamid: I am ex ISI - if it continues I will probably go back to Afghanistan to stand with them and to fight with them, because it is a moral question - there is a genocide of the citizens going on.

01:56

Music

02:08

Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel

Corcoran: If, as many in Pakistan believe, America has launched a new Christian crusade, then this is the biblical Tower of Babel. Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel -- beacon for a thousand journalists from around the world, their satellite links reaching towards the heavens, broadcasting in many tongues on a war they cannot see.

02:18

Music

02:40

Ahmed Rashid

Corcoran: One figure with a clear vision is Ahmed Rashid, author, commentator and Taliban watcher. Such is his expertise on Afghan affairs that Pakistan’s military rulers invited him to join the regime as a national security adviser – an offer he declined.

02:57

Pakistan may now be America’s key ally, but he warns there is a deep sense of betrayal from within the ranks of the ISI, which is now being asked to destroy what it helped create.

03:20

Super:

Ahmed Rashid

Afghanistan Analyst

Ahmed Rashid: There’s a big joke in the army - in the regular army - that is that, you know - many of the ISI officers are more Taliban than the Taliban. Now, you know, there is an ideological commitment there - there’s a religious commitment there - there’s a great feeling of anti- Americanism there.

03:34

Pakistan countryside

Corcoran: The irony is that the ISI owes its rise to power to the Americans. In the 1980’s Pakistan was a frontline state in Washington’s war against communism, and the battlefield was Soviet occupied Afghanistan.

03:49

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid: When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Americans started sending in billions of dollars worth of aid to the Afghan Mujahadeen, the ISI became the distribution agency for those military supplies -- money and planning battles inside Afghanistan for the Mujahadeen. So it expanded enormously - there was very close co-operation with the CIA.

04:05

Abandoned Pakistan City

Corcoran: In 1989 the superpowers lost interest and went home, but there was no reconstruction - no Marshall Plan for this forgotten war – an abandonment still resented bitterly by many Pakistanis.

04:28

Emboldened by its Afghan adventures and flush with cash, the ISI expanded its domestic role – becoming the king-maker of Pakistani politics.

Benazir

Benazir: I found it to be a state within a state. I was the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and while I was the Prime Minister of Pakistan I found ISI officials approaching my parliamentarians and asking them to defect from me, asking them to vote against me.

04:54

Corcoran: Benazir Bhutto is in Washington, warning the Americans to be extremely cautious of their new Pakistani intelligence allies, for the ISI are the eyes and ears of US forces in Afghanistan. Forced into exile in amid allegations of corruption, Benazir firmly believes the agency was the instrument of her demise.

05:15

Super:

Benazir Bhutto

Prime Minister, Pakistan 1988-90, 93-96

Benazir: In my second term I’ve heard about ISI officials approaching the Chief Justice of Pakistan and offering him the interim Prime Ministership, in case he help topple my government.

05:36

Afghanistan military training

Corcoran: As the ISI consolidated its power at home – Afghanistan was in a state of anarchy following the Soviet departure.

05:53

Out of the chaos in 1994 emerged the Taliban, then a small obscure band of religious zealots - a group quickly talent spotted by the ISI and anointed for greater things -- the Pakistan-sponsored takeover of the entire country.

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid: Almost immediately, if you like, the ISI started supporting them, and in a sense running them and their politics and military structure and their military advances.

06:25

Pakistan Parliament building

Corcoran: Pakistan still officially denies direct ISI involvement with the Taliban. But now the truth is finally emerging from the shadows.

06:39

Brigadier Shaukat Qadir was a senior planner at Army headquarters with close links to the ISI. He left the military two years ago, taking with him a detailed knowledge of the ISI’s Afghan operations.

Qadir

Qadir: I’d estimate that the highest point they reached - probably the official representatives over there - would number under a thousand or so, which includes some military personnel, some civilians in an advisory capacity etcetera, etcetera. All kinds of people who were helping out.

07:04

Taliban troops

Corcoran: It was a huge operation with the ISI spending one billion US dollars a year keeping this Taliban war machine running. But the Pakistani agents soon found that their protégés were out of control.

Super:

Brigadier Shaukat Qadir

Qadir: I think this kind of extremism that developed over the years – until recently – was something Pakistan would have paid money to try and avoid but could not. I think the ISI would have exerted all its possible influence to prevent this from happening.

07:39

Madrassa in Pakistan

Corcoran: Many of the young Taliban fighters were in fact from these religious schools or madrassas in Pakistan, secretly funded by ISI heroin smuggling operations out of Afghanistan.

07:57

Benazir

Benazir: There was money coming into Pakistan in suitcases –this money was used by the retired generals who were then serving in ISI to set up schools, they have endowments of the their own, and now they can recruit and train and do what they want independently.

08:09

Music

Taxi driver's tour of Islamabad

Corcoran: The taxi driver's tour of Islamabad takes you past the grand facades of the Parliament and the courts, but the real power rests just down the road along Kahyban e Suharwady avenue at the ISI’s sprawling headquarters.

08:35

Behind these walls lies “the hidden government” – an intelligence agency nominally under army command, but in reality it has dictated the terms on Pakistan’s most sensitive policies such as Afghanistan, Kashmir and nuclear weapons development.

08:54

General Hamid Gul

Retired General Hamid Gul ran the ISI in its Cold War heyday. He takes pride in having Islamicised the agency before being sacked by Benazir in ‘89 – perhaps her only victory against the ISI. Now he preaches the politics of fundamentalism, and claims to be the public voice of the ISI ranks.

09:18

Hamid Gul: If America can come 12,000 kilometres to defend its national interests, we also have a large sphere of influence – and it is not necessary that our interests are limited to within Pakistan – our security interests are beyond Pakistan’s borders.

09:41

Corcoran: He claims the ISI is now Pakistan’s moral guardian - defending the state against corrupt incompetent politicians.

Super:

Hamid Gul

Former Director-General. ISI

Corcoran: So there is nothing wrong with the ISI interfering in the political process?

Hamid Gul: No it’s the way you handle it - it is the way that you handle it. It is an efficient instrument - and its efficiency it is like a knife which is sharp, which is efficient. It can depend -- you can cut a vegetable with it or you slit somebody’s throat, or you commit hari kari with it. Anything is possible, it is the way that you use it.

10:13

Benazir

Benazir: It is the agenda of certain retired generals who them make and break governments to get their favourites appointed in the ISI, and even to some extent in the judiciary and the civil administration, and then they work through these to turn Pakistan into a theocracy.

10:34

General Pervez Musharraf

Corcoran: Serving fundamentalist generals played a key role in the coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power two years ago. A few months later we witnessed this rare gathering of the all the coup makers for Ramadan prayers, including Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmed –in the red cardigan -- who’d just been appointed as the new ISI boss.

11:00

Prayer meeting

They prayed shoulder to shoulder – fundamentalists and the secular Musharraf -- all equal before God.

11:27

But here in the imperfect mortal world, General Mahmoud was soon seduced by the power of the ISI.

Ahmed Rashid

Super:

Ahmed Rashid

Afghanistan Analyst

Ahmed Rashid: There is so much power there, there is so much ability to manipulate, to monitor, to do surveillance to, you know -- you such an enormous sense of power that unless you are a very, very well balanced person I’m sure it will go to your head.

11:47

Streets of Pakistan

Corcoran: And General Mahmoud, by all accounts, acted with the zeal of a convert. Following the September 11 crisis, Musharraf sent Mahmoud to meet the Taliban - to demand the surrender of Osama bin Laden. But military sources told us the ISI boss did precisely the opposite, encouraging the Taliban to tough out the coming American attacks.

12:05

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid: A few days after the September 11th bombings, several officers went back in again, to help the Taliban. They were reported to be advising the Taliban on how to prepare their military defences against the -- at that time -- upcoming American attack.

12:34

General Musharraf in press conference

Corcoran: Mahmoud's treachery cost him dearly. On the day the Americans launched their air war in Afghanistan, General Musharraf announced his own military strike. Mahmoud was suddenly retired - three other fundamentalist generals were also sidelined.

12:51

Reporter: Mr. President why did you replace the head of the ISI?

Musharraf: Well this is a normal military activity which has gone on; it has no relationship with events that are taking place.

13:09

Corcoran: The language was typically diplomatic, but in dangerous world of Pakistani politics the message was clear. This was Musharraf’s bid to reign-in his renegade spy agency.

Qadir

Super:

Brigadier Shaukat Qadir

Qadir: The ISI, for this period of time, ran wild under Mahmoud only to that sense that Mahmoud had grown in arrogance - he began to believe that his authority was unchallenged, which is why he had to go - which is why he in fact got the sack.

13:38

Musharraf praying

Corcoran: Musharraf may have lopped off some fundamentalist heads, but the ISI and its powerful network of retired officers remains a hydra headed monster with extremist views.

13:54

Hamid

Corcoran: Who do you think was responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11?

Hamid: You ask me?

Corcoran: Yes.

Hamid: I think Mossad. Mossad along with the Jewish lobby inside America.

14:09

Music

Anti-American rally

Corcoran: Yet another anti-American rally, and George Bush’s effigy goes up in flames. Plenty of colour and movement for the vast foreign TV horde. The cameras don’t record the fact that most of these displays are engineered by extremist groups – funded and controlled by the ISI.

14:29

The question is who, if anyone, has control of the so-called “hidden government”. General Musharraf has assured President Bush that he’s now taken firm command of the agency. But as the Americans continue their war on terror, they may well be asking themselves – with friends like the ISI – who needs enemies?

Credits:

Credits "Pakistan ISI"

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Camera: Geoff Lye

David Leland

David Martin

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

15:28