In 1993, Kashmiri separatist Firdous Syed got to meet Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, who had formerly headed the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate and who had retired the previous year. (Firdous quit militancy in 1996; I wrote a book on him 15 years ago.) Gen. Gul was given importance beyond the normal for retired personnel; one of the lesser known things that made him stand out was a paper he wrote in the early 1980s, approximately four years before he was appointed ISI director-general in 1987. It dealt with the Central Asian states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The ISI was at the time directing a Mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union and its client Afghan Army. Since Independence, Pakistan has debated whether it is a part of South Asia or of Central Asia. Gen. Gul noted that Central Asia’s Fergana Valley was the seat of power for the first Mughal emperor, Babur, from whom the subcontinent’s Muslims derived their social, political and cultural heritage. Gen. Gul said Pakistan ought to conceive of an alliance with the Central Asian states centered on the Fergana Valley.
Others were dismissive as the Central Asian republics were part of the superpower Soviet Union, unlikely to part with its territory. As it happened, the USSR suffered several crises and had to withdraw from Afghanistan, marking the first time the Pakistan Army (or, precisely, the ISI) had won a war. The USSR broke up and all of its republics became independent. Suddenly, Gen. Gul was no longer a fantasist but a visionary.
In March 1987, Pakistani ruler Gen. Zia-ul Haq promoted Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rehman, who as ISI chief from 1979 was the man responsible for managing the successful jihad in Afghanistan, to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. To replace him at ISI, Gen. Zia appointed one of his former battalion commanders, Gen. Hamid Gul.
Gen. Gul was an ideologically entrenched Pakistani, being a “Punjabi-Pathan”. His forefathers were Pushtuns of Swat’s Yousafzai tribe who came down from the mountains to settle in the plains of Punjab. (Imran Khan is a “Punjabi-Pathan”.) He was a tank commander in the biggest tank battle since World War II, at Khem Karan in India’s Punjab during the 1965 war; it in a nutshell tells you everything you need to know about him.
As ISI chief he went on the offensive against India, be it in Khalistan or Kashmir. Militancy in Kashmir was probably inevitable, but Gen. Gul’s ISI gave it a lethal edge — training Kashmiri boys in the large-scale manner that Afghan Mujahideen were trained — so much so that in 1990-91 India was shaken. A year after Gen. Gul took over the ISI, his mentor Gen. Zia was killed in a plane explosion. There was an election, and four months after she became Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto met her counterpart Rajiv Gandhi in Islamabad for the December 1988 Saarc summit. She apparently complained to Rajiv that the ISI was beyond her control.
As part of the two leaders’ efforts to improve bilateral relations, a meeting was held between their spy chiefs — perhaps the first such meeting ever. Gen. Gul and Research and Analysis Wing chief Anand K. Verma meeting is ironic considering one of the few (and far between) of such meetings involved the most hardline ISI chief of all time.
Benazir had Gen. Gul sacked from the ISI in October 1989. Media accounts blame his ill-advised launch of a conventional war on Jalalabad by the Mujahideen, who had till then only engaged in guerrilla warfare. His role in cobbling together a right-wing opposition to Benazir — to which he cheerfully admitted in a 2012 TV interview — called the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, comprising religio-political parties and led by Nawaz Sharif (it won the 1990 elections after Benazir’s dismissal), may have also been a factor.
There is a reason that never gets talked about. As chief, Gen. Gul headed the ISI investigation into Gen. Zia’s assassination. The story is that he was close to a breakthrough when he was sacked. Not only he, but the colonels and majors working on the investigation were also quietly shifted out.
Gen. Gul may have retired in 1992, but he did not drop out of sight. Pakistani liberals on social media have, after his death, mocked the fact that he spent 25 years on TV talk shows (they were angry over his anti-democratic actions that damaged Pakistan’s social and political fabric). Though the fact is that there has been for years, particularly after 9/11 and during the US military’s Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, constant talk of rogue elements in the ISI. They have been blamed for aiding the Taliban fight the US forces, and undermining American efforts.
It is said that there was an entire rogue ISI. And that Gen. Gul, hardliner among hardliners — he said 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy — was its head. For many people he continued being a spymaster. If the regular ISI is a “state within the state”, then the rogue ISI was/is a state within that “state within the state”; a “deeper” state, perhaps.
When Firdous met Gen. Gul in 1993, he had many questions about the direction of Kashmir’s militancy. But instead of providing answers, Gen. Gul merely encouraged him to continue fighting India. To Firdous, Gen. Gul was nothing more than a “fauji”, that is, a simplistic thinker.
Nonetheless, after Gen. Gul died on Saturday night, there was a spontaneous outpour of praise for him in Pakistan. The Urdu press was unanimous in praising him as a nationalist and patriot; even liberals in the Urdu media, like Nazir Naji of Roznama Dunya, who is unapologetically anti-Taliban, called Gen. Gul a patriot. His funeral was attended by former Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as well as current Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif — who is supposedly against terrorism. No wonder. They were mourning the passing of the man who was, more than Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the ideologue of modern Pakistan, led by its deep state.
The writer has written, with A.S. Dulat, the current bestseller, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years
