It might take a while to be accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary, but in Pakistan confusion is now spelled PPP. Last Sunday, in Multan, the foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, let slip the news that the “political wing” at the Inter-Services Intelligence has been disbanded. The media, predictably, fell on the story like hungry wolves.

The next day, talking to the BBC, an unnamed senior official contradicted Qureshi saying the wing hadn’t been disbanded but was made “inactive”. According to this official, the staff had not been given new assignments.

Wonderful! But let’s take a pause and see what this political wing is all about.

Talk of a “dirty-tricks” brigade within the ISI has been around for a while. But it re-emerged when a former director-general, Lt-Gen Hameed Gul (retd), decided to recast himself as a democrat and as part of his mea culpa to the nation confessed that the ISI has a dedicated political wing which is used to make and break governments.

I recently asked another former DG, Lt-Gen Asad Durrani (retd.) about the wing. Durrani denied there was any dedicated set-up but admitted that the ISI played a political role when asked by a government to do so — and didn’t need a dedicated wing for the job.

Where does the truth lie?

Conversations with various officers reveal that there may be no “dedicated” political wing but the agency not only has the capacity in its internal wing to meddle in political affairs but has been doing this both off its own bat as well as at the behest of successive governments.

... contd.