Keeping tabs on politicians within and outside the government is something most intelligence agencies do. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover became notorious for such activities. Recent books on R&AW show the agency performs this task almost as a routine affair.

Objectionable though such interventions in peoples’ privacy may be, the situation becomes worse when an agency is routinely utilised to put down political opponents. The PPP says it has been stung the most by the ISI. But the irony is that its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the man who put the ISI and the Federal Security Force — his own creation — to most use when it came to hounding and putting down political opponents.

So, how does one wean the ISI from something it has been expected to do for a long time and for which the agency seems to have developed a taste? Definitely not by announcing casually at the Multan airport that the political wing of the ISI has been disbanded; nor, as was earlier done abortively, placing it under the interior ministry.

At the minimum two things are required. Conceptualising an effective reform process which must be debated thoroughly before it is implemented; and creating, as part of that exercise, an effective monitoring mechanism which can keep a check on the agency without interfering with its necessary work and compromising its requirements for secrecy.

This is not an easy task; neither is it a function of casual statements that can be contradicted the very next day or of orders that are then rescinded with obscene haste.

... contd.