Gravitas Plus: Is ISI the death squad employed by Pakistan? Find out here

The ISI was formed in 1948 and it was the brainchild of this man – General R Cawthorne. Pakistan has a death squad and a group of assassins who operate around the world.

This group tried assassinating a president of a South Asian country. Murdered journalist Daniel Pearl (in Pakistan), activist Karima Baloch (in Canada), activist Sajid Hussain (in Sweden), attacked a blogger in the Netherlands, and turned Balochistan into the land of missing people also created the Afghan Taliban who masterminded 26/11.

URI, Pathankot and Pulwama- attacks and the Indian Embassy blast in Kabul – we could go on. Pakistan’s death squad has the blood of thousands on its hands, it also has a list of dissidents – that it's ticking off, one after another.

Those hands pull the strings of multiple terror organisations and also sleeper cells around the world. The death squad is called the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence, a.k.a. Pakistan’s high-profile assassins. It is Pakistan's take on what an intelligence agency should be.

On the 20th of December, activist Karima Baloch went missing in Canada. In March this year, activist Sajid Hussein had gone missing in Sweden.

Karima Baloch was found dead a day after she went missing while Sajid Hussein too was found dead. Both Karima and Hussein had reportedly drowned.

Karima was a Baloch, Hussein – a Baloch too and both vocal critics of Pakistan. Both of them had fled Balochistan, found dead in a foreign country, under mysterious circumstances and last seen in public spaces.

Sweden was not too inclined towards probing Hussein's death from a murder angle while Canada says there’s no foul play in Karima’s death.

These deaths point at Pakistan’s death squad and they are just two of the many ‘mysterious’ deaths linked to the ISI.

What and who is the ISI?

General R. Cawthome was the then deputy army Chief of Staff, who recruited men from across Pakistan’s military, the army, navy and the air force. The ISI’s job was to be the center of Pakistan’s army, protect the country’s national security, defend and promote Pakistan's interest abroad and 72 years on, the ISI has overstepped its limits and how.

It has gone rogue and has become a hit squad with Balochistan as its playground. The region is sandwiched between Iran and Afghanistan on one hand and Pakistan on the other. It makes up for 40% of Pakistan's territory but its population is just over 12 million of the total 200 million -- that's less than 5 per cent of us.

The region is resource-rich but it's deprived, ignored, repressed, and currently sold to the Chinese. Balochistan has been fighting for independence from Pakistan since 1948 while Pakistan has deployed its death squad in the region.

To date, over 5000 people have gone missing, at least a thousand others have been found dead and all of them, mysteriously! Balochistan is now known as the land of missing people.

Land of the missing people

In 2014, senior journalist Hamid Mir was shot, in 2015, human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud was silenced -- this is what the ISI does. It goes after dissidents within Pakistan, and without.

The death squad went after Baloch activists who fled to Afghanistan in December 2018, a suicide blast struck a Baloch camp in Kandahar. Pakistani media said: ‘a mastermind of the Chinese embassy attack in Karachi was killed’.

No word on the ISI's involvement, no questions raised on the targetting of the Baloch. A few weeks later, this happened –  ‘Car bomb targets Baloch insurgents in Kandahar’, in the same place. The targets again – the Baloch.

Pakistan’s death squad is also going after the Pashtuns. It was reportedly behind journalist Daniel Pearl’s murder too. Pearl was in Pakistan in 2002, investigating the link between the ISI and Al-Qaeda.

Pearl was kidnapped in January, the video of his beheading sent to the US consulate a month later. Omar Saeed Shaikh was convicted for Pearl's murder. His links with the ISI are out there for the world to see.

Two decades after the murder, Shaikh is walking out a free man. That's the kind of immunity the death squad enjoys.

On February 2, 2020, Pakistani blogger Ahmad Goraya was assaulted outside his home in the Netherlands.

The attacker threatened to kill Goraya and told him: ‘he knows exactly where Goraya and his family live’. The Pakistani blogger told Reporters without Borders: 'the attack fits the modus operandi of Pakistani spy agencies'.

You may have heard of Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan. The ISI tried assassinating him too. The reason – he was too friendly with India.

The ISI has played multiple roles in Afghanistan. For starters, it created the Taliban. Nasrullah Babar, who was the interior minister in the Benazir Bhutto government has said this.

In 1999 he said, 'we created the Taliban'.

Col. Chris Vernon, the British chief of staff for Southern Afghanistan in 2006 told The Guardian: 'the thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It’s the major headquarters’.

Pakistan also nurtured the Taliban, provided it with arms and maintained the terror group as its strategic asset. The Taliban is just one of ISI’s many terror friends.

One report says the ISI spends around $250 million dollars every year on terror groups. Where does the money go? On salaries, cash incentives as well as porters and informers

The death squad orchestrated the 26/11 attacks. Look up David Headley's testimonies, the attacks on London's transit system in July 2005 have the footprints of ISI too.

In 2006, a leaked report by the British defense ministry think tank read: 'Indirectly Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism. Whether in London on 7/7, or in Afghanistan or Iraq’.

In 2006, Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari was asked about the ISI’s links with terror organisations and he said, ‘Does this mean CIA has a direct link with Al-Qaeda? No, they have their sources and we have our sources. Everybody has sources.’

No intel agency can come clean in the notoriety test but which agency has such deep ties with terrorists -- the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Al-Qaeda.

Which intel agency hides a wanted terrorist? Which intel agency operates sleeping cells across the world? Which intel agency terrorises people abroad? Which intel agency peddles drugs? The answer is none.

That is exactly why the ISI is far from an intelligence wing, it is a hit squad and a death squad.

Constitutionally, the ISI is supposed to report to Pakistan's Prime Minister. But experts say the government of Pakistan has 'virtually no control over the ISI’

In July 2008, Pakistan announced that ISI will be brought under the interior ministry. The decision was revoked within hours. Two months later, in September 2008, the ISI chief was replaced.

Former President Pervez Musharaf's pick had to leave office as army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani picked Shuja Pasha to head the ISI.

Most ISI officers are from the army, so that's where its loyalties lie. One expert said: 'the ISI does what it is told' adding: 'it may push the envelope sometimes'.

Who tells ISI what to do?

So the command comes from Rawalpindi and as the former interior minister of Pakistan said: ‘the army and the death squad have means of covering up’.

In other words, enough layers and proxies and it is difficult to trace ISI killings. Countries like Canada don't even try.

In 1984, an Indian diplomat in the United Kingdom was abducted and killed. It is hard to dissociate ISI from Ravindra Mhatre’s killing. The operation was orchestrated through a proxy terror outfit and the assassins have now struck Sweden and Canada.

This is Pakistan signalling to its dissidents and a challenge to the world leaders – that its death squad's playground is no longer limited to Balochistan or Afghanistan.

More high-profile assassinations could be in the pipeline and your country could be next.