M A I N   N E W S

Pervez sends ISI chief packing

Washington, October 8
In a bid to prevent a possible challenge to his regime, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has purged two key intelligence and military officers reportedly sympathetic to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia.

Genaral Musharraf pushed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Gen Mehmud Ahmad and the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Gen Muzaffar Usmani, into premature retirement “to preempt threats to the stability to his government,” the Washington Post reported.

Pakistani news agency SADA had earlier reported that the two generals had quit after being superseded by two junior officers who were promoted as four-star generals.

The Post, however, said General Musharraf “intended to rid his security agencies of top officers unwilling to abandon their support of militant Islamic groups and to prevent them from undercutting orders to sever Pakistan’s ties with the Taliban.”

General Ahmad had led Pakistani teams to Afghanistan to ask the Taliban leaders to hand over Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last month’s terror attacks in the USA.

General Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999, also curtailed the power of Lieut Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan, a strong supporter of Pakistan’s radical Islamic groups, by promoting him from his key decision-making role as the army’s Vice-Chief of Staff to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Daily said.

The Pakistan President named Lieut Gen Ehsanul Haq, a moderate with an extensive background in Afghan issues, as new head of the intelligence services. General Haq is also an ethnic Pashtun, the same ethnic background as that of most members of the Taliban.

Some members of the ISI reportedly balked at orders to provide intelligence information to the USA as it prepared for military attacks against Bin Laden and the Taliban leadership, the Post said.

Pakistan has pledged support to the US war against terrorism, but the decision has invited the wrath of pro-Taliban religious parties in the country.

“Reflecting concern that Islamic clerics and senior officers could try to destabilise his two-year-old military government, the self-appointed president pushed out at least five prominent officers,” the Post reported.

The President also appointed new commanders in two strategic provinces on the Afghan border, Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, volatile tribal areas where many leaders and residents have strong ties with the Taliban.

Pakistan’s intelligence services played a critical role in financing, arming and training the Taliban throughout its rise to power in Afghanistan between 1994 and 1996.

Three of the men who today lost their influential positions were instrumental in carrying out military coup in October 1999 and were his long-time personal associates.

Meanwhile, PTI added from New Delhi that Lieut Gen had been forced into retirement after FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umer Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

Informed sources said there were enough indications with US intelligence agencies that it was at General Mahmud’s instruction that Sheikh had transferred one lakh US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta. IANS, PTI