The ISI and the CIA: Newly Released Document Raises Questions

The tangled web of Pakistani extremist groups is only getting more complex. Documents released recently by the National Security Archives indicate that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (the country’s CIA) were instrumental in providing support for the Haqqani attack on the CIA Camp Chapman in December of 2009.

The attack killed seven Americans, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and an Afghan asset. It was the most devastating attack on a CIA compound in over two decades.

The document in question repeats a source’s claims that the ISI provided “200,000.00 USD to enable the attack on Chapman.” If true, this would mean that the ISI was effectively behind the attack. It also claims that Arghawan, an Afghan official, was provided with $100,000 to assist in the attack.

Arghawan was the Afghan who died in the attack, the email says.

If this is true, it marks a major public escalation in the continuing cold war between Pakistani and US security officials.

The relationship between the ISI and CIA has always been strained. The two agencies share information but don’t trust one another at all. The US Global War on Terror has created an atmosphere of mistrust as the superpower continually wages war within Pakistan’s borders but not against the country itself.

This continuing, 15 year incursion into Pakistani sovereign territory and the Afghan War has pushed relations between the two countries to the breaking point. The ISI’s support for extremists in the country has exacerbated tensions as well.

The net result of the tensions by 2009 was escalating instability in Pakistan and an increase in attacks inside the country.

It’s impossible to know the exact motivations of the ISI for financially supporting the attack, if they even did so. As Wesley Morgan points out, the information is not concrete:

If the ISI was involved in the attack, though, it stands to reason that a possible motivation could be deflecting attention away from the country’s internal problems to the outside. The CIA would make a good target for both the militant groups causing trouble in country and the ideologues stirring them up.

Time will tell as more documents are released.