Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Operations

Successes
Listed below are de-classified operations in which the ISI completely/partially fulfilled their missions.
*In the 1950s, the ISI's Covert Action Division was used in assisting the insurgents in India's North-East and its role was expanded in the late 1960s to assist the Sikh Home Rule Movement of London-based Charan Singh Panchi, which was subsequently transformed into the Khalistan Movement, headed by Jagjit Singh Chauhan in which many other members of the Sikh diaspora in Europe, USA and Canada joined and then demanded the separate country of Khalistan. CIA and ISI worked in tandem during the Nixon Administration in assisting the Khalistan movement in Punjab. However, as most of the Sikh terrorist groups found little popular backing in Punjab, by the early 1990s the Indian forces were able to suppress this artificially created insurgency.
*ISI decided to spy on the residence of Colonel Hussain Imam Mabruk who was a Military Attach to the Embassy of Libya in Islamabad as he had made some inflammatory statements towards the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq. The spying paid off as he was seen talking with two Pakistani gentlemen who entered and left the compound suspiciously. The ISI monitored the two men and were later identified as Pakistani exiles that hated the current military regime and were Bhutto loyalists. They had received terrorist training in Libya and were ready to embark on a terrorist campaign in Pakistan to force the Army to step down from power. All members of the conspiracy were apprehended before any damage could be done.
*ISI foiled an attempt by the French Ambassador to Pakistan, Le Gourrierce and his First Secretary, Jean Forlot who were on a surveillance mission to Kahuta nuclear complex on June 26, 1979. Both were intercepted and their cameras and other sensitive equipment were confiscated. Intercepted documents later on showed that the two were recruited by the CIA.
*After the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, the U.S. media outlets such as News Week and Time Magazine reported that CIA agents stationed in Tehran had obtained information in regards to the location of the hostages, in-house information from a Pakistani cook who used to work for the U.S. Embassy. ISI successfully gathered evidence, and intercepted communication documents and showed it to the Iranian Chief of J-2 which cleared the cook. The Iranian chief of intelligence said, "We know, the Big Satan is a big liar."
*ISI successfully intercepted two American private weapons dealers during the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980's. One American (his name has not been de-classified) who lived in the F-7/4 sector of Islamabad was bugged and trailed and was found to be in contact with various tribal groups supplying them with weapons. Another was Eugene Clegg, a teacher in the American International School who also indulged in weapons trade. Both were put out of business.
*ISI had placed a mole in the Soviet Embassy in Islamabad. The mole reported that the Third Secretary in the Soviet Embassy was after information in regards to the Karakurum Highway and was obtaining it from a middle level employee (Mr. Ejaz) of Northern Motor Transport Company. ISI contacted Ejaz who then confessed that a few months ago the Soviet diplomat approached him and threatened his family unless he divulged sensitive information in regards to the highway such as alignment of the road, location of bridges, the number of Chinese personnel working on the Highway, etc. The ISI then decided to feed the Soviet diplomat with false information. This continued until the Soviet diplomat was satisfied that Ejaz had been bled white of all the information and then dropped him. Intercepted communications later showed that the information was being gathered by the Soviet Union for India.
*ISI was very worried that among the large influx of Afghan refugees that come into Pakistan due to the Soviet-Afghan war were members of KHAD (Afghan Intelligence). In order to gather information on these spies, the ISI successfully turned Mansoor Ahmed who was the Charge-de-Affairs of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad. He and his family were secretly escorted out of their residence and were given safe passage on a London bound British Airways flight in exchange for classified information in regards to Afghan agents in Pakistan. The Soviet and Afghan diplomats tried their best to find the family but were unsuccessful.
*A routine background checks on various staff members working for the Indian embassy raised suspicions on an Indian woman who worked as a school teacher in an Indian School in Islamabad. Her enthusiastic and too friendly attitude gave her up. She was in reality was an agent working for RAW. ISI monitored her movements to a hotel in Islamabad where she rendezvoused with a local Pakistani man who worked as an engineer for Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. ISI then confronted her and were then able to turn her into a double agent spying on the Indian Embassy in Islamabad.
*ISI became aware of a plot to assassinate the President of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq and then launch a bloody coup to depose the current government and install an extreme Islamic government in its place. The attempted assassination and coup was to occur on March 23, 1980 during the annual March 23rd Pakistan day parade. The masterminds behind the coup were high ranking Military and Intelligence officers and were led by Major General Tajammal Hussain Malik, his son, Captain Naveed and his nephew Major Riaz, a former Military Intelligence officer. ISI decided against arresting these men outright because they did not know how deep this conspiracy went and kept these men under strict surveillance. As the date of the annual parade approached, these men were arrested along with quite a few high ranking military officers.
*Ilam Din also knows as Ilmo was an infamous Indian spy working from Pakistan. He had eluded being captured many times but on March 23 at 3 A.M., Ilmo and two other Indian spies were apprehended by Pakistani Rangers as they were illegally crossing into Pakistan from India. Their mission was to spy and report back on the new military equipment that Pakistan will be showing in their annual March 23rd Pakistan day parade. Ilmo after being thoroughly interrogated was then forced by the ISI to send false information to his RAW handlers in India. This process continued and many more Indian spies in Pakistan were flushed out such as Roop Lal.
*ISI uncovered a secret deal in which naval base facilities were granted by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the USSR in Vizag and the Andaman & Nicobar Island and the alleged attachment of KGB advisers to the then Lieutenant General Sunderji who was the commander of Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984.
*ISI, CIA and Mossad carried out a covert transfer of Soviet made PLO and Lebanese weapons captured by the Israelis during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and their subsequent transfer to Pakistan and then into Afghanistan. All knowledge of this weapon transfer was kept secret and was only made public recently.
*ISI played a central role in the U.S.-backed guerrilla war to oust the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s. That Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed effort flooded Pakistan with weapons and with Afghan, Pakistani and Arab "mujahideen", who were motivated to fight as a united force protecting fellow Muslims in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. The CIA relied on the ISI to train fighters, distribute arms, and channel money. The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan mujahideen between 1983 and 1997, and dispatched them to Afghanistan.
*CIA through the ISI promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to make the Soviet troops into heroin addicts and thus greatly reducing their fighting potential.
*Major General Sultan Habib who was an operative of the ISI's Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous department successfully procured nuclear material while being posted as the Defense Attaché in the Pakistani Embassy in Moscow from 1991 to 1993 and concurrently obtaining other materials from Central Asian Republics, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia. After Moscow, Major General Habib then coordinated shipping of missiles from North Korea and the training of Pakistani experts in the missile production. These two acts greatly enhanced Pakistan's Nuclear weapons program and their missile delivery systems.
*ISI engineered the takeover of Afghanistan by the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime after the fall of the Communist government in Kabul in 1992.
*Altaf Hussain, the leader of the MQM political party which represented the Muhajir (Immigrants from India during the partition of 1947) population in Karachi started a terror campaign by bombing, random murders and political assassinations to force the Pakistani government into creating an independent country for the Pakistan's Muhajir population. Hussain who had the backing of India and was living in exile in London, England and out of the reach of the Pakistani Justice but nevertheless, the ISI systematically dismantled his terror campaign and MQM has renounced its militant ways.
Failures
*The 1965 war in Kashmir provoked a major crisis in intelligence. When the war started, there was a complete collapse of the operations of all the intelligence agencies, which had been largely devoted to domestic investigative work such as tapping telephone conversations and chasing political suspects. The ISI, after the commencement of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, was apparently unable to locate an Indian armored division due to its preoccupation with political affairs. Ayub Khan set up a committee headed by General Yahya Khan to examine the working of the agencies.
*ISI became even more deeply involved in domestic politics under General Yahya Khan, notably in East Pakistan, where operations were mounted to ensure that no political party should get an overall majority in the general election and attempts were made to infiltrate the inner circles of the Awami League. The operation was a complete disaster as it led to the 1971 Pakistan civil war which saw East Pakistan become an independent nation of Bangladesh.
*In 1981, a Libyian Security company called Al Murtaza Associates sends recruiters to Pakistan to entice former soldiers and servicemen for high paying security jobs in Libya. In reality, Libya was recruiting mercenaries to fight with Chad and Egypt as it had border disputes with both nations. Only later did the ISI become aware of the plot and the whole scheme was stopped, but nearly 2,700 Pakistanis had already left for those jobs.
*The PAF Field Intelligence Unit at their base in Karachi in July 1980 captured an Indian agent. He was interrogated and revealed that a large network of Indian spies is functioning in Karachi. These spies in addition to espionage have also assassinated a few armed personnel. He also said the leader of the spy ring is being headed by Food and Beverages Manager, Intercontinental Hotel, Karachi and a number of serving Air Force officers and ratings were on his payroll. The ISI decided to survey the manager and see who was he in contacts with but the President of Pakistan superseded and wanted the manager and anyone else involved in the case arrested. It was later proven that the manager was completely innocent.
*ISI failed to perform a proper background check on the British Company which supplied the Pakistan Army with its Arctic-weather gear. When Pakistan attempted to secure the top of the Siachen Glacier in 1984, it placed a large order for Arctic-weather gear with that company but that company also supplied the Indian Army with its gear. Indians were easily alerted to the large Pakistani purchase and deduced that this large purchase could be used to equip troops to capture the glacier. India then mounted an operation (Operation Meghdoot) and secured the top of the glacier before Pakistan.
*ISI failed to calculate the International reaction to the Kargil operation in summer of 1999. Subsequent heavy pressure by foreign countries such as USA forced the Pakistani backed forces to withdraw from Kargil.