Pakistan’s notorious ISI agency is funded and armed by…, Kashmir-Centric Strategic Operation is its…, it operates in…
New Delhi: The infamous intelligence agency of Pakistan is the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It is the most secretive and powerful agency in Pakistan. Its main purpose is to plot destabilise India. For this purpose, it spends more than Rs 2000 crores every year. It uses this huge money to use against India via terrorism. The latest one being the Pahalgam massacre in which 28 tourists were killed.
The ISI’s budget is a portion of Pakistan’s total defense budget. It comes directly under the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Chief of Army Staff. In 2024-25, Pakistan’s total defense budget was about 1.8 trillion Pakistani rupees (approximately 6.5 billion USD). An estimated 15-20% of this goes to intelligence agencies. The annual budget of ISI is believed to be between 200-300 billion Pakistani rupees (approximately 700-1000 million USD). ISI’s operations against India continue unabated, which they refer to as the ‘Kashmir-Centric Strategic Operation,’ for which they have a separate hefty budget.
ISI’s terror budget for Kashmir
According to several reports, the ISI spends around USD 150-200 million annually on anti-India operations. This is a little less than Rs 2000 crores in Indian rupees. Although there is a separate fund of USD 70-80 million for proxy war in Kashmir, most of these expenses come from black funds, which is not mentioned in the normal defense budget. For this, the ISI also collects donations from narcotics, arms smuggling and Pakistani donors in other countries.
This money is spent on the maintenance of terror launch pads along the LoC, smuggling of drugs and weapons, funding sleeper cells in India, spreading fake news and hate propaganda on social media, and supply of money through hawala channels
About ISI
The ISI was formed in 1980s when America’s intelligence agency, the CIA, started training terrorist organizations like Taliban and Al-Qaeda to drive out Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ISI played a crucial role in this work.
The ISI was established a year after the creation of Pakistan. The full name of ISI is Inter-Services Intelligence. It was established just a year after Pakistan came into being. However, until the 1980s, it was generally known as a loosely organized intelligence agency. Although this organization was behind several tribal attacks from Pakistani territories into India, the ISI had lost its teeth alongside the Pakistani army during the 1971 war. It was then rebuilt from scratch. The CIA, the American intelligence agency, primarily trained it when Soviet troops were stationed in Afghanistan as America wanted to defeat the Soviet Union through unconventional warfare.
The CIA has made the ISI so proficient that it has now become the world’s most deceitful and notorious agency. It has built up a solid base of terrorism in India over the past two decades with the help of CIA training and funds from Gulf countries.
The ISI is believed to be the world’s largest intelligence agency in terms of staff and money. It lures locals in different countries on a large scale by giving them money and trains them in terror related work and intelligence collection.
The ISI is considered an integral part of the Pakistan Army which plays a key role in everything from the appointment of its head to operations. It was named Inter Services so that officers from the three branches of the Pakistan Army, Air Force, and Navy, could be included. However, in recent years, people from many different government departments in Pakistan have also started being appointed to enhance the capacity of this agency. The head of ISI is always an officer of general rank from the Pakistani army. Below him are three deputies who lead three different wings. These three wings are the Internal Wing, External Wing, and Foreign Relations Wing.
These three wings are divided into eight divisions. In this, Joint Intelligence North directly prepares the crop of terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan. These wings try to maintain constant instability in India and especially in Kashmir. That is why they continue to work to encourage terrorist groups through them. Terrorist groups spreading trouble in India and Afghanistan have been taught new tricks.
Global Security Review, a think tank, published a report on ISI a few years ago. According to this report, ISI always attempts to ensure that significant terrorist activities continue in its two neighbours, India and Afghanistan, because it serves its own security interests. In Afghanistan, ISI has prepared three major terrorist organizations, including the Haqqani Network, Afghan Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.
Proxy War
Pakistan conducts proxy wars with its neighbouring countries through the ISI. The use of terrorist organizations through this intelligence agency has essentially become a component of Pakistan’s foreign policy. It is believed that during the 1990s, one of ISI’s primary roles became training jihadists. The 2008 attack in Mumbai was carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had close ties with the ISI. It is involved in funding to the establishment of Jaish-e-Mohammed.
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