Home-grown militants, not India, biggest threat: ISI

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has said “home-grown” Islamist militants have overtaken the Indian Army as the greatest threat to national security.

A recent internal assessment of security by the ISI said the country expects a number of threats coming from Islamist militants, a senior ISI officer said.

The assessment allocates a “two-thirds” likelihood of a major threat to the state coming from militants rather than from India or elsewhere.

The ISI officer said Pakistan has about 150,000 soldiers fighting on its western border, with an additional 100,000 in reserve to rotate with those troops.

The country’s remaining 350,000 soldiers are focused on the border with India. “The direct threat from India has reduced considerably but that’s not to say it’s diminished entirely,” the officer was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal.

This is the first time since the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947 that India hasn’t been viewed as the top threat.

“It’s earth shattering. That’s a remarkable change,” said Bruce Hoffman, a counter-terrorism specialist and professor at Georgetown University.

“It’s yet another ratcheting up of the Pakistanis’ recognition of not only their own internal problems but cooperation in the war on terrorism.”

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief spokesman of the Pakistani military, said he wasn’t aware of the assessment and said India remained a threat. He, however, said it was the ISI’s role to draw up security assessments in the country.

The US, which gives around $2 billion in military aid to Pakistan annually, is particularly concerned about one of these groups, the Haqqani network.

The significance of the ISI’s assessment will hinge on exactly which militant groups it considers a threat, said Hoffman.

The media report said ISI’s new assessment is at odds with the projection of India inside Pakistan.

Politicians and the media regularly hold up India as working to undermine Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan. Others believe India is stealing water from Pakistan by building dams on shared rivers. And many Pakistanis blame India for funding a separatist insurgency in Balochistan province.

India has, however, denied all charges, the report added.