The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

by Declan Walsh

without money or papers, and ordered them to make their way back to the Academy using their wits. Sometimes, real life intruded. Once Ashraf and his classmates, in the guise of street vendors, were arrested by police officers who hauled them off to jail for refusing to pay a bribe. The police slapped and threatened the students, who were under strict orders not to break cover. Eventually, a weary ISI instructor turned up to bail them out. After his graduation, Ashraf was posted to Quetta. He was initially assigned menial duties – running bureaucratic errands for bosses, or depositing payment for sources at the bank – but that afforded a view of the ISI’s extensive operations in Quetta. Offices dotted around the city were known by their code names: Section 944 for Operations; Section 9341 for Counter-Intelligence; and, most sensitive of all, Section 21 for the ‘Afghan Cell’, which liaised with the Afghan Taliban. Like any intelligence organisation, the ISI was supposed to be strictly compartmentalised. But Quetta’s compact size, and the loose discipline of its officers, allowed Ashraf to grasp the agency’s activities beyond his office. In Meezan Chowk, a bustling downtown intersection, he spotted an ISI officer he knew in beggar’s clothes, apparently surveilling a target. On a visit to the ISI headquarters in the city, Section 51, he spotted militants from outlawed sectarian and extremist groups who had apparently popped in for meetings. During tea breaks, fellow officers s...