The spy agency’s fortunes were transformed, in the 1980s, by the Afghan jihad. Alongside the CIA, it ran the vast covert war machine that supplied money, men and missiles to the guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation. Over the course of a decade, the ISI smuggled one million Kalashnikovs to the mujahideen – not to mention crates of American-supplied Stinger missiles that knocked the Red Army’s helicopter gunships from the sky. By the time the last Soviets stumbled from Afghanistan in 1989, bloodied and humiliated, the ISI had become a powerful, well-resourced organisation and a centre of
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