Pakistan’s spy agency ISI recruits university students, people from public service commissions and retired army officials to carry out various operations including its proxy war against India, German historian and political scientist, Hein Kiessling has said.
During the launch event of his book “Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan”, Hein Kiessling said: “ISI will continue its proxy war against India regardless of any change in its leadership because it ‘needs an enemy’ and the agency defines it as India’s ‘control over Kashmir’.
Kiessling, who spent around 13 years in Pakistan during which he studied structure and work of ISI, claimed the Pakistani intelligence agency is one of the best in Asia and had a staff strength of around 3,500 in 2004 when RAW’s strength was around 7,000.
About his book, Kiessling said: “The book spans the period from 1948, the period of establishing of the agency (ISI) to 2015. This work is based on my observations and experiences and I have used historical method. There were several factors which led me into doing this book.”
“While researching the book, I met several top officials who had been associated with ISI, from DG-rank to others, and one thing I found out was that the archiving of information, about it, was not done properly… Also, in 2004, ISI had 3,500 staff,” he said.
Kiessling also claimed that a former top official of the ISI had told him that “9/11 was an inside job” but he refused to give credence to it.
“I am not in favour of conspiracy theories. There have been many conspiracy theories around the September 11 attack in the US. So, this was another one… Lot of people also still think that US astronauts never landed on the moon and it was staged in a desert. So, let’s not get into conspiracy theories,” he said.
