ISLAMABAD: Lt. Gen. Asim Malik will take charge as the new chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) today, Monday, exactly a week after he was picked to head the powerful spy agency.
Malik, who was serving as an adjutant general at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Pakistan’s garrison city of Rawalpindi when his name was announced as the new head of the ISI last Monday, will be replacing Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum. His predecessor was appointed by then-prime minister Imran Khan in 2021.
The army is arguably the most influential institution in Pakistan, with the military having ruled the country for about half of its 77-year history since independence from Britain and enjoying extensive powers even under civilian administrations.
“Lt. Gen. Muhammad Asim Malik has been appointed as DG ISI,” state television PTV News said last Monday. “Lt. Gen. Asim Malik will assume charge of his new responsibilities on Sept. 30.”
Sharing details about the new ISI chief, PTV had said Malik previously served in the Balochistan infantry division and commanded the infantry brigade in Pakistan’s volatile northwestern Waziristan district.
Malik also earned an honorary sword in his course and has served as chief instructor at the National Defense University (NDU), and as an instructor at the Command and Staff College Quetta. He is a graduate of Fort Leavenworth in the United States and the Royal College of Defense Studies in London, the state television said.
The head of the ISI occupies one of the country’s most powerful positions. His posting comes at a time when Pakistan faces surging militant attacks in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and southwestern Balochistan provinces by separatists and religiously motivated militants. The surge in militant attacks in KP has marred Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan, whose government it accuses of providing sanctuaries to the Pakistani Taliban militants who launch attacks in Pakistan. The Taliban deny these allegations and have urged Pakistan to resolve their security challenges internally.
Created in 1948, the ISI gained importance and power during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and is now rated one of best-organized intelligence agencies in the developing world.
The agency is seen as the Pakistani equivalent of the US Central Agency (CIA) and Israel’s Mossad. Its size is not publicly known but the ISI is widely believed to employ tens of thousands of agents, with informers in many spheres of public life.
The military intelligence agency is believed to have a hidden role in making many of the nuclear-armed nation’s policies, including in Afghanistan and India. The threat to Pakistan from nuclear-armed neighboring India has been a main preoccupation of the ISI through the decades.
