Pakistan has appointed Lieutenant-General Muhammad Asim Malik as the new head of the country’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
The move comes amid persistent criticism of the powerful military-run agency for its alleged role in making or breaking elected governments in the South Asian nation.
A senior Pakistani security source confirmed to VOA on Monday that Malik will assume office as the agency's next director general on September 30, replacing the current ISI chief, Nadeem Anjum.
The military's media wing did not immediately comment on the high-profile appointment, but Pakistan’s state broadcaster reported it with a brief profile of the new ISI chief.
Malik graduated from Fort Leavenworth in the United States and the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and currently serves as an adjutant general at the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, adjacent to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
The ISI’s meddling in national politics has lately been the subject of intense debate in Pakistan’s national media and political circles.
Jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan accuses current ISI chief Anjum of playing a role at the behest of the military in ousting him from power in 2022 through an opposition parliamentary no-confidence vote, instituting frivolous lawsuits subsequently, and unleashing a crackdown on his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to keep him from returning to power.
Several federal and provincial court judges, in a recent letter to the Supreme Court chief justice, have also alleged that the ISI was pressuring them to decide cases against Khan to ensure he remains in jail. The incarcerated former prime minister remains Pakistan’s most popular politician.
The military, in turn, has recently arrested Anjum’s predecessor, Faiz Hameed, and initiated his court marshal on various charges, including the use of his position as the ISI chief to enable Khan to suppress political opponents while in office.
It is widely believed that Khan's decision not to let Anjum replace Hameed in October 2021 angered the military and eventually led to the prime minister's removal from power several months later.
Subsequent governments and the military deny having any political role or pressuring judges, a claim critics dispute.
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than three decades since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. Former Pakistani prime ministers, including Khan, and political parties say generals maintain control over foreign policy and national security issues.
Khan has persistently alleged in statements from his prison cell that the current coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif “is merely a tout” of the military. He alleges that the army leadership used the ISI to massively rig the February 8 parliamentary elections this year to prevent his party from winning.
The allegations were supported by a detailed Supreme Court majority decision released on Monday, resolving a petition concerning pre- and post-election controversies. The judgment declared several actions of Pakistan’s election commission in the lead-up to the polls “unlawful,” saying they were meant to keep PTI-nominated candidates from winning.
The judgment stated that the commission “has failed to fulfill this role in the general elections of 2024.” It noted that election authorities’ actions “significantly infringe upon the rights of the electorate and corrode their own institutional legitimacy.”
The vote outcome has worsened the political turmoil triggered by Khan’s ouster, undermining Pakistan’s efforts to stabilize an already troubled economy. A spike in militant violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, which border Afghanistan, has added to the challenges facing the military-backed Sharif administration.
"All this has familiar echoes of the past — a government unwilling to engage with the opposition, jailing opposition leaders, trying to steamroll legislation, and a desperate opposition in constant protest mode against a backdrop of economic gloom, weak governance, and ubiquitous establishment pulling the strings from behind the scenes,” Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, wrote in an article published by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper Monday.
The term establishment in Pakistan is a reference to the military and its intelligence services.
