Hamid Gul, Pakistan spy chief with anti-American views, dies at 78
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Version 0 of 1. Hamid Gul, who led Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency as it funneled U.S. and Saudi cash and weapons to Afghan Islamist extremists fighting against the Soviets and who later supported Islamist militants, died Aug. 15 at the resort of Murree near Islamabad, the capital. He was 78. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said his daughter, Uzma Gul. Mr. Gul’s tenure at the ISI and his outspoken backing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other extremists showed the murky loyalties at play years later when the United States and Pakistan formed an unlikely alliance following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. But others viewed Mr. Gul as an increasingly out-of-touch braggart later in life, as he appeared on countless Pakistani television programs warning of dark conspiracies and demanding that his country militarily confront India, its nuclear-armed neighbor. Mr. Gul was born near Sargodha, in what is now eastern Pakistan, on Nov. 20, 1936. He served in the army and fought in two wars against India. He always viewed India with suspicion, constantly warning that it and others wanted to seize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Many believe he helped shape Pakistan’s policy of funding Islamist militant groups to attack India’s interests in the disputed Kashmir region. Mr. Gul came into real power when he became the chief of the ISI in 1987. By then, the United States and Saudi Arabia were using the ISI to funnel billions of dollars to fund militants fighting the Soviets during their occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. Those militants became the backbone of the Taliban and included a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden. The government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto forced Mr. Gul out in 1989. Years later, he acknowledged creating an alliance of Islamist political parties to challenge Bhutto in the 1988 elections that brought her to power. Yet Mr. Gul’s influence persisted for years as the ISI remains one of the most powerful institutions in Pakistan. Although unnamed in the 9/11 Commission report, U.S. officials at the time said they suspected Mr. Gul tipped off bin Laden to a failed 1998 cruise missile attack targeting him in Afghanistan after the al-Qaeda attacks on embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. U.S. officials said Mr. Gul contacted Taliban leaders and assured them that he would provide three or four hours of warning before any U.S. missile launch. Mr. Gul was a close ally of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received U.S. assistance during the Soviet occupation and was a bitter rival of Taliban figurehead Mohammad Omar. The United States declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist” in 2003 because of alleged links to al-Qaeda and froze all assets he may have had in the United States. After the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Gul became an outspoken opponent of the United States while cheering the Taliban in public appearances. There were allegations, however, that Mr. Gul had a more hands-on approach. U.S. intelligence reports released by WikiLeaks alleged that he dispatched three men in December 2006 to carry out attacks in Afghanistan’s capital. “Reportedly Gul’s final comment to the three individuals was to make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame,” the report said. Mr. Gul at the time described the documents as “fiction and nothing else.” Some of the reports, generated by junior intelligence officers, did include far-fetched claims, such as an allegation in 2007 that militants teamed up with the ISI to kill Afghan and NATO forces with poisoned alcohol bought in Pakistan. But Mr. Gul’s anti-Americanism was by then a well-known fact in Pakistani public life. At one point in 2003, Mr. Gul boasted that Pakistani officials would “turn a blind eye” to any Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters who escaped Afghanistan. “The intelligence and security agencies are a part of the ethos of the country and the national ethos today is a hatred of America,” he said. But by the time U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011, Mr. Gul helped spread a rumor that U.S. forces actually killed the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan and brought his body to Pakistan to humiliate the country. “My feeling is that it was all a hoax, a drama which has been crafted, and badly scripted, I would say,” he said. And in conspiracy-minded Pakistan, many believed him. The last line of his online autobiography reads: “People wait to listen to his direction before forming their own opinions.” — Associated Press |