Who is Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, Pakistan’s New ISI Chief?
Hameed is believed to have played an instrumental role in clamping down on a sit-in protest by the sectarian group Tehreek-e-Labbaik in Faizabad a couple of years ago.
Lt Gen Faiz Hameed has been appointed as the new director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The Pakistani army made the announcement on Monday. Hameed, a hardliner general who belongs to the Baloch regiment, takes over the coveted position – one of the most influential in the country’s military – from Lt Gen Asim Munir, who was the country’s spymaster since October 2018.
Known to be close to the army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, Hameed was made the adjutant general at Pakistan’s GHQ (General Head Quarters) in April.
Munir was at the helm of affairs at the ISI during the Pulwama terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 40 CRPF jawans, and the Indian Air Force air strikes on militant camps in Balakot within Pakistan that followed
Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, the Pakistani military spokesperson, had singled out Hameed for praise in July last year for his role in combating terrorism. “All these terrorist incidents that I tell you have been averted are because of Gen Faiz’s department,” Ghafoor said as reported by the newspaper Dawn.
Hameed is believed to have played an instrumental role in clamping down on a sit-in protest by the sectarian group Tehreek-e-Labbaik in Faizabad a couple of years ago.
A former head of the ISI’s Counter Intelligence wing, Hameed will now head one of the most powerful agencies in his country, which is almost a law unto itself. Pakistan’s ISI is known to control the terror ‘tap’ in the country, turning it on and off and unleashing mayhem in neighbouring India and Afghanistan when circumstances require.
America’s CIA developed close links with the ISI in the 1980s with the common goal of forcing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but the Americans have grown more circumspect in the recent past especially in the aftermath of the raid by US special forces in Pakistan’s Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. It is widely believed that there was no way the terrorist masterminded could have stayed untraced for so many years in Pakistan without the knowledge – if not active support – of the dreaded ISI.
