Pakistan's Intelligence Agencies: The Inside Story

Over the last two decades, the role and scale of Pakistan's intelligence agencies has grown over and above their prescribed functions, to the extent that their operations, often undercover and at odds with even each other, have earned them the reputation of being a "State within a State".

Expanding the theatre of their operations to cover major foreign and domestic policy areas, the workings of the three key intelligence agencies, the ISI, the MI and the IB, have assumed more controversial proportions than ever before.

On a freezing December day in Islamabad, MNA Dr Imran Farooq, ordered the maintenance staff of the MNA hostel to service his room heater. The staff took down the gas heater, only to discover a device that didn't belong there taped to its back. Noticing that there were batteries attached to it, they immediately became alarmed and summoned the bomb disposal squad.

Being experts at their job, the members of the bomb squad soon allayed the perturbed MNA's fears that the device was not a bomb of any sort. Instead, they said, they had discovered a powerful transmitter that was being used to bug the MQM MNA's room.

While the federal interior minister was quick to order an inquiry into the affair, the MQM blamed the former PPP government for bugging Dr Farooq's room. The real culprit, however, is still to be identified.