This Article is From Aug 16, 2015

Tributes for Pakistan's Ex-ISI Chief Hamid Gul Bound to Upset India and Afghanistan

Tributes for Pakistan's Ex-ISI Chief Hamid Gul Bound to Upset India and Afghanistan

File Photo: Former ISI Chief Hamid Gul.

Karachi: Tributes for Pakistan's late former Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) chief Hamid Gul poured in today, words bound to infuriate Pakistan's neighbours after he spent a career promoting militancy in Afghanistan and India.

"(Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif has expressed his heartfelt condolences over the sad demise of ... Hamid Gul," Pakistan's ruling party said on Twitter. "The prime minister prayed eternal peace for the departed soul and said that may God bless the deceased."

Pakistan lawmaker Arif Alvi tweeted that Gul had died on Saturday night of a brain haemorrhage at age 79 and called him "a great man".

The tributes will anger Afghanistan and India, who saw Gul as Pakistan's most senior and vocal proponent of militancy in their territory.

Gul worked closely with US and Saudi officials to strengthen Afghan fighters against the Soviet military when he headed the feared military intelligence agency, ISI, from 1987 to 1989. Some of those fighters later joined the Taliban insurgency.

Towards the end of his posting, officials began diverting men and guns from the Afghan war towards budding terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, founded in 1990 as a separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.

After Gul retired, he frequently went on television to defend the Taliban and separatists and blame a Jewish conspiracy for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
© Thomson Reuters 2015
.