The extension was given to the spymaster of Pakistan’s top intelligence agency to preserve ‘continuity’ of policy at a time when the country was dealing with an uptick in terrorist activities, caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has said.
“Try to understand the point on continuity [of policy]. Any system prefers and supports the idea of continuity,” he told Arab News in an interview earlier this week in response to a query related to the extension given to the Inter-Services Intelligence director general.
Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum is the incumbent ISI DG. He was due to retire last month, but media reports claimed that he was given an extension by the government.
The last DG ISI to get an extension was Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, whose tenure coincided with major anti-militant offensives in the country’s northwest.
The caretaker prime minister added that there was an “idea of continuity” of elections in a democracy where the governments hold polls periodically.
“You want to have a continuation of the process, and for you, the continuation of that process is important so that idea or practice or brand gets entrenched,” the interim PM said. He did not share specific details of the policies the government and military wanted Anjum to continue to implement.
“So, in that context at times in many institutions, you do feel, or the political dispensation feels, that some individual has to continue for any security benefit or otherwise, and they [the state] have got the discretion to do that [grant extension]. There’s nothing unusual and abnormal about it.”
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Anjum succeeded Lt Gen Faiz Hameed on November 20, 2022. His appointment had come amid the outlawed terrorist group’s announcement to end the ceasefire agreement with the government.
The army announced on Oct 6 that Lt Gen Anjum was appointed as the ISI chief while his predecessor was made the Peshawar corps commander. But the Prime Minister’s Office had issued an official notification of his appointment after three weeks.
Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum, who was commissioned in service in September 1988, earlier headed Corps V in Karachi.
Gen Anjum commanded a brigade in Kurram Agency, led Frontier Corps (North) in Balochistan and remained commandant of Command and Staff College Quetta before becoming corps commander Karachi in December 2020.
When asked, Kakar said that the caretaker government has got “excellent working relationship” with the military.
“All the challenges of the government we deliberate over them and wherever we feel there is an institutional input required from that side [army], we have an open communication channel with them and we receive a lot of honest input from that and not just input from that, we receive coordination and cooperation in the enforcement part.”
Kakar added he did not want to link the rise in militancy to a possible delay in the election.
“They [militants] keep on changing their tactics, we have to respond accordingly,” the PM said. “So that’s why I’m saying that I’m not linking it [rise in attacks] or our government is not linking it with the electoral process.”
