Pakistan Army Chief Names New Head of ISI
Pakistan Gen. Raheel Sharif Names Rizwan Akhtar as New Head of Inter-Services Intelligence Agency

By SAEED SHAH
Updated Sept. 22, 2014 5:17 p.m. ET

Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, shown in 2012 with sunglasses, will have a role in internal security and dealings with neighbors. European Pressphoto Agency
ISLAMABAD—Pakistan army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif strengthened his authority on Monday as he named a new head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, a key political and security post, and made a raft of other senior appointments.

Gen. Sharif became army chief in November, and the new appointments—made to replace retiring generals—allow him to put his own men in crucial positions as a political crisis continues to grip the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif amid protests demanding his resignation.

ISI Chief General Rizwan Akhtar

The new head of the ISI will be Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, who has just completed a stint as head of the paramilitary Rangers force for the southern province of Sindh. As the Rangers chief, he has won praise for his leadership of the operation launched a year ago to clear Karachi of the militants and criminals who have turned Pakistan’s biggest city into a chaotic and dangerous place.

The army is engaged in an operation, launched in June, to fight Taliban and al Qaeda militants in the North Waziristan tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Gen. Sharif and the prime minister, elected in May 2013, aren’t related. Relations between the two have become strained over the prime minister’s goal of rapidly making peace with traditional enemy India and his determination to prosecute former army chief Pervez Musharraf for treason. Mr. Musharraf ended Mr. Sharif’s previous stint as prime minister with a coup in 1999.

Officials in Mr. Sharif’s government believe that the military—or elements within it headed by the outgoing ISI chief—support the antigovernment protests, which are led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and cleric Tahir ul Qadri.

In a meeting Monday with Gen. Sharif, the prime minister “commended the armed forces for the sacrifices given by them in making Pakistan a safer country,” according to a statement from his office.

The new head of the ISI was among six appointments made Monday by Gen. Sharif, all promoted from major-general rank to lieutenant-general. The six include a new commander for the army corps in Peshawar, which runs operations in the militant-plagued tribal areas, and a commander for the India-facing strike corps at Mangla.

Previously, Gen. Sharif’s top commanders were his near-peers, many of whom had joined the army about the same time as him and had been appointed by the previous army chief.

“These appointees are taking key positions and they owe their jobs to Raheel Sharif,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst. “This is Raheel’s first set of senior appointments and it strengthens his position.”

The ISI chief, in particular, is a crucial player in both internal security and Pakistan’s dealings with its neighbors, especially Afghanistan and India.

The ISI has long been accused by U.S. officials of supporting some jihadist groups active in Afghanistan and India, including the Haqqani network,—accusations the Pakistani government denies.

The ISI head is also considered an important operator in the country’s domestic politics. Although democracy was restored in Pakistan in 2008, both the outgoing head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Zaheer-ul-Islam, and his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, were accused of meddling in politics.

Relations between the government and the military were further strained in April, when Geo, Pakistan’s leading news channel, broadcast accusations that Gen. Islam was behind the shooting of its star news anchor. The military protested against the allegations, while the government was seen to side with Geo over the affair.

According to some senior aides of Mr. Sharif, Gen. Islam is backing the political protest, along with some other outgoing generals. Gen. Sharif, however, has told the prime minister that he isn’t involved, these aides say. Many security analysts believe it would be impossible for an ISI chief to run such an initiative without the army chief’s consent.

The information minister, Parvaiz Rashid, has publicly alleged that former ISI chief Mr. Pasha is “advising” protest leader Imran Khan. Mr. Pasha, who retired from the ISI in 2012, hasn’t responded to the charge. Mr. Khan has denied any links with the military.

In a press briefing on Sept. 12, the military’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, said that “the army has nothing to do with the ongoing political crisis.” He also said that “the army strictly follows the directions of the army chief.”

The new ISI chief, Gen. Akhtar, has also previously served in the tribal areas, as an infantry-division commander, giving him experience of both counterinsurgency and, with his experience in Karachi, counterterrorism.

Political parties are deeply involved in Karachi crime, including extortion and land-grabbing, police say. Security forces come under intense pressure from politicians not to arrest their supporters in the city. However, Gen. Akhtar is credited with carrying out an operation in the giant metropolis that didn’t favor any side. The operation, in its later stages, also tackled the presence of Pakistani Taliban militants, who had come to dominate Karachi’s fringe areas.

“He’s honest, straightforward, but very tough when needed,” said Shahid Hayat, a senior Sindh police officer and Karachi’s former city police chief who worked closely with Gen. Akhtar. “There is no compromise as far as the enforcement of the law is concerned—he will take whoever breaks it to task. He’s totally committed to that.”

Gen. Akhtar’s training includes a 2008 course, as a brigadier, at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. There one of his research papers entitled “U.S.-Pakistan Trust Deficit and the War on Terror”—said that Pakistan “must reform its governance, improve the economy, confront and eliminate Islamic extremism, and create a more tolerant society. Most important, it must aggressively pursue rapprochement with India.”

—Syed Shoaib Hasan contributed to this article.

Write to Saeed Shah at [email protected]