The U.S. has forced Pakistan to ease travel restrictions on its diplomats after it threatened to reciprocate by invoking international law, officials from both sides tell TIME. Washington hit back against unusual limits on the movements of U.S. diplomats that had been set by Pakistani authorities on the instructions of their country's top spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 

U.S. officials say that American diplomats in Pakistan have suffered harassment at the hands of the country's authorities, citing instances of midnight searches, tip-offs to local media about the movements of U.S. officials and lurid tales planted in the local press of diplomats conspiring with Pakistani politicians. Pakistani officials' most recent move was to restrict the ability of U.S. diplomats to travel freely within the country, citing "security reasons." 

The squeeze on the activities of U.S. diplomats in Pakistan is the latest chapter in the ISI-CIA spy war that has been slowly escalating since the arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis after an incident in which two Pakistanis were killed, reaching a fever pitch following the U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil. 

The dispute over travel restrictions comes on the heels of the departure of the CIA's second Islamabad station chief in just seven months; an unnamed official was evacuated for "medical reasons" a fortnight ago but will not be returning to the Pakistan post. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

In its easing of the travel restrictions, Pakistan furnished the U.S. embassy in Islamabad with blanket "no objection certificates," allowing the diplomats to move unimpeded within the country for a month. Despite the waiver, the restrictions remain formally in place. U.S. diplomats may still be asked to demonstrate that they have permission to travel and will have to seek extensions of their no-objection certificates on a monthly basis. Under the Vienna Convention governing rules for diplomats, one official said, any restrictions imposed by Pakistan on U.S. diplomats can be reciprocated by Washington. 

According to U.S. and Pakistani officials, Washington threatened to retaliate by limiting the movements of Pakistan's diplomats in the U.S. after Cameron Munter, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad, was questioned at Islamabad airport. Munter had been traveling to Karachi on Thursday, July 28, when he was surprisingly asked by airline officials to provide a no-objection certificate. Officials said they knew of no similar demand having been made of any of Munter's predecessors. 

The restrictions imposed by the Pakistani foreign office at the behest of the ISI appear to be just one element of a broader effort since the Davis affair by spy chief Lieut. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha to make his agency aware of exactly what every American official in Pakistan is working on, a U.S. official tells TIME on condition of anonymity. The Pakistani spymaster's alarm was further heightened when reports emerged that the CIA had recruited Pakistani citizens to help spy on bin Laden's hiding place in Abbottabad. The alleged harassment of U.S. personnel would clearly limit the Americans' ability to gather intelligence in Pakistan independently of the Pakistani authorities. 

"The U.S.-Pakistani relationship is complicated," a U.S. official tells TIME on condition of anonymity. "It ebbs and flows, and it's driven most of all by what is or isn't accomplished on the ground. There have been recent incidents where U.S. embassy officials have been harassed by Pakistani authorities, which is a disturbing trend. The visas the Pakistanis have agreed to give U.S. embassy officials are short-term and single-entry - not the type traditionally afforded to diplomatic representatives in the country. This is a far from ideal solution." 

Still, tensions appear to have been somewhat eased by a July 14 meeting in Washington between Pasha and CIA acting director Mike Morrell. At the meeting, an agreement was struck to issue 87 visas to CIA agents headed to Pakistan, reviving the strength of the station there and lifting the choke hold on new visas to U.S. officials, even aid workers, that has been in effect in recent months. The two spy chiefs also agreed on new "rules of engagement," a senior Pakistani official says. 

Pasha will not have been displeased by the recent departure of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad. Relations between them are alleged by officials from both sides to have been strained by the Davis affair, and they exploded into angry exchanges following the bin Laden raid. An official familiar with ISI-CIA relations says the station chief had been forced to leave the country because of a sudden illness but was in any case scheduled to leave early, in September, after just 10 months on the job. The station chief's departure was first reported by ABC News. 

An indication of the extent of the breakdown between the ISI and the CIA station chiefs came in the weeks after the bin Laden raid, when the U.S. official's name was leaked to the local press. That marked the second time in five months a CIA station chief's cover had been compromised. The previous Islamabad station chief had been forced to leave in December after his identity was revealed in a legal action brought by a relative of victims of a drone strike. U.S. officials believe that leak came from the ISI in retaliation for Pasha's name being included in a New York City lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of the 2008 Mumbai massacre. 

The drone program, targeting militants along the Pakistani-Afghan border and initially launched with the cooperation of the ISI, has become a major source of tension in the CIA-ISI relationship. A senior Pakistani military official tells TIME the ISI stopped collaborating with the CIA in drone strikes in mid-2008. Since then, the CIA has intensified the rate of drone strikes to nearly one every four days. Both sides say the attacks have become more accurate in that time. Pakistani officials confirm reports that the ISI receives only "concurrent notification" of the strikes: it is informed of the targets after the missiles have been fired. Pakistani officials complain that drone strikes, widely reviled among the Pakistani public, often target mere foot soldiers, although they concede that the drones have helped cut down key targets and limit militants' freedom of movement. 

The ISI now demands that the drone programs either are halted or are continued but only with full Pakistani participation. There appeared to be a rare pause in recent weeks, with Monday's drone strike in South Waziristan being the first known since July 12 - the lengthiest hiatus since the height of the Davis affair, when no drones were fired for 28 days from January to February. 

The centrality of the spy agencies to the pursuit of al-Qaeda and also to the shaping of an Afghanistan endgame makes the conflict between the CIA and the ISI a major factor in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. As one U.S. official tells TIME, "It is bleeding over into other areas of cooperation." Pakistan's official position is that it is reviewing the terms of its entire relationship with the U.S. in all areas of cooperation. Pakistan's new Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, recently told state television, "The terms of engagement are being revisited, and are being revisited in a way which is creating some problems, some operational issues."

(Source: TIME)

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