# ISI Inter-Services Intelligence is Pakistan's primary intelligence agency and one of the most powerful and controversial intelligence services in the world. Established in 1948 and deeply intertwined with the Pakistani military, the ISI functions simultaneously as a foreign intelligence service, a domestic political enforcement mechanism, and — according to extensive evidence — a covert support network for militant organizations including the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The ISI's defining relationship is with the [[CIA]]: during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War, the ISI was the [[CIA]]'s primary conduit for funding and arming the Afghan mujahideen — a partnership that channeled billions in weapons and money through ISI, which distributed them to favored Afghan factions. This arrangement gave the ISI enormous independent power and established the template for its subsequent support of militant proxies as instruments of Pakistani foreign policy, particularly against India in Kashmir. The fundamental contradiction: the ISI was simultaneously America's closest intelligence partner in the region and a covert supporter of the Taliban and other groups that killed American soldiers in Afghanistan. The discovery that Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan — a military garrison town, less than a mile from Pakistan's equivalent of West Point — crystallized suspicions that elements of the ISI had sheltered him. The US conducted the 2011 raid without informing Pakistan. ## See Also - [[CIA]] — primary intelligence partner and frequent adversary - [[RAW]] — Indian intelligence rival - [[Global Intelligence Hub]] — full agency index