ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar has confirmed that the service term of head of the country’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had been extended in order to ensure continuity of policy amid uptick in terror attacks.
The premier revealed it during an interview with an international media outlet while a formal announcement for extension in tenure of Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum as DG ISI is yet to be made by the Pakistan Army.
The spy chief was set to retired late this month but the statement from the prime minister confirmed that he will remain in the office for another year. It has also ended speculation circulating on social media for a month.
“Try to understand the point on continuity [of policy]. Any system prefers and supports the idea of continuity,” Kakar told Arab News in an interview this week, when asked why Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum was given an extension.
“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,” he was quoted as having said.
He said it was the context that many institutions and political dispensation felt that extension should be granted for security benefit. Lt Gen Anjum was appointed DG ISI on November 20, 2022.
Pakistan witnessed a surge in terrorist attacks since the Taliban withdrew from a ceasefire agreement in November last year. One of the deadliest attack was carried out in Peshawar where a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque located at highly-fortified police lines of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa capital.
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