Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service, protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents. After the shah’s government fell, SAVAK and other intelligence services were eliminated and new services were created, though many low- and mid-level intelligence personnel were retained or rehired by the new services. The most important of the postrevolutionary intelligence services is the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), which is responsible for both intelligence and counterintelligence. It also has conducted covert actions outside Iran in support of Islamic regimes elsewhere; for example, it was said to have provided military support to Muslim fighters in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.
Shortly after the Islamic revolution, the new regime formed an impromptu militia known as the Revolutionary Guards (Persian: Pāsdārān-e Enqelāb), or simply as the Pāsdārān, to forestall any foreign-backed coup—such as the one the CIA had undertaken to topple the nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953—and to act as a foil to the powerful Iranian military. The Pāsdārān also aided the country’s new rulers in running the country and enforcing the government’s Islamic code of morality. Only after Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 was the organization pressed into a broader role as a conventional military force; at the same time, the Pāsdārān—which answered to its own independent ministry—sought to broaden its scope by developing departments for intelligence gathering (both at home and abroad) and clandestine activities. The names and functions of these departments are not well-known. One such group, however, is known as the Qods (Jerusalem) Force. Like the MOIS, it is responsible for conducting clandestine operations and for training and organizing foreign paramilitary groups in other parts of the Islamic world, including, purportedly, the Lebanese Shīʿite group Hezbollah. In the late 1990s agents of an organization associated with the Pāsdārān were arrested and convicted of the murder of Iranian dissidents in western Europe.
Pakistan
The intelligence community of Pakistan is one of the most sophisticated in the world. The ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence), which is responsible to the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense, has undertaken major foreign intelligence and covert operations, such as the funding and training of Afghan partisans during their guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the arming and training of the Taliban movement before the terrorist bombings against the United States in September 2001, and allegedly providing close support to separatists in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In addition to the ISI, separate tactical intelligence services are maintained by the three branches of the Pakistani military. The Intelligence Bureau carries out domestic surveillance against the general population.
India
India, which has fought several wars with Pakistan since the 1940s, also has a sophisticated intelligence community; unlike that of Pakistan, it is accountable to the civilian government. The Joint Intelligence Committee, which is supervised by the Cabinet Secretariat, analyzes information collected by civilian and military agencies. Military intelligence is the province of the Directorates of Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, and Air Intelligence, and the Joint Cipher Bureau provides interservice cryptology and signals intelligence. India’s most important intelligence agency is a civilian service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The RAW’s operations are for the most part confined to the Indian subcontinent, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. The RAW also has directed efforts in the United States aimed at influencing that government’s foreign policy.
Domestic security and counterintelligence are the responsibility of agencies controlled by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which has overall control of the country’s police and domestic counterintelligence. A number of paramilitary internal security organizations have been created for operations in Kashmir, the Indian-Tibetan border, and other regions where there has been unrest and insurgency. The record of these organizations is mixed; though they have strong professional leadership, they have been blamed for atrocities against civilians and suspected guerrillas. Internal security is the responsibility of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which performs a role similar to that of the American FBI.
Taiwan
As part of its democratization process at the end of the 20th century, the government of Taiwan took major steps to reform its intelligence services. The once-covert National Security Bureau, developed in China in 1955, had a long history of clandestine arrests and executions. In 1994 it became a formal legal institution, and the names of its senior officials appeared in the press for the first time. The agency, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Security Council, is responsible for all aspects of the country’s intelligence, including foreign and counterintelligence and intelligence related to mainland China.
South Korea
As in Taiwan, South Korea’s intelligence community, originally established in the 1960s with U.S. guidance, underwent major changes beginning in the 1990s. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency and its successor, the Agency for National Security Planning, were deeply involved in domestic politics and human rights abuses, especially during the period of martial law in the 1980s. In 1994 legislative oversight of the agency was strengthened, and in the following year it moved to a new headquarters complex under new leadership. The agency, renamed the National Intelligence Service in 1999, collects and coordinates national security intelligence. The Defense Security Command of the Ministry of National Defense and the National Intelligence Service are responsible for the collection of national security intelligence, particularly with regard to the threat from North Korea. The Defense Security Command also handles counterintelligence within the military.
North Korea
Far less is known about the intelligence community in North Korea, where intelligence and counterintelligence operations are apparently controlled by the Cabinet General Intelligence Bureau, a component of the Central Committee of the ruling Korean Workers’ (Communist) Party. The party also controls a semisecret organization, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chosen Soren), that collects information and money from expatriate citizens. The Chosen Soren, whose name derives from the formal name of Korea when it was controlled by Japan, has been pivotal in helping North Korea to acquire advanced technology. Because Japan does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, the Chosen Soren serves as North Korea’s de facto embassy and intelligence service in Japan. Much of the country’s counterintelligence is the responsibility of the State Safety and Security Agency, which functions as a secret police force and administers camps for political prisoners. The Social Safety Ministry, the country’s police force, is among North Korea’s most powerful agencies, maintaining prisons, conducting investigations of potential opponents of the regime, and protecting leading officials.
North Korea has a large military intelligence system. The Reconnaissance Bureau of the General Staff Department of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, which is believed to control between 60,000 and 100,000 troops, undertook violent covert action during the Cold War, including the assassination of senior South Korean officials and the sabotage of a South Korean airliner. Beginning in the early 1990s, North Korea made several efforts to land agents in South Korea from fishing trawlers and miniature submarines. It also bored tunnels under the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to infiltrate agents into the South.