During Kayani's tenure at the X Corps, he led the successful investigation of the two back-to-back suicide attacks against Musharraf in December 2003. It is believed that Kayani won the trust of Musharraf after the investigation, and a prelude to Kayani's promotion to the sensitive position of ISI chief.[4] He was awarded Hilal-e-Imtiaz, the civilian medal, for his achievement.
Inter-Services Intelligence
In October 2004, Ashfaq Kayani was made the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in place of General Ehsan ul Haq, who was promoted as the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Kayani led the ISI during a bleak period, with insurgencies in North-West Pakistan and Balochistan, Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear proliferation scandal, and waves of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan emanating from the northwestern tribal belt. In his final days at the ISI, he also led the talks with Benazir Bhutto for a possible power sharing deal with Musharraf.[4] In October 2007, after three years, he was replaced at the ISI by Lt Gen Nadeem Taj.
Kayani was also present at the March 2007 meeting that took place between Musharraf and Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, when the former military ruler informed the top judge that he was suspended. Accounts of that meeting narrated that Kayani was the only one among Musharraf’s aides who did not speak a word.
Chief of Army Staff
In October 2007, Kayani was promoted as a full general, and made the Vice Chief of Army Staff. At the time of promotion, Kayani superseded one officer, Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai who was on an extension for a year. He took over as the new army chief of Pakistan Army after Musharraf's retirement on November 28, 2007. The ceremony was held at the sports stadium near General Headquarters, Rawalpindi. Kayani is the first officer in the history of Pakistan who held the position of DG ISI and then went on to become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS). The last time a Director General of the ISI was to be made army chief in 1999, the Army staged a bloodless coup to reinstate the proposed outgoing Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf.
Withdrawal of military from civilian government
In January 2008 General Kayani passed a directive which ordered military officers not to maintain contacts with politicians.[7] It was further made public on 13 February 2008 that General Kayani ordered the withdrawal of military officers from all of Pakistan's government civil departments. It was an action that reversed the policies of his predecessor, President Musharraf. It was welcomed by President Musharraf’s critics, who have long demanded that the military distance itself from politics. The Pakistani media reported that the army officers would be withdrawn from 23 wide-ranging civil departments, including the National Highway Authority, National Accountability Bureau, Ministry of Education, and Water and Power Development Authority.
2008 general election
On 7 March 2008 General Kayani confirmed that Pakistan's armed forces will stay out of politics and support the new government. He told a gathering of military commanders in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that "the army fully stands behind the democratic process and is committed to playing its constitutional role." The comments made were after the results of the Pakistani general election, 2008 where the Pakistan Peoples Party won the election and began forming a coalition government who were opposed to President Pervez Musharraf.
Perceptions of Kayani as COAS
When he became COAS, several top-level U.S. officials visited General Kayani in succession to make up their own minds about him. Most, including then-CIA chief Michael Hayden, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and former CENTCOM-commander Admiral William Fallon came away confident that Kayani "knows what he’s doing."[10]
Kayani first move as army chief was to visit the front lines in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), something that most US Generals very rarely do with the war in Afghanistan. Spending the Muslim holiday of Eid not with his family, but rather with his soldiers prompted American military officials to praise him as a "soldier’s soldier." A U.S. report quoted retired Pakistani military officials as saying that in "an army deeply enmeshed in Pakistani politics, General Kayani had declined to ally himself with any political groups". As a junior officer, he briefly served as a military aide to Benazir Bhutto during her first term as prime minister in the late 1980s, but has stayed away from politicians since then.
Perceptions of USA
About the Afghan war, Kayani is reported to have said, "real aim of U.S. [war] strategy is to denuclearize Pakistan."[11]
In January, 2011, and after, there was criticism of General Kayani's handling of the Raymond Davis saga. Davis, a CIA contractor, was hastily tried and acquitted of murder charges in exchange for blood money paid to relatives of the victims, after which he was sent out of Pakistan within a matter of hours. Knowing the dynamics of the Pakistani state and the nature of this particular case, it was impossible for Davis to be released and deported from Pakistan without the knowledge and cooperation of Pakistan's Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).[citation needed]
The day after Davis' release, over 40 people were killed in the Datta Khel airstrike in North Waziristan in the FATA, in a drone strike by a US Predator aircraft. The target appeared to be a compound operated by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban leader. The dead included local tribal leaders.[12] The strike, intended to further the local war effort, instead added to the unpopularity drone strikes and added to the anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Kayani conducted a rare press conference in which he condemned the drone strike (even persuading the Pakistani government to summon American Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, and lodge a "protest in the strongest possible terms") and labeled it "intolerable". However, this has not satisfied most Pakistanis who feel that mere condemnations of American brutality and provocation aren't enough and that instead more tangible steps such as withdrawal of cooperation in the war on terror need to taken in order to salvage Pakistan's own interests.[citation needed]
Kayani's comments about the Datta Khel strike came to be put in the broader context of public and private communications by Pakistani officials with Washington, including an April, 2011, visit by the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to CIA Director Leon Panetta at CIA headquarters. "[S]ome officials in both countries [were] saying intelligence ties [we]re at their lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks spurred the alliance," according to one report. The report went on to say the overall communications included private demands that the CIA suspend drone strikes and also reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country. After the ISI-CIA meeting, CIA spokesman George Little said the intelligence relationship "remains on solid footing.
