Lieutenant General Hamid Gul

Lieutenant General Hamid Gul HI(M) SI(M) SBt (Urdu: حمید گل‎; 20 November 1936 – 15 August 2015) was a three-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army and defence analyst. Gul was notable for serving as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, between 1987 and 1989. During his tenure, Gul played an instrumental role in directing ISI support to Afghan resistance groups against Soviet forces in return for funds and weapons from the US, during the Soviet-Afghan War, in cooperation with the CIA. In addition, Gul was widely credited for expanding covert support to Kashmiri nationalist groups against neighbouring rival India in the disputed Kashmir region from 1989, diverting focus from the fallout of the Soviet war. Gul earned a reputation as a "Godfather" of Pakistani geostrategic policies. For his role against India, he has been considered by A. S. Dulat, former director of RAW, as "the most infamous ISI chief in Indian eyes."Following an escalation of the Kashmir militancy in India and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, he was even accused by the United States and India of having ties to Islamic terrorist groups, notably Al-Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. In 1988 Gul also played a role in the creation of the IJI, a conservative political alliance formed to oppose the PPP of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. On 15 August 2015, he died after suffering a brain haemorrhage.