PART III – From Military Intelligence to the ISI: Duty, Power and a Controversy That Changed Asim Munir’s Career
There are moments in the career of a soldier when professional responsibility intersects with political power. For an intelligence chief, that intersection can be particularly sensitive. Information reaching the highest levels of government may concern national security, foreign threats, political instability, corruption allegations or individuals close to the centres of power.
For Lieutenant General Syed Asim Munir, one of those moments came during the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Years before he would become Chief of Army Staff and subsequently Field Marshal, Munir occupied two of the most sensitive intelligence positions in Pakistan. His experience was unusual: he headed both Military Intelligence and the Inter-Services Intelligence.
The second appointment, however, would be remarkably brief.
And the circumstances surrounding its end would remain the subject of political controversy years later.
At the helm of Military Intelligence
By the time Major General Asim Munir was appointed Director General Military Intelligence in 2017, his career had already given him extensive command, staff and operational experience.
Military Intelligence operates within the Army and performs responsibilities crucial to military security, counter-intelligence and assessment of threats affecting the armed forces.
For an officer accustomed to operational command, intelligence leadership required a different approach.
A conventional commander often deals with a visible adversary. Intelligence officers must frequently identify threats before they become visible.
Information must be collected, assessed and separated from misinformation. Individual pieces of intelligence may appear insignificant until connected with other information. A wrong assessment can have consequences far beyond the intelligence organisation itself.
Munir’s appointment therefore placed him close to the centre of Pakistan’s national security structure.
His performance and career progression soon led to an even more important assignment.
In September 2018, Major General Asim Munir was among six officers promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General.
Within weeks, another announcement followed.
On October 10, 2018, he was appointed Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence.
The officer who had headed Military Intelligence was now responsible for Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency.
Taking charge of the ISI
The importance of the ISI extends far beyond Pakistan’s borders.
Its responsibilities involve external intelligence, counter-intelligence, counterterrorism and national security. Its assessments can influence Pakistan’s understanding of developments involving Afghanistan, India, Iran, China, the United States and the wider region.
The DG ISI therefore occupies one of Pakistan’s most sensitive national-security appointments.
Munir assumed the position only weeks after Imran Khan’s PTI government had taken office.
Pakistan at the time faced a complicated security environment. Relations with India remained tense. Afghanistan was approaching another decisive period. Militancy continued to demand attention, while Pakistan’s relationships with Washington, Beijing, Riyadh and Tehran required careful management.
An intelligence chief operating in such an environment must provide assessments to the state leadership regardless of whether those assessments are politically convenient.
It is at this point that the documented chronology and the later political accounts must be carefully separated.
Eight months that became a political controversy
Munir’s tenure as DG ISI lasted only around eight months.
In June 2019, the military announced a significant reshuffle. Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed was appointed the new Director General ISI, while Lieutenant General Asim Munir was posted as Commander Gujranwala Corps.
The transfer was notable because Munir had served an unusually short period as head of the intelligence agency.
At the time, however, the official announcement did not state that his transfer resulted from a disagreement with Prime Minister Imran Khan or from any investigation involving the prime minister’s family.
That distinction is essential.
What subsequently emerged was a series of claims made years later about events that allegedly preceded the transfer.
According to one account that became prominent after Imran Khan’s government had left office, Munir, while serving as DG ISI, had brought information to the then prime minister concerning alleged corruption involving individuals close to his family, including allegations associated with his wife, Bushra Bibi.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif later publicly claimed that Munir had informed Imran Khan about alleged corruption involving his wife on the basis of information available to him and that the episode led to Munir’s transfer.
Other political figures subsequently made similar claims.
If established conclusively, such an episode would present Munir’s removal as the consequence of performing an uncomfortable professional duty.
But journalism demands that the other side of this contested history be recorded equally clearly.
Imran Khan’s categorical denial
Imran Khan has explicitly rejected this version of events.
In May 2023, responding to reports that he had removed Munir because the intelligence chief had sought to raise corruption concerns involving Bushra Bibi, the former prime minister described the account as “completely false.”
Khan denied that Munir had shown him evidence of corruption involving his wife and denied that he had removed him for that reason.
This denial is important because the precise motivation behind the 2019 transfer has never been established publicly through an official contemporaneous document explaining such a dispute.
There are therefore two levels to the historical record.
The first consists of established facts:
Asim Munir became DG ISI in October 2018.
He served for approximately eight months.
In June 2019, Faiz Hameed replaced him.
Munir was subsequently appointed Commander Gujranwala Corps.
The second consists of competing explanations that emerged later.
One side maintains that Munir’s professional reporting concerning alleged wrongdoing around the prime minister’s family contributed to his removal.
Imran Khan rejects that account.
A responsible examination of Munir’s career must preserve this distinction.
The officer leaves the ISI – but his career continues
Whatever the precise reasons behind the change, the episode did not end Munir’s military career.
This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the story.
He left the ISI but was entrusted with the command of XXX Corps at Gujranwala, an important operational formation of the Pakistan Army.
Corps command represents one of the highest levels of operational responsibility available to a lieutenant general.
The appointment therefore demonstrated that his removal from the ISI was not the end of his advancement within the Army.
Munir continued his professional career rather than entering into public controversy over the circumstances of his transfer.
There were no political rallies.
There was no public campaign.
There was no attempt by the serving officer to turn his departure from the intelligence agency into a confrontation with the elected government.
He returned to military command.
That silence would later become significant.
Because only a few years afterwards, Pakistan would witness another confrontation over the leadership of the ISI.
The Faiz Hameed factor
Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, who replaced Munir in June 2019, would himself become one of the most consequential intelligence chiefs of the PTI era.
His tenure eventually extended into the politically sensitive period surrounding Afghanistan’s transformation following the withdrawal of US-led forces.
But by 2021, another controversy emerged.
The Army announced in October that Faiz Hameed would leave the ISI to command Peshawar Corps and that Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum would replace him as DG ISI.
The notification from the Prime Minister’s Office, however, was delayed for weeks, generating intense public speculation about differences between the PTI government and the military leadership over the appointment.
This episode gave the earlier 2019 change additional political significance.
By then, questions about intelligence appointments, institutional authority and political preferences were no longer confined to closed rooms. They had become part of Pakistan’s public political debate.
For Asim Munir, however, the next chapter was already developing elsewhere.
From Gujranwala Corps to GHQ
After commanding Gujranwala Corps, Munir continued rising through the Army’s senior command structure.
In October 2021, he was appointed Quartermaster General at General Headquarters.
The position placed him at GHQ and gave him responsibility in an important branch concerned with the Army’s logistical and administrative requirements.
By this stage, his professional résumé had become unusually broad.
He had commanded troops.
He had served in the Northern Areas.
He had headed Military Intelligence.
He had headed the ISI.
He had commanded a corps.
And he was now serving at GHQ.
The officer whose ISI tenure had ended abruptly in 2019 had not disappeared from Pakistan’s military hierarchy.
Instead, he was moving closer to its summit.
When an old controversy returned
By 2022, Pakistan’s political landscape had changed dramatically.
Imran Khan was no longer prime minister following the parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April.
The country was deeply polarised.
General Qamar Javed Bajwa was approaching retirement as Chief of Army Staff.
And Pakistan faced one of its most consequential military appointments in years.
Among the senior lieutenant generals eligible for consideration was Syed Asim Munir.
Suddenly, the officer whose tenure at the ISI had ended during Imran Khan’s government was being discussed as a possible successor to General Bajwa.
The past had returned.
But this time the stakes were considerably higher.
The appointment would not be for the leadership of an intelligence organisation.
It would be for command of the Pakistan Army itself.
Political statements, public rallies, competing narratives and extraordinary speculation began surrounding the succession process. Munir’s seniority became a subject of national discussion, as did the timing of his retirement and the constitutional process for selecting the next Army Chief.
The contest surrounding Pakistan’s next military commander was rapidly becoming intertwined with the country’s political confrontation.
A soldier who had largely remained outside public political debate was suddenly at the centre of it.
In 2019, Asim Munir had left the ISI after only eight months.
Three years later, his name would return to the centre of national attention-not as an intelligence chief, but as one of the leading candidates to become Chief of Army Staff.
Those who believed his military journey had been weakened by the events of 2019 were about to witness something very different.
His greatest professional appointment was still ahead.
And before he could reach it, Pakistan would pass through weeks of political manoeuvring, uncertainty and intense controversy over who should command its Army.
That would become another defining chapter in the extraordinary journey of Syed Asim Munir.
