For God and Country: Inter-Services Intelligence & Secret Intelligence Service
Chair (ISI): Parker Guthrie (psguthrie@uchicago.edu)
Crisis Director (ISI): Tara Chandra (tchandra@uchicago.edu)
Chair (SIS): Harini Srinivasan (hsriniv@uchicago.edu)
Crisis Director (SIS): Sean Mirski (mirski@uchicago.edu)
Coordinated Crisis Director: Blake Rachowin (brachowin@uchicago.edu)
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), more commonly known as the Pakistani chief intelligence agency, has emerged from radical reforms to face a newly challenging and complex world. Although the organization was originally created with the objective of monitoring a perceived Indian threat, Pakistan faces a major threat from small terrorist organizations. ISI will be forced to play a delicate game of balancing national interests with continued regional threats, while also figuring out how to manage the international web of espionage. How will Pakistan's most powerful organization find an equilibrium between trying to work their way into the ranks of the world's great intelligence agencies and simultaneously defending their own regional and cultural interests? In novel, modern-day pairing between history's largest empire and one of its former colonies, ISI will have to decide whether to work with the Western powers to reshape Pakistan into a stable and powerful regional player, or instead watch as the tatters of their nation burn with the flames of terrorism and regional extremism. In a world united not by nationality, but instead by ethnicity, will ISI be able to hold Pakistan together? After all, when almost anything is possible, how far is ISI willing to go For God and Country?
On the other side stands the legendary Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom (SIS), colloquially known as MI-6. Her Majesty’s Secret Service, faced with the prospect of a lapse into antiquity after the Soviet Union’s collapse, found that instead the events of 9/11 and the London subway bombings jarred the British government into a massive expansion of SIS’s powers, once again bringing the organization into the ranks of the world’s greatest intelligence agencies. Despite its global outreach, however, its eye has always stayed on regions in which Britain holds a vested interest, including the troubled former colony of Pakistan and the rest of South Asia. Its nominal ally, Pakistani ISI, is often seen alternatively as a close friend and one of the last bastions of Al Qaeda, making anti-insurgency work in the region much more difficult and perilous. SIS must prevent the region from descending into a chaotic swirl of violence, demanding a delicate strategy that navigates global pressures through covert operations and diplomacy that runs the gamut from negotiation, subtle pressure, and bribery to assassination and regime-change. But as the eleventh hour approaches, what's ethically permissible and what's practical will undoubtedly diverge, making it almost impossible to determine what, if anything, is any longer For God And Country.