The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan, founded on 1 January 1948. The ISI was so-called because it consisted of military officers seconded from the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy, and Pakistan Air Force, as well as civilian employees. The ISI became infamous for its public support for the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s, specifically backing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and Jalaluddin Haqqani's Haqqani Network insurgent groups. From 1994 to 2001, the ISI also openly supported the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War, with an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis training in, and fighting in, Afghanistan on behalf of the Taliban. The ISI also supported the Bosnian Mujahideen during the Bosnian War, the communist Naxalites during their sabotage campaign against India's infrastructure, Kashmiri and Pakistani militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi during their guerrilla war against India in Kashmir, airlifted hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and fighters out of Kunduz during the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, and financed the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan with the help of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
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