Pakistan’s Ambassador Takes The Fall

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s mighty military and intelligence establishment has eventually forced Hussain Haqqani, the country’s influential ambassador to the United States and a close aide of President Asif Zardari, to quit and face an inquiry on charges of seeking the help of the Americans. Haqqani did this through a memo to fend off a possible military coup against the Pakistan People’s Party government in Islamabad after the US Navy SEAL raid in May that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani announced his resignation following a high-level meeting held at the prime minister’s residence on November 22 of the civil-military top brass that included Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf.

Raza Gillani, chief of army staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and Haqqani.

“I have requested Prime Minister Gillani to accept my resignation,” Haqqani said in a Twitter post shortly after the meeting. However, his implicit claim of submitting a resignation voluntarily was promptly contradicted by the prime minister’s office in a statement saying “Hussain Haqqani was asked to submit his resignation in order to pave the way for a proper investigation at an appropriate level [into the allegations leveled against him].”

The statement, however, did not elaborate which forum would probe this matter. “All concerned would be afforded sufficient and fair opportunity to present their views,” the statement said. No timeframe was given regarding the investigations.

Despite saying he had submitted his resignation, Haqqani remained adamant that he had nothing to do with the controversial memo that cost him his ambassadorship.

“I have resigned to bring closure to this meaningless controversy threatening our fledgling democracy. I still maintain that I did not conceive, write or distribute the memo,” Haqqani said, adding that the resignation was “not about the memo … this is about bigger things”.

Haqqani’s close associates claim that he put up a strong fight during the Tuesday meeting when quizzed jointly by the civilian and military leadership. But he eventually agreed to quit to pave the way for holding a fair investigation amid rumors that he actually lost his job because of an ongoing power struggle between the military and civilian leadership for control over who manages relations with the United States.

Therefore, many in Pakistan believe the crisis has not ended with the resignation; rather, it is the beginning of the story.

Tensions between the civilian and military leadership have been simmering following the October 10 publication of an article by a Pakistani-American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, in an op-ed piece for the Financial Times of London, claiming that he had helped deliver the controversial memo from Haqqani to Admiral Mike Mullen, then the US military chief, seeking American help to ward off a possible military coup.

In his article, Ijaz, who has a knack for finding himself at the center of controversies, claimed that in return for US help, Zardari had offered to replace the army and ISI chiefs.

Written on May 10, the alleged memo urges Mullen to convey a “strong, urgent and direct” message Kiani and Pasha to “end their brinkmanship aimed at bringing down the civilian apparatus”.

Former US national security advisor James Jones has said that he delivered the memo to Mullen after receiving it from Ijaz.

The memo told Mullen that after the raid in Abbottabad that killed Bin Laden, there was a dangerous slide in Islamabad in which no controls appeared to be in place.

The memo warned that the military, unhappy with the covert US raid, could topple the civilian government and if that happened, Pakistan could become a sanctuary for Bin Laden’s legacy and potentially the platform for a far more rapid spread of al-Qaeda’s brand of fanaticism and terror. The memo told the Americans that an opportunity existed for civilians to gain the upper hand over the army and intelligence directorates due to their complicity in the Bin Laden matter.

According to Ijaz, the memo was from Zardari and dictated to him (Ijaz) by Haqqani almost a week after the Abbottabad raid.

The Pakistan government had flatly denied knowledge of the memo. Mullen, too, initially denied having dealt with Ijaz, but later acknowledged having seen the memo although he said he disregarded it as not being credible.

Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby, who had previously worked under Mullen, also issued a statement saying Mullen knew the emissary who had brought the memo to him but he did not believe it was from Zardari.

“Admiral Mike Mullen had no recollection of the memo and no relationship with Mansoor Ijaz. After the original article appeared, he felt it incumbent upon himself to check his memory.

He reached out to others who he believed might have had knowledge of such a memo and one of them was able to produce a copy of it. But the letter was not signed and he did not find the contents credible at all because nothing in it indicated that it was from President Asif Zardari. Also, neither the contents of the memo nor the proof of its existence altered or affected in any way the manner in which Mr Mullen conducted himself in his relationship with General Kayani [Kiani] and the Pakistan government.

Whatever the truth, the controversy - dubbed “Memogate” - has exacerbated tensions between the frail civilian government and the ever-powerful generals.

The alleged memo offers a six-point plan on how Pakistan’s national security leadership could be altered in favor of American interests, with the formation of a new security team top on the list.

As per the memo, the new team, formed with US help, would hold an independent and accountable inquiry into the Bin Laden raid and would implement a policy of either handing over to the US or killing al-Qaeda leftovers and militants from the various groups operating from Pakistani soil. The team would also give the American military the “green light” to conduct operations to capture or kill them on Pakistani soil.

Furthermore, the new security team would develop an acceptable framework of discipline for Pakistan’s nuclear program. The team would also eliminate Section “S” of the ISI that is charged with maintaining relations with the Taliban and the Taliban-linked Haqqani network that operates in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s border areas

The memo offers to reshape Pakistan’s national security leadership, cleaning those elements within the military and intelligence agencies that have supported religious radicals and the Taliban. The memo further reminds the US administration:

… that its political/military backing would result in a revamp of the civilian government that, while weak at the top echelon in terms of strategic direction and implementation (even though mandated by domestic political forces), in a wholesale manner replaces the national security adviser and other national security officials with trusted advisers that include ex-military and civilian leaders favorably viewed by Washington, each of whom have long and historical ties to the US military, political and intelligence communities.

Haqqani, an ex-journalist who is clearly not the most liked person in the military establishment for having criticized it in his writings before being appointed ambassador, rejected Ijaz’s claims as “a bundle of lies”, saying, “I have been consistently vilified as being against the Pakistani military even though I have only opposed its intervention in political affairs.” He added that in Pakistan, a single person’s false claims could create a crisis and that the enemies of democracy were behind the scandal as they wanted to use it as an excuse to undo democracy.

Haqqani’s primary defense was that the memo was unsigned and unverified. He said Ijaz had given several interviews to the media that clearly showed that he only wanted to create misunderstanding between the civilian and military establishments, and strain Pakistan-US ties further.

Reminding that Ijaz was the same person who had branded the ISI a terrorist organization, Haqqani said: “Think about the objectives of Mansoor [Ijaz] before doubting me and my credibility. It is beyond comprehension why a person first delivered a memo and later made it public, and targeted a particular person.”

Haqqani said all technical proof was fabricated and he was ready for a probe into the reality through a Supreme Court judge:

I was defending the Pakistan army on American television channels after the May 2 Abbottabad raid, unlike Mansoor who had declared the ISI a terrorist organization. Remember, he is a US citizen; how could he defend the interests of Pakistan? I leave it to the president and the premier to decide how the story of a suspected person could be authentic.

Haqqani’s clarifications apart, Ijaz has already retracted his previous claim that there was some understanding between Zardari and Haqqani regarding the memo, saying that the president had no knowledge of any such document.

Speaking in a live talk show on a Pakistani television channel, Express News, on November 20, Ijaz said the president might have spoken to Haqqani after the May 2 raid about the pressure on him, hence asking the latter to help him out in this regard while leaving the mechanics to the ambassador on how to go about it.

Ijaz had earlier claimed in his Financial Times article that he had, on Zardari’s instructions and with the help of Haqqani, drafted and delivered the memo to Mullen.

Ijaz’s backtracking on the alleged involvement of Zardari has created a sense of respite for the government, besides creating doubts about the credibility of the accuser.

A former official of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Bruce Riedel, has dismissed the memo as a clumsy fake that threatens to further destabilize an already deeply divided Pakistan.

“The charge that Zardari wanted US help in controlling the military has been seized upon by enemies of the civilian government. Ambassador Haqqani’s accuser, Mansoor Ijaz, has a long track record of fabricating false information and self-promotion,” Riedel told The Washington Examiner in an interview reported on November 21. “The Pakistan army is using this invented scandal to oust a long-time critic and weaken the civilian government,” said Riedel, who once chaired US President Barack Obama’s Af-Pak strategy and is now affiliated with the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank.

From the outset the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment suspected Haqqani and wanted the government to make him face an inquiry for working against the national interest. In view of the sensitive nature of the charges, it was decided at the highest level of the military leadership that the initial investigation must be carried out by the top spymaster himself.

Thus, ISI chief Pasha flew to London to meet with Ijaz on October 22, less than two weeks after Ijaz disclosed the existence of the memo in the Financial Times column.

According to Ijaz, the ISI chief conclusively authenticated the delivery of the memo to Mullen before raising the issue with the president and the prime minister.

The Ijaz-Pasha meeting took place at the Park Lane InterContinental hotel in London. Ijaz over a fairly large quantity of records, both copies and originals. These were subsequently put through a verification process following which the ISI chief briefed Kiani, who ultimately took up the matter with Zardari on November 15 in a one-on-one meeting at the presidency.

Kiani impressed on the president the inevitable necessity of Haqqani’s presence in the country to explain his alleged role in the controversy - which is what happened.

In fact, the military establishment had been gunning for Haqqani for a long time, especially after he wrote a controversial book in 2005, titled Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, in which he exposed the unholy historical nexus between the military and militants and how the military tried to win US support when needed, while at the same time strengthening ties with militants. He wrote:

Washington should no longer condone the Pakistani military’s support for Islamic militants, its use of its intelligence apparatus for controlling domestic politics, and its refusal to cede power to a constitutional democratic government … In an effort to become an ideological state guided by a praetorian military, Pakistan has found itself accentuating its dysfunction, especially during the past two decades.

The alliance between mosque and military in Pakistan maintains, and sometimes exaggerates, these psycho-political fears and helps both the Islamists and the generals in their exercise of political power. Support for the Pakistani military by the United States makes it difficult for Pakistan’s weak, secular, civil society to assert itself and wean Pakistan from the rhetoric of Islamist ideology toward issues of real concern of Pakistan’s citizens.

Haqqani further wrote in his book:

Pakistan has become a major center of radical Islamist ideas and groups, largely because of its policies of support for Islamist militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed territory of Jammu & Kashmir as well as the Taliban in its pursuit of a client regime in Afghanistan.

Therefore, after he was appointed ambassador to Washington in April 2008 when Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Power came into power, he became an instant target of the khaki establishment. Being a political appointee and someone thought to be close to Zardari, he struggled for his survival for much of his three-year tenure.

Shortly after Haqqani replaced Major General (retired) Mahmood Ahmed Durrani as ambassador to the US he was accused of acting against the national interest by manipulating the insertion of pro-democracy clauses in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation that committed US$7.5 billion to Pakistan over five years as a “strategic ally”.

This annoyed the generals, who perceived some of the legislation’s provisions as being disrespectful to the military and it became an open secret that they wanted him sacked.

“Memogate” highlights that the military establishment has directly or indirectly managed Pakistan’s affairs for more than half the years since independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

In the first decade after the creation of Pakistan, the army became a politicized force - the power behind the throne in politics and thus it soon seized political control by imposing military rule for protracted periods; the coups of president General Ayub Khan and president General Yahya Khan were followed by the pro-jihad regime of president General Zia ul-Haq that lasted for 12 years and the anti-jihad regime of president General Pervez Musharraf that ruled Pakistan for almost 10 years until he stepped down in August 2008.

In this vein, Kiani, despite his repeated pledges not to interfere either in politics or in governmental affairs, continues to assert his authority and meddle even though he was granted an unprecedented second three-year term as army chief in July this year by the Zardari government - something no elected government had done before.

Kiani’s right-hand man, ISI chief Pasha, has received two one-year extensions from the government since the expiry of his actual tenure on March 18, 2010.

And it was Zardari who came forward to defend Kiani and Pasha when former prime minister Nawaz Sharif sought stern action against them in the wake of the Abbottabad raid that was widely described as a grave intelligence and military failure.

At a press conference in Islamabad on June 23, Ali Khan Nisar, the opposition leader (from the Pakistan Muslim League) in the National Assembly, went as far as to say: “I congratulate the armed forces of Pakistan on having their new spokesman in the form of President Zardari.”

Since the May 2 American military raid in Abbottabad, Kiani has been trying to repair the wounded pride of his men. The incident strained Pakistan-US ties in a big way besides raising some serious questions about the army chief’s own standing. It also set off a nationalist backlash - the usually untouchable army was sharply criticized in the media, with people holding demonstrations and demanding the resignation of the top brass for their failure.

The broader lesson to be learned from “Memogate” is that the civil-military imbalance in Pakistan remains intensely tilted, with an elected civilian government on one side and hardline military men on the other who continue to believe that they alone know what is good and what is bad for Pakistan.

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK24Df01.html