JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: I am not really surprised by how many readers, even of your newspaper, seem to be convinced that the controversial memo was written by Husain Haqqani – Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US. This is not the first time that ordinary Pakistanis are being fooled by the powerful establishment and its partners into declaring their opponents as traitors. No one who dared to challenge the establishment has ever been spared in Pakistan. And for proof of that, one needs to look at Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, Benazir Bhutto, Wali Khan and even Altaf Hussain.
Consider: an unsigned memo which was written and handed over to a retired American general (James Jones), to be passed on to Admiral Mike Mullen and in it the Americans were given the apparent proposal to bring the Pakistani military under the effective control of the civilian government.
What has been ignored is that General Jones has said in an affidavit that he did not think that Mr Haqqani wrote the memo and that Mansoor Ijaz never mentioned to him that he (Mansoor) was doing this on behalf of someone in the Pakistani government. Also, Mr Ijaz has written several articles in the past severely critical of the Pakistani military and this fact has been overlooked as well. This all seems like a witch-hunt and the target is our former ambassador to the US.
Masood khan
Published in The Express Tribune, January 3rd, 2012.
