It is a SOP in our armed forces that no action is taken on any anonymous or unsigned letters, applications or memos.
LAHORE: It is a standard operating procedure (SOP) in our armed forces that no action is taken on any anonymous or unsigned letters, applications or memos. Such documents go straight into trash bins. Yet, the current army chief and the head of the ISI were spurred into action by an unsigned and dubious memo written in another country. In their affidavits to the Supreme Court (SC) they said that “the memo exists” and that it had sought to “demoralise the armed forces”.
Another SOP is that all correspondence is routed through the proper chain of command in the armed forces. The COAS has the Supreme Commander of the armed forces as his superior and so, his response to the Supreme Court should have been sent through his Supreme Commander. Similarly, the ISI chief’s submission to the apex court was supposed to have been channelled via the office of the prime minister, who is the ISI’s boss. It is also surprising that the ISI chief went to London to meet Mansoor Ijaz and did not report his findings to his boss, who is the prime minister.
One needs to ask the top brass of the military what prompted them to act in such a way.
Maj (retd) Mahmood Akhtar
Published in The Express Tribune, January 8th, 2012.
