A non-issue

We Pakistanis seem to have perfected the art and science of wasting time and energy on non-issues. Take for instance the ruckus we have succeeded in kicking up both in the political circles as well as in the media over what Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani (HH) has claimed in one of his recent articles published in the Washington Post.

Went through this piece a number of times but did not find anything which was already not in public knowledge. So, what is the ruckus about? Why do they want to form a Parliamentary Commission to find out what is already well known? Hussain’s public career is too public for anyone to take him for granted. He has done it all. A Jamiat boy at Karachi University. Took up journalism as career after graduation. Started political career as a supporter of Ziaul Haq. In 1990 he became Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif’s special assistant. From 1992 to 1993 he served as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. From 1993 to 1995, he was spokesman for PM Benazir Bhutto (BB). After the ouster of PM Nawaz in 1999, he lobbied for a job in the Musharraf government winning some consulting contracts through the good offices of then finance minister Shaukat Aziz and then was interviewed by General Aziz for the post of Information Secretary but failed to get the job. After having lost any hope of getting into the Musharraf regime he went to the US to join a think tank where he once again revived his contacts with BB and assisted her in lobbying power brokers in the US establishment. And when the PPP came to power after the 2008 elections he successfully lobbied for the post of US ambassadorship. Interestingly, it was not Zardari but President General (retd) Musharraf who appointed him to the coveted post in April 2008, of course on the recommendation of the former who had to wait for another five months to enter the presidency. Meanwhile he has authored two very interesting books both open indictments of Pakistani establishment for what he claims the ‘harmful’ consequences of its policies.

Three persons from the PPP side have responded to the claims made by HH in his Washington Post piece. Two of them, Sherry Rehman and Syed Khurshid Shah, do not appear to know what they are talking about. Their statements sounded more like whistling in the dark fearing perhaps another round of PPP bashing by the media. But Farhatullah Babar’s response was measured and perhaps the right one at the right time. Babar said all visas issued to US nationals under the PPP tenure were given in accordance with the laid-down procedure involving various state agencies and no irregularity whatsoever was committed.

Any Commission, judicial or parliamentary formed to probe the claims of HH is not going to reveal anything new or anything other than what has already been revealed in the Abbottabad Commission report. So, the best thing to do is to make this report public rather than form another Commission. The Justice Javed Iqbal Commission was formed to find out how was it possible for Osama Bin Laden to live in Pakistan for nine years, from 2002 to May 2011 without being detected by our intelligence agencies and secondly how was it possible for the CIA to trace him without our government’s knowledge and how the US Seals could sneak into Pakistan, kill him and return home without our air force intercepting them.

According to the part of the report leaked subsequently by Al Jazeera and which was not contradicted by anyone in Pakistan, the Commission found that the country’s “political, military intelligence and bureaucratic leadership cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the state of governance, policy planning and policy implementation that eventually rendered this national failure almost inevitable”, and calls on key national leaders to formally apologise to the country for “their dereliction of duty”. Al Jazeera reported that its domain (www.aljazeera.com) was blocked for users in Pakistan shortly after it was released. Page 197 of the report, which contains part of the testimony of Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then director of the ISI, was missing from all copies of the report that Al Jazeera obtained from multiple sources.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2017.

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