I(SI) will survive

There is too much history to just walk away, besides, the CIA still has some of its drones lying back at our house.

It’s the moments before the break-up that are always the hardest. When the relationship has been edging towards that final heartbreak, those few days when you carefully consider everything you say and then only say the things that hurt. Everyone around you knows it is already over, that this was always an affair with an expiration date. They could see your universe shrinking from their vantage points, but they knew better than to say anything. Better to watch you burn through the cycle of attraction-affection-love-betrayal-hurt-anger-rejection; all from a distance safe enough to avoid thrown furniture and depressed poetry. The real tragedy lies in the attempts to hold it all together, ignoring all the built-up bitterness and resentment, using just force of will and stubborn rejection of reality. Loneliness and yearning may be in the offing, but if you can just keep it over the horizon for a few more days you might recreate some of the intense passion that made those early days so heady. But it won’t be so. Yet, you can’t let go.

But let go they must. The ISI and the CIA need to move apart. They need to understand that this dalliance was never meant to be permanent. The sheer incompatibility between them may well be what creates the attraction. Time and time again, the two organisations throw themselves together in a fit of passionate and frenzied intelligence sharing. ‘You show me your sensitive data and I’ll show you mine.’ There are public proclamations of cooperation, followed by gifts of captured terrorists. For a while they feel like this time will be different. This time we won’t make the same mistakes we did last time. But in the end they are creatures of habit. When the passion fades and the make-up can’t hide the double chin and the cologne starts to smell of regret, then the clock starts ticking loudly once again. All of a sudden, all the drone attacks start piling up and, in a fit of anger, a station chief’s identity is revealed. Next thing you know, that secret the CIA forgot to disclose during all those pillow talk sessions is running around Lahore shooting people and the ISI starts asking pointed questions about all those trips to Afghanistan.

In the next few weeks, we will see all kinds of pronouncements about how things are okay and the ISI and the CIA aren’t worried about their future together. Which is usually evidence of them worrying about their future together. The evidence is in how much of their anger towards each other is making it into the news media. When a couple can’t bring themselves to talk to each other, they try talking through intermediaries. Friends, associates and even innocent bystanders get trapped in a game of ‘tell him…’ and ‘oh yeah! Well tell her…’.

In the end, they might even make it last for a little while longer. There is too much history to just walk away so abruptly and besides, the CIA still has some of its drones lying back at our house. Also, we will hold on as long as we need to if it means keeping them away from that RAW hussy. So there will be conciliatory efforts: We will offer an official presidential visit, they will scale back on intelligence personnel posted in the country. There will probably be one conversation in the soaking rain with Nick Cave playing in the background. But it won’t be the same as it was before. This will be more like going through the motions. The smiles won’t be as adoring nor the cooperation as lustful. And, in the end, they will take a break from each other, wanting it to be permanent. And it will be. Until the next time they lock eyes across a candlelit Afghanistan and forget all that happened before.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2011.