Was it really an intelligence failure?

It stretches belief when we are told that the ISI, such is its reputation, was ignorant as to the May Day op.

The helpless hapless prime minister of the Islamic Republic — he who was shot into the slot because it suited the purposes of his party boss — has always seem to be confused as to the positioning of his elbow (or ankle) with other parts of his anatomy. And no more so than when eight days after the May Day (according to US timing) operation, he stood before his fellow parliamentarians and, attempting to bristle with indignation, lamely defended the country’s mighty army and its super-sleuth, the ISI, by declaring that neither was guilty of either complicity or incompetence.

If it was neither of the two, then what on earth was it? What is the third, fourth or umpteenth alternative? What exact excuse was he attempting to convey? Three days later, on a black day for the Republic, the mighty COAS and his super-sleuth chief deigned to offer themselves up for questioning, behind firmly closed doors, by the people’s representatives.

Reportedly, from what was gleaned from parliamentarians who in no way can keep their mouths shut, the powerful, on May 13, admitted to an ‘intelligence failure’. It may, of course, have been nothing of the kind because we just do not know what ‘arrangements’ are made with the US, which keeps the country going by fairly regularly contributing to the begging bowl, and which for sure keeps the armed forces as well supplied as it sees fit in its own interest.

That day as the powerful were ‘confessing’, the local Taliban (horribly cruel people) blew up and killed 70 young Frontier Constabulary recruits in Charsadda and 17 odd civilians who happened to be in the area. Going by the media, this act of terrorism went completely unmarked by anyone. How hardened we all have become — not even the usual ‘condemnation’. So what if 87 families were mourning their dead? The government has far more important things to occupy it other than the grief or hardship of the people it represents.

Anyhow, it stretches belief when we are told that the ISI, so feared by all nationally and internationally, such is its reputation, was ignorant as to the May Day op or to what lurked behind those Abbottabad walls. But then, anything in the Republic is possible. After all, the ISI has been known to goof up — it did so with the 1965 war and again in East Pakistan where it failed to ‘fix’ the 1970 elections. And its interference in the 1977 elections ultimately led to the slaying of the founder of the PPP — that old party which bore no resemblance to the one now usurped by the posthumous son-in-law.

But what not only stretched belief but, hopefully, made quite a few indulge in a rare laugh, was the end of April ‘defence’ of the ISI by the interior minister, supported by his prime minister, when in response to the allegations of the leader of the opposition (can he please change his wig — this one has been around too long) that the agency had been involved in clobbering together this latest, useless coalition between P and Q, ludicrously, stated that the ISI was not and never had been involved in politics. This was a bit thick, considering that both gentlemen are creatures of the ISI’s dealmaking and the unlawful demeaning NRO cooked up between Pervez Musharraf’s chief negotiator, DG ISI Lt.-General Ashfaq Kayani as he then was, the western powers and Benazir Bhutto, and her chief negotiator, one Rehman Malik. Memories are short. It has for decades been ‘make and break’ with politics in Pakistan as far as the ISI is concerned, and we all know it.

But for the ISI, it is safe to say that at least 50 per cent of those now wielding power in government would probably not even have been in Pakistan, but in the greener pastures where they loll around when not put in national positions to fill their pockets. So who owes whom?

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2011.