
Memento mori
This makes you wonder what our now-former-ambassador Husain Haqqani was doing talking to him. Haqqani seems reasonably intelligent. At the very least, the memo that Ijaz claims is his, seems too poorly written to have come from his desk. If it did indeed originate there though, it makes sense. In the wake of the Abbottabad Incident, the army was capable of doing anything to save face. If you tell someone standing knee-deep in filth of their own making that they might drown, their instinctive reaction will be to grab something to hold on to. In the past, that’s been the reins of power. So for the civilian government to worry is understandable. To blame them would be like blaming a victim of domestic abuse for shielding her face the next time her punch-drunk husband raises his hand. So why would an intelligent man like Haqqani entrust the message to the recipient of the lifetime achievement award for Flip-flopping. Perhaps, Haqqani is just a poor judge of character. He is, after all, also a close friend of President Zardari’s. It happens to the best of us.
So what now? The ambassador has gracefully resigned, under pressure from the military leadership. The same leadership that didn’t resign when Bin Laden was found sharing blankets with them and was killed by a Seal taskforce that snuck into our country despite us giving them everything short of our teeth fillings so they can guarantee the sanctity of our borders. The next ambassador will, no doubt, be more compliant as will the civilian government come next election. America has also, perhaps, proven that it has the best interests of our military at heart by confirming the existence of the memo, thus guaranteeing a better working arrangement. Maybe there are more memos being held hostage?
All that’s left to ask is what Mansoor Ijaz thinks of all this. And then instantly putting stock in the opposite.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 24th, 2011.
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