The smell test — II

The Deep State was/is an aggrieved party in the Murky Memo; so how come DG ISI took it up to be Chief Investigator?

Right then, the DG ISI, hot-footed it to London to meet the very person who described the ISI thus (in his piece titled “Time to take on Pakistan’s jihadist spies”. for the Financial Times on Oct 10 this year): “The time has come for the state department to declare the S-Wing a sponsor of terrorism under the designation of “foreign governmental organisations... it no longer matters whether ISI is wilfully blind, complicit or incompetent in the attacks its S-Wing is carrying out... S-Wing must be stopped... ISI embodies the scourge of radicalism that has become a cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

“The time has come for America to take the lead in shutting down the political and financial support that sustains an organ of the Pakistani state that undermines global antiterrorism efforts at every turn. Measures such as stopping aid to Pakistan, as a bill now moving through Congress aims to do, are not the solution. More precise policies are needed to remove the cancer that the ISI and its rogue wings have become on the Pakistani state.

“Pakistanis are not America’s enemies. Neither is their incompetent and toothless civilian government — the one Admiral Mullen was asked to help that May morning. The enemy is a state organ that breeds hatred among Pakistan’s Islamist masses and then uses their thirst for jihad against Pakistan’s neighbours and allies to sate its hunger for power. Taking steps to reduce its influence over Pakistan’s state affairs is a critical measure of the world’s willingness to stop the terror masters at their very roots.”

And, after a several-hours meeting described in great detail by a calculated leak telling us how Pasha was by turn ‘surprised’ and ‘shocked’, at what Mansoor Ijaz was telling him about the Murky Memo, he flew straight back to Pakistan to report to the COAS who, in turn, hot-footed it to the Presidency to vent at President Asif Zardari, not once but twice in two days.

The rest of the events we know well by now. Husain Haqqani was pulled before a ‘board of inquiry’ comprising: COAS; DG ISI; the president; and PM, and then unceremoniously pushed aside, the PM’s office making sure that it was known that he had been asked to resign rather than merely say his resignation had been accepted, thereby keeping up an old Pakistan government tradition of utter inelegance and gracelessness. (The last time I saw this was in 1996, when Leghari stabbed the much-missed, much-lamented Benazir Bhutto in the back and dismissed her government. Wajid Shamsul Hassan, then High Commissioner in London, was in Pakistan at the time and was thrown in jail despite the sterling work he had done as Pakistan’s envoy in the UK).

But back to the present: In Haqqani’s place has been appointed Sherry Rehman, till lately the president of the Islamabad-based think tank, Jinnah Institute, the latest production of which was the quite disgraceful Report on the Endgame in Afghanistan in partnership with the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) in Washington DC. A report that is a shameless re-hash of the Deep State’s deep yearnings in Afghanistan.

Wait, though. The Deep State was/is an aggrieved party in the matter of the Murky Memo; so how come one of the leaders of the Deep State, let us not be afraid to name him: the DG ISI, took it upon himself to be the Chief Investigator? How, possibly, can someone with a vested interest in a case, investigate the case him or herself? Surely we have many eminent people in Pakistan with deep knowledge of criminal investigation, both serving police officers, and retired. Say, a two-man board comprised of Mr Afzal Shigri, a man with an impeccable service record and Shoaib Suddle, PhD (criminology), as straightforward a man as ever there was?

More fundamentally, did the ISI chief ask the government’s permission to travel abroad to investigate charges against a high official of self-same government, laid at his door by a man who published the most vile and explosive allegations about the ISI itself? Could one ask too, that if Mansoor Ijaz’s story about the Murky Memo was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the Deep State and its high officials as the truth and nothing but the truth, that his take on the ISI being the “scourge of radicalism” and a “cancer” and its S-Wing a “sponsor of terrorism” should also be taken as the truth and nothing but the truth?

Or is it the case that The Boys are irreproachable; that theirs is the final wisdom; that they will believe what they want to believe and disbelieve what they want to disbelieve, the truth be damned; that they are the final arbiters of everything that goes on in the Land of the Pure, no questions asked; that they are the inheritors of the country and all of us who sail in it?

Must surely be the case, for, just look back at Abottabadgate, when three or four or ten — who knows? — American aircraft entered Pakistan, some of them flying to Abbottabad, the SEALs aboard the helicopters killing Osama bin Laden and then flying out again taking his body with them. Not one head rolled; not one honourable man resigned. Instead our perpetually petulant Rommels and Guderians growled at the quaking ‘bloody civilians’ and demanded and GOT support from a joint session of parliament. As an aside the most ludicrous in all of this matter was the cover-up: We were not complicit, sirs, we were inept; we were incompetent. And this from the ISI which considers itself second to none. And, yet, no head rolled, no honourable man resigned?

Many are the times when one finds the Deep State in trouble and one’s heart goes out to the people who command it. Such as at the time of Raymond Davis’ release. But the very moment you express the wish to help out, their arrogance takes over: when they stupidly get their hand maidens in the press to bad-mouth the elected government for little reason.

There is much stink. Not merely a bad smell.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2011.