Tribune’s Gamechangers 2011: Husain Haqqani

Memogate and the civil-military divide.


Express January 13, 2012

The existence of a controversial note, an alleged exchange of messages with a man named Mansoor Ijaz and an op-ed by Ijaz in The Financial Times snowballed into the country’s gravest political crisis this year.

As a result, Husain Haqqani – then Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States – resigned from his high profile position while a parliamentary committee and the Supreme Court both moved on the issue.

Since he was named ambassador, Haqqani was the scapegoat for any problem with the US – be it the cases of Aafia Siddiqui or Raymond Davis or the Kerry-Lugar/Berman bill. But even his strongest detractors admired the former ambassador’s tenacity and attitude.

Haqqani’s undoing, at the end, was by the military he had critiqued in his book Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, as Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Inter-Services Intelligence head Ahmad Shuja Pasha took the lead in “investigating” the memo and sided with Ijaz’s claims.

Quote: “I resigned because no one can represent his country as ambassador in the middle of a media trial.”

COMMENTS (1)

Uza Syed | 12 years ago | Reply Political witch hunting by those who have no role and pretend no role in politics of Pakistan, neither domestic nor our foreign relations. Husain Haqqani did a good job in the service of Pakistan, his decision to resign from his post is an act of grace and our role in this whole affair is less than honourable.Treating a devoted son of Pakistan in the shabby manner that we allowed is an act of betrayal and treachery. Supporting a liar, Manoor Ijaz, and a self declared hater of Pakistan, Manoor Ijaz, is letting Pakistan down and I think what we see in the behaviour and posturing of couple of self-possessed individuals in robes * fatigues, from khaki to black, is an overwhelming case that these generals and justices are up to no good, and they deliberately set out to insult the entire polity of Pakistan, all inclusive the politicians in government or those in the running for government.
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