Answerable to parliament

If good intentions counted for much the PPP would have resolved the most pressing governance issue facing the country: that of the civil-military imbalance. The PPP has always talked a good game in this regard but seldom had the power to follow through with it. Soon after taking power in 2008, the government decided to place the ISI under the authority of the interior ministry in a bid to rein in the spy agency. It only took a day of frantic behind-the-scene manoeuvring for that decision to be reversed. Then, after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the PPP government volunteered to send the ISI chief to New Delhi to cooperate with the Indian investigators. That, too, was presumably viewed by the establishment as usurpation of its authority by civilians and the offer was promptly withdrawn. There is a case to be made that neither of these initial PPP positions were particularly wise in the first place (in the sense that such things should have been better thought through) but that is besides the point. The fact remains that making mistakes like these is the prerogative of the civilians, without the military having an automatic veto.

Now it looks like the government may be preparing to have another go. Raza Rabbani, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS), has said that ways are being considered to track all the people who have gone ‘missing’ and figuring out how to stop the intelligence agencies from abducting more people. The devil, as always, will be in the details. For the PCNS to simply state that it will deal with the intelligence agencies will not be enough. Its recommendations will only have teeth if it first demonstrates its legitimate authority, which it derives from parliament itself. One way of doing that would be to ask the heads of all intelligence agencies to appear in parliament and explain why people are being abducted and held incommunicado. If this were to happen it would, perhaps, make possible a situation where all intelligence agencies — like in most civilised nations — are answerable to parliament and the government of the day for their acts of omission and commission.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2012.