Lingering but futile

Supreme Court should hear thousands of pending cases instead of issuing notices, such as the one summoning Haqqani.

There are matters, futile matters that linger on and on when it seems clear that no permanent solution can be reached. The most honourable Supreme Court is one such body that sometimes pursues futile issues with terrier-like intensity.

One issue that will not go away pertains to Husain Haqqani, widely acknowledged as this government’s former, most effective envoy to the United States. That was until November 2011 when the ‘Memogate’ scandal cum excitement aroused by one, Mansoor Ijaz, brought him back to the homeland to hand in his resignation.

Haqqani filed a detailed statement with the Parliamentary Committee on National Security. The Supreme Court sprang into action and on December 30, 2011, formed an inquiry commission before which Haqqani appeared on January 9, 2012. On January 30, he gave an assurance to the Supreme Court that he would appear before it “when needed” and was allowed to leave the country on January 31 2012.

Subsequent events and the media attitude (dubbed a traitor etc.), plus that of the commission and the Supreme Court, have made his return a dicey proposition due to the current environment in Pakistan. In fact, there is no one (not even the head of state) who can ensure him that there is no Mumtaz Qadri waiting for him in the wings — he has been subjected to multiple death threats. He has settled in the US, where he is a professor at Boston University and he has made it eminently clear that he is not returning when summoned unless, there is a radical change in the national mindset.

But the Supreme Court insists that he appear before it. In a letter, dated December 27, 2012, addressed to the interior secretary of the Government of Pakistan, Haqqani has detailed valid reasons why his return in not feasible. This letter brought forth two news reports in the US, in The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal published on January 29, 2013, after it had been read out in the Supreme Court on January 28 by Haqqani’s dauntless counsel, Asma Jahangir, who remarked that the Court is “encouraging investigations from the top-down rather than the bottom-up”.

One sentence from this letter reads: “Which law enforcement agency or security organisation can guarantee that their personnel will not be affected by this negative propaganda against me in an environment wherein people are being killed for their religious beliefs and even children administering polio vaccine to infants as volunteers are not safe from ideologically-driven maniacs.”

And who is to deny that this country harbours a great many murderous “ideologically-driven maniacs”, adherents to their own brand of warped ideology.

Even though Haqqani has not been charged or tried, a general impression has been created that though not convicted, he has been found guilty of a crime against the state, thus ensuring that he is a likely target for — as he puts it — “hyper-nationalist vigilantes” who are currently active all over Pakistan, including within the security services. With his adamant refusal to return and the impossibility of enforcing a return, what does the honourable Supreme Court hope to gain by insisting on his appearance? Those who wanted him out of his ambassadorial post achieved their aim in November 2011. The Court can try charging him with contempt or even order the registration of an FIR against him for treason based on the commission’s report. But in both cases, there is little chance that authorities outside Pakistan will carry out the Court’s order.

There is little to be gained by insisting that he return to Pakistan and no legal way of forcing him to do so. So, would the Supreme Court not be wiser to do as did Admiral Mike Mullen, to whom the famous memo was addressed, and file it away (Mullen’s reaction was that it is “probably not credible”), get on with hearing the thousands of pending cases before it and forget about sending out such notices.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2013.