Shooting the messenger

Given the sheer number of disclosures, both embarrassing for Pakistan’s leaders and damaging to its policy, it is no surprise that the cabinet’s defence committee has denounced WikiLeaks’ publication of American diplomatic cables. But the strategy the defence committee has chosen to take is illogical. It is to be expected that the revelations contained in the cables would be denied but the committee went a step too far in describing WikiLeaks and its activities as a conspiracy against Pakistan. Although only a small percentage of the over a quarter of a million cables have been released thus far, few countries have been spared embarrassment. If the WikiLeaks document dump is a conspiracy, it is one that has no obvious beneficiary.

Right now, Pakistan needs to worry less about who is behind WikiLeaks and concentrate on dealing both with the public-relations fallout of the leaks and, more substantively, fixing the governance issues that have been brought to the fore by the cables. It has always been an open secret that the military acts as a puppet-master, pulling the strings of democratic governments to ensure its interests and ideology is advanced. Only now do we have confirmation, though, of just how tenuous the hold of democracy in the country really is. Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani saw no problem in speculating about removing the president and installing his preferred prime minister. Such blatant interference is intolerable and, because it took place behind a veil of secrecy, more insidious even than direct military takeovers. Instead of condemning WikiLeaks, the government should be thankful that it brought military meddling to the fore. Now that the citizenry has some idea of the extent of army control of the democratic process, there is a chance that there will be a push-back against the men in uniform.

President Asif Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif will surely be upset that the extent of their unpopularity throughout the diplomatic world is now available for public consumption. Both need to resist the urge to scapegoat WikiLeaks for shredding their reputations. Instead, they need a bout of soul-searching to try and figure out just how their names and the collective reputation of the country has plummeted so much. The fault, the government needs to realise, lies not in WikiLeaks but in ourselves.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2010.