It is clear they want his scalp. The military wasn’t ever quite comfortable with Hussain Haqqani. And this whole memo business appears to be what is finally going to be the ambassador’s undoing.
Mr. Haqqani, for what it is worth, is denying the whole thing. His defence is plausible enough. He doesn’t employ the dazzling sophistry he is famous for but common sense. The argument: if he is indeed as well-entrenched in the US administration as his detractors claim (the American ambassador to America, as the joke goes) why would he, instead of communicating with whoever he wants to, use a person like Mansoor Ijaz as a conduit? Mr Ijaz is a bit of a shady character. There is anecdotal evidence of late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto having this view about him. Maleeha Lodhi, another ambassador, went to the extent of calling him an Israeli agent.
The media, however, will throw any pinch of salt by the wayside when it wants to. For better or worse, however, public discourse is what it is. If it has come to include an issue, the government must step up to the plate and resolve it. There needs to be an inquiry on who indeed is the Pakistani official – if indeed it is an official – that wrote to Admiral Mike Mullen.
Having said all of that, perhaps a step back is in order to have a look at the larger picture. In the aftermath of the Abbottabad incident, tensions were indeed high. Yes, General Kayani has maintained an admirable public stand on democracy. But the Kargil war, a mini-war in its own right as it might have been, pales in comparison to the strike against the man most wanted in the world. If that ’99 snafu was followed by a military coup, are similar fears entirely unfounded in our hapless republic, regardless of who is at the top in the military?
Treason – to use a word that is being thrown around these days – would traditionally be used for a military conspiring with foreign forces to the detriment of an elected government. Things are – allegedly – the other way around here. Could the same word be used here or should the lexicographers corps dig another one up?