More to Memogate
Unfortunately, life isn’t a law school classroom. Why do I lament that fact? Law school classrooms are often home to the raising and discussion of some of the most outrageous and controversial questions. And since lawyers are trained skeptics, we often believe in the ‘there isn’t always a right answer’ theory. In classrooms in general and in law school classrooms in particular when people argue, they argue over stances, principles and incentive structures. Real world is much more obscene I suppose.
Speaking of incentives though the incentive structure of Memogate simply does not make sense to me. It would make a fascinating case-study in an ‘Economic Analysis of Law’ classroom where people debate what a rational actor would do. Ambassador Haqqani, like all men who are even remotely interesting, is a controversial figure. The boys in khaki are not his greatest admirers. Most people have been extremely critical of him. Being a Pakistani in this day and age can be exhausting and being Pakistan’s ambassador in DC, particularly more so. Anyone in Ambassador Haqqani’s position was fighting stereotypes both at home and abroad. Those of a khaki disposition at home must have seen him as the President’s messenger who was up to no good and many in DC must have seen him as the messenger from a country that, to put it mildly, is not particularly well liked in North America right now.
The fact that a man like Mr Mansoor Ijaz chose to stay silent for so long and then acted in ways that completely contradict his alleged intentions makes the plot even more beguiling. The fact that the issue featured in Imran Khan’s speech to his followers at Minar-e-Pakistan makes it more suspicious than beguiling since Khan is suspected by many to be the establishment’s blue-eyed-boy right now. Once Khan threw it out there, the media jumped on the Mansoor Ijaz bandwagon and one after another Musharraf era apologist has since then taken pot-shots at that favorite target of Pakistanis: a civilian named Asif Zardari. If you are a Mush/military loving, chest thumping, self-righteous, let’s-get-it-over-with-since-I-don’t-have time for democracy soul, then Asif Zardari is your dream target. But let’s face it, the man knows his politics and he deserves respect for that. Every time I have mentioned the word ‘respect’ anywhere close to Mr Zardari’s name I have faced personal attacks, but so be it.
Reading columns in the aftermath of Memogate has been both amusing and depressing. Of course, civil-military imbalance is the prime issue that faces Pakistan. Therefore, if any civilian government is weary of the military then the responsibility for that should rest with the military and not the civilian government. Of course, if the civilian government says things that you disagree with you must step forward and make it known in the public sphere. But before our well known thinkers advise on future courses of action for the government one must question any unquestioned assumptions. Why assume that just because our establishment alleges it that our civilian Ambassador was the culprit? Maybe our cynicism should have a different target.
In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s killing, the Army was staring down the barrel. Therefore, unless our Ambassador feared a completely irrational and panicky action from the military there was no incentive for a coup. If Mr Mullen reckoned that the memo was not credible then why would a man of Haqqani’s stature not communicate to Mullen somehow that the memo needed to be taken seriously? Surely, if the memo was written at the behest of Haqqani or Zardari then things were dire and yet, Mansoor Ijaz wants us to believe that they decided to sit back once the memo was written?
For more than 6 decades we have been fed a narrative that civilians are corrupt and then the extension of that argument translates into an argument against democracy itself. If Haqqani and Zardari are the cunning political beings that the establishment wants us to believe that they are then what would they expect to gain from such a Memo? Our President could be accused of many things but he definitely cannot be accused of being a lousy chess-player. And Memogate was not a chess move that suited him. A man loyal to him, Ambassador Haqqani, lacked the incentive structure to dictate that memo. And if he dictated it he would have pushed on it but there is no evidence of it.
Granted what I am arguing could be wrong. People act irrationally a lot of times but many people have a lot to gain by seeing the back of Ambassador Haqqani. During his tenure the real blessing has been the amount of pressure exerted on the Pakistani military by the US government. Finally, thanks to Mr Haqqani’s efforts, the Americans divorced Pakistan’s people and their needs from its military — Kerry Lugar was just one example.
Before we swallow another narrative and call for our Ambassador’s head, maybe we should question the motives underlying this entire saga? Every man is presumed innocent until proven guilty and you do not need to be in a law school classroom to learn that. As the noise grows and people demand, quite absurdly, for the Supreme Court to step in and for treason charges to be initiated against Mr Haqqani and our President, maybe we should step back and examine what is at stake. It is not just a government at stake but also our character as a nation when we believe a narrative without asking enough questions. Another point worth considering: if you are the guy in khaki who plotted this, then the media lapped it up brilliantly and you can sit back and smoke a cigar.
In law school classrooms, people speak freely because there are few consequences of what they say. But what we say and don’t say or believe and not believe in the real world, especially in matters such as Memogate, has real consequences. Maybe that alone, if nothing else, should make us pause. Maybe it is actually a good thing that life isn’t a law school classroom — since we can all act more responsibly.
The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He is currently pursuing a LLM in the United States. He can be reached at wmir.rma@gmail.com