Of disputed authors and even more disputed missives
The case of Hussain Haqqani is curious. He must be the world’s first diplomat who has been asked to resign on the basis of the contents of an unverifiable piece of paper and the media statements of an unreliable man. That infamous scrap of paper that is supposed to incriminate him does not carry a signature and its authorship is disputed. The one who wrote the letter is someone else. The one who was blamed for writing the letter is someone else. The one who delivered the letter is someone else and the recipient is a fourth someone else in this fiasco. All four of these people are not prepared to take any kind of responsibility. Mansoor Ijaz says that I ‘wrote’ the letter but the contents were dictated to me by Hussain Haqqani over the phone. Hussain Haqqani says he did nothing of the sort. General Jones says that he was just delivered the memo to Mullen and had no idea about what was in it whereas Admiral Mullen says that he received the memo but put its aside, thinking it to be unimportant. An unholy mess of denial and confusion.
But can one find another case in the world where someone had been punished amidst such confusion when no facts had been ascertained. This is what has been done to Hussain Haqqani. He was asked to resign as a punishment first. The inquiry will be conducted now. Who will do so? Even this is another unknown. Will it be a special team? Or will it be a judicial commission? Will one of Pakistani agencies conduct the investigation or will it be a foreign one? Citizens of two countries are involved in this case.
If Pakistan does conduct the investigations, then it will be that Mansoor Ijaz will not fall under the jurisdiction of Pakistani laws. He has offered to cooperate but that cooperation will come as and when he wants. None of our law enforcement agencies can ‘order’ him to do anything. They can only do so with Hussain Haqqani. He has already surrendered his laptop and his Blackberry. His entire record is now open. Will Mansoor Ijaz also do this? Never. How can one then expect justice to be done? The alleger will only provide selective proof that buttresses his case. Why would he willingly offer proof that incriminates him?
Mansoor Ijaz has yet not offered nay credible explanation for his actions. He says that he wrote the Financial Times op-ed because the Pakistani media is running a campaign against Admiral Mullen. Thus, being an American, he felt it his duty to defend a rank officer of his country’s army. But the article he wrote didn’t even mention the Pakistani media. Then what is it that was motivating Masoor Ijaz? What makes him tick? If we look at his background, he is always been in search of influential positions. He often meets dignitaries from other countries even though he does not have the official position or capacity. For instance, he tried to mediate between the Sudanese president and American officials but the results were concertedly different from his tall claims. He met one of our famous diplomats Zafar Hilaly once and was asked what authority/position did he have. The answer: nothing. He was there in his personal capacity but requested Zafar Hilaly to ask the Pakistan government to accept Israel. Zafar Hilaly says that he was confounded as to who he was representing, America or Israel?
Similarly, Mansoor Ijaz once went to Indian PM Vajpayee during his tenure and started telling him formulae for solving the Kashmir dispute. He was asked why he was doing this. He said that he was doing this to bring peace to the subcontinent on his own. Maulana Tahir Ashrafi who has taken part on the Afghan jihad and has link with various groups of mujahideen said that this man once went to a group of mujahideen active in Kashmir and told their commanders that Pervez Musharraf was ready to ink a peace deal with India which meant that the mujahideen’s lines of support would be cut off. He offered to help them meet with the Indian authorities so that they could work out something with them because they would otherwise be in a fix if an India-Pakistan peace deal was to materialise. The simple-minded mujahideen trusted him as a fellow Muslim and fell for this gyp. He claimed that he had arranged a meeting with RAW officials in Dubai and took the passports of two commanders for visa purposes.
Coincidentally, Maulana Ashrafi found out and he stopped the commanders from being defrauded by Ijaz and told them that they had no need to meet RAW officials. On the other hand, Maulan Ashrafi informed the Pakistani authorities and the matter reached the ISI. They conducted an investigation into the matter and the record will be with the ISI to this day. When the ISI chief went to Britain to meet Mazoor Ijaz, had he not seen his record? And if he had not seen it, was it appropriate for the head of a country’s intelligence agency to go on a visit abroad to meet such a shady character.
It is also apparent from Mansoor Ijaz’s record that he had been trying all kinds of tactics to get a position of authority with the US government. When the Abbottabad incident happened, everybody knew that relations were extremely tense between the US and the Pakistan army and also that the public was up in arms about the violation of Pakistan’s territorial integrity and that the army was under quite a bit of pressure. Is it not possible that Mansoor Ijaz wrote this memo of his own accord and offered Mullen that he could get the contents of this from the Pakistani government? He could’ve easily concocted the story of his contact with a Pakistani diplomat to add weight to his claims so that he could convince Mullen that he could come though on the assertions made in the memo; all this could’ve been done to extract an authoritative position from the US government. He could’ve asked to become President Obama’s special representative to Pakistan so he could get all the things mentioned in the memo done in American interests. Obviously, he must’ve tried to get the support of Haqqani so he had some kind of official backing and then when Hussain Haqqani relented, he might’ve turned against him.
All the information that we have comes from Mansoor Ijaz. He has only mentioned the memo. Is it not possible that the memo was accompanied by some kind of written request for a position in the US government? After all, what could one expect from somebody’s who has Mansoor Ijaz’s record? He has been marauding around the world making offers he could not have come through on. He must’ve been wrongfully accorded some credence in certain countries but he did not fall through and never did anything purposeful. Once he even came to Pakistan to say that he could help them attain Russian missiles. The man whose memo was rubbished and put aside as ‘unimportant’ by the officials of his own country is now deemed ‘most reliable’ by the prime agency of our country.
Everybody knows of his views about the ISI and the Pakistani army. He is one of their worst enemies. If he bring him to the witness stand, what guarantee is there that he will limit his statements to that of the memo? What will stopping him from fibbing about the Pakistani army based on that memo. It is also possible that the American administration is trying to get back at the Pakistani army through him. Whatever he ‘divulges’ to the investigative commission will not be able to kept under wraps. Mansoor Ijaz will tell it how he wants it to, whom he wants it to? He could present it to the international media and say anything he wants about the Pakistan army.Why are we stirring this hornets’ nest? We’ll attain nothing of value in this game. But we could lose a lot.
The writer is one of Pakistan’s most widely read columnists.