Putting limits on spies

The ISI needs a lawyer

“I kept the ISI out of it all,” former \ISI chief Asad Durrani pleaded to the Supreme Court of Pakistan before asking for the services of a lawyer. In this statement, the retired general is eluding to the fact that the ISI is in need of a lawyer and the questioner is not merely the Supreme Court, it is the people who inhabit Pakistan.

The Mehrangate scandal is not merely a matter to do with tailor-made notions of sovereignty; it is the matter of the agency directly subverting the democratic will exercised by the people in the first elections of the marred 1990s.

Rumours had remain abound as to who had been creating the democratic topsy-turvy that had alienated the public into silently greeting the Musharraf coup in 1999. Their culprit has been unearthed: the army and its agencies.

As the roll call of politicians who had been doled out money by the agencies was rolled out, we were greeted with barely any surprises: the mullahs, the Sharifs, the MQM. There was a bit of a nonchalant, “I told you so,” that represented the whispers that rotated around the atmosphere.

The truth of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) that observers critical to the deep state and machination had termed another instance of the Mullah-Military Alliance had been confirmed. The only surprise was that Rs 1.4 billion was all it took to subvert the democratic rights of the people.

This was of course not the only case in the Supreme Court that involved the military establishment. On one side, it had been asked to produce persons it had abducted during the last decade. On the other side, it had been attempting to dislodge and discredit the serving civilian government through the Memogate plot.

Each of the cases has allowed a different insight into how the military establishment and its agencies manipulate the political and social contours of Pakistan. The excesses committed by the agencies came into public knowledge with the depressing sight of the seven from the “Adiala 11” shown them still alive. As the men entered the Supreme Court on catheters with faces covered, a shrill went down the spine of those watching, including the judges that witnesses the march in.

“The intelligence agencies cannot be allowed to violate the law,” the CJP remarked in response. And so it should be.

But the same Supreme Court was giving credence to another military establishment ploy in the mould of Memogate. The more important question was to answer how an enquiry was set up on an independent trip by the then ISI Chief Shuja Pasha to meet American citizen Mansoor Ijaz, who has continued to make claim after claim to further discredit the enquiry itself.

The intelligence agencies have also had to answer the questions of the Abbottabad Commission and the Salim Shehzad Commission. The question of how Osama bin Laden was sheltered near the Military Academy Kakul still remains open and should continue to haunt the agencies.

The more important question of the Baloch missing persons and ‘killed-and-dumped’ Baloch bodies has begun to gather steam and fingers point in the same direction. To those who live in Balochistan, this is barely any attempt to disguise who is responsible for an abduction. The denials are only offered to the ‘rest of Pakistan’.

As it stands, it is the ISI and intelligence agencies themselves that have forced themselves to be put on the questioning box. And that the matter is being discussed is not a conspiracy as the current army chief suggested to newspaper editors at a recent dinner.

Suggestions that the matter of the Mehrangate was to dig up 20 years old history and was a case of ‘fighting history’ are means of dodging the issue. Suggestions that the debate on ‘national institutions’ demotivates soldiers fighting at minus 20 degree Celsius are moreover hypocritical.

Institutions who have disrespected their own institutional boundaries are themselves responsible for being taken to task. If there is anyone demotivating soldiers on the fighting fields, it is the excesses of agencies purportedly acting counter to national interest in the name of national interest.

The fact of the matter is that the role of security agencies must fall under public scrutiny. Security agencies are subservient to civilian governments. Mehrangate shows the consequences when they decide to define national interest on their own.

And this is indeed the reason why an ex-ISI chief is standing before the Supreme Court, asking for a lawyer to represent him.

The writer is a member of the Workers Party Pakistan and is a researcher at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He blogs at voiceamidstsilence.blogspot.com