Apropos to a front page report published in your esteemed newspaper on 23 March on US designs to extend its reach through construction of 16 new buildings including high rise within the embassy premises in Islamabad is tantamount to keeping a tight watch on all of our VIP movements in and out of Presidency, Prime Minister House, National Assembly and the Senate. Besides, latest gadgetry installed in and outside the proposed building once completed would also monitor our national air waves thereby listening to our security establishment’s communications with jamming them at will.
More painful is the information that CDA gave its approval without necessary routings and inputs from various state institutions. The CDA’s role is reminiscent of Dr Shakil Afridi’s role who conducted false vaccination campaign in collusion with CIA to determine DNA of Osama Bin laden. Did CDA influentials collude with CIA for dollars and visas?
Whosoever bypassed the procedures in granting approval to the construction of the building must be penalised for the crime committed against the security of Pakistan. I am also very sure that clandestine approval must have been granted without delving on the many aspects of the project kept under wraps by the US embassy.
Reportedly, one of the Deputy Directors belonging to Building Control Section-II of the CDA conveyed the approval to Sandra M Muench, management counselor of the US embassy on 10th January this year. The construction on the project has already commenced since on the existing plot and on an additional piece of land that the US embassy acquired last year cost of which (Rs 1.7 billion) has not been paid as yet. After the construction began on the original US embassy land, it approached CDA for additional land which it graciously allotted on its own sweet will.
The repercussions of this mega-infrastructure would be catastrophic, especially if seen in the backdrop of controversies over Blackwater operations in Pakistan, Raymond Davis, a large number of CIA agents openly residing in palatial houses in Islamabad, exonerating the perpetrators of Salala massacre of 24 Pakistan soldiers and others. It is sincerely hoped that the permission granted for expansion of the US embassy must be revoked and the guilty punished.
ENGR JAVED IQBAL
Islamabad