Calling establishment to account
The aging but indefatigable Air Marshal (rtd) Asghar Khan has performed the historic task he had undertaken. It now remains to be seen what the Supreme Court does to deter service officers in future from obeying manifestly illegal orders. The proceedings in the court have exposed several actors in the establishment who in the name of supreme national interest undertook political engineering leading to the derailing of the democracy after its revival in 1988. Their actions were to have bad influence on the course of later events. As the CJ observed, if former COAS Aslam Beg had realised his responsibility, there would have been no coup in 1999 by Pervez Musharraf and the event of November 3 would not have taken place. Lt Gen (rtd) Durrani who headed the ISI in 1990 has already owned arranging the distribution of money among politicians. He has also submitted the list of the recipients and the amount they received. He maintains that he acted on orders given by his superiors. A similar excuse was advanced on Thursday by former head of MI Brig (rtd) Hamid Saeed who handed over to the SC his diary covering the period and containing the details of ‘each and every account’. Gen (rtd) Aslam Beg claims that the amount of Rs 80 million, out of a total of Rs 140 million, was not distributed among the politicians and was deposited in the ISI accounts. Documents available with the court however show that Rs 30 million were transferred in the accounts of FRIENDS, owned by Mirza Aslam Beg and that General (rtd) Asif Nawaz Janjua had also expressed concern over the transfer of the amount. The ministry of defence, maintaining records of such transactions, needs to fully cooperate with the SC instead of denying cooperation on the excuse of confidentiality.
The SC has to decide what to do regarding superior officers issuing illegal orders. Equally important is to discourage the practice of following the illegal orders. On the day the SC deals with both types of cases depends whether the practice would cease or continue as before.
The SC has yet to take up the case of the civilian beneficiaries of ISI’s largesse. By accepting the money they decided to become a part of the conspiracy against democracy, an offence that should not be condoned. They helped GIK, Aslam Beg and Durrani achieve the objective of queering the PPP’s pitch. There is a perception that the SC has so far concentrated on cases pertaining to just one political party. Unless the beneficiaries of the ISI’s munificence, who belonged to right wing parties, are also held accountable, the perception is likely to be further strengthened.