Spy versus spy

And our diplomatic isolation

According to official claims, Pakistan is in a grip of spies playing havoc with our national security. First it was the conviction of the Indian spy Kalbhusahn Jadhav and now we are told that Lyaari gangster Uzair Baloch is a spook working for the Iranians.

The plot becomes even murkier with the mysterious disappearance of Lt Col (r) Habib Zahir in Nepal. Ostensibly he has been kidnapped by Indian spy agency RAW’s operatives.

Speculation is rife that the colonel was in fact an ISI operative somehow linked to the Jadhav case. The foreign office has, nonetheless, denied that Habib had anything to do with the arrest of the Indian spy from Balochistan last year. Some Indian analysts including former diplomat Mani Shankar Ayar have, however, hinted that the alleged ISI operative could be used for a swap with the former Indian naval officer.

The military is adamant that Jadhav’s sentence will be carried and no pressure to spare him will be brooked. The same mantra was repeated when the COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa called on the prime minister the other day.

Interestingly, these kinds of swaps are not unusual in the spy vs spy games. The most famous swap involved the captured American pilot Gary Powers flying a U2 spy mission over the former Soviet Union in 1960. He had flown from Peshawar, facilitated by the CIA base in Badaber, when his plane was shot down over Soviet air space.

Powers, after being captured alive and later convicted for ten years in prison, was ultimately swapped with a Russian spy known as “Rudolph Abel”, earlier arrested in the USA. The exchange, after a long trial in a military court, took place at the Glinencike Bridge in Berlin as a result of an out of court diplomatic settlement.

The whole incident, including the arduous negotiations for a swap, has been captured in a celebrated film, ‘The Bridge of Spies’ released in 2015. I was quite surprised when the film was mentioned by the officer who had captured Jadhav in Balochistan. I met the ISI operative in Quetta with a couple of other journalists last year on a visit to Balochistan.

The capture of the Indian spy red handed was the biggest intelligence coup since the capture of Gary Powers, he proudly claimed. Certainly Jadhav’s is an open and shut case. Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, briefing the parliament, sounded a bit defensive speaking in platitudes, promising the best defence for the captured spy.

The prime minister and his national security advisor Lt Gen (r) Nasir Janjua, in the meanwhile, are extending an olive branch to New Delhi. According to the NSA advisor Pakistan and India cannot be enemies forever.

However, Modi sarkar is in no mood to talk to Islamabad. And why should it be? Judging by the recent state elections that the BJP swept, anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric is working quite well for it.

The treatment meted out to former Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri the very next day the Indian spy was handed a death sentence in Pakistan is quite symptomatic of the present Indian mood. Kasuri, while addressing a seminar at the India International Center, ironically on prospects of India-Pakistan peace, was booed down by a belligerent and hostile crowd.

Notwithstanding the nature of iron clad charges against the former Indian naval officer the curious case of Uzair Baloch being a spy working for Iran raises a lot of new questions. We had always assumed that Iran is a brotherly Islamic neighbour albeit somewhat miffed over Pakistan joining the Saudi midwifed Islamic military alliance ostensibly to combat terrorism.

It sounds rather surreal that the Iranians, to spy on the corps commander Karachi and the naval commander, recruited Uzair Baloch a gangster known for murder, extortion and thievery. Espionage is a professional game. Who were the handlers of Baloch who helped him to morph from a criminal to an intelligence sleuth?

Coming on the heels of former army chief General (r) Raheel Sharif being dispatched to head the so-called Islamic military alliance with official blessings, the timing of disclosures about Uzair Baloch is rather odd. After assuring ad nauseam that the proposed military coalition is in no way against Iran it seems that we have now clearly chosen where we stand in the Middle Eastern strategic matrix.

There have been a few high profile visits from Saudi Arabia including the religious affairs minster and Imam-e-Kaaba followed by the secretary general of the OIC (organisation of Islamic countries) during the past week. The timing is however quite ominous.

The Imam-e-Kaaba, in his interactions, was openly critical of Tehran. According to him Iranians have left no stone unturned to destabilise Saudi Arabia since the Revolution, including backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen and supervising policies in the rest of the Gulf states.

Implicitly, it seems by openly accusing Iran of spying our establishment has also accepted that our neighbour is guilty as charged. Perhaps far-reaching external and internal dynamics of our choosing sides (despite protestations to the contrary) in the Middle Eastern cauldron have not been properly examined.

Notwithstanding Uzair Baloch’s culpability, it raises a bigger question. Islamabad, it seems now, is at odds with all its neighbours barring China. Afghan intelligence agency NDS, the Indian RAW and the Iranians perhaps working in unison are bent upon destabilising us.

This is not a good position to be in, being symptomatic of Pakistan’s complete isolation in its own back yard. Prime Minister Sharif has kept the foreign ministry portfolio with himself. But practically throughout his tenure foreign and security policies remain outsourced to the military leadership.

Resultantly, the single dimensional security ridden approach has landed Islamabad in a diplomatic cul de sac. The latest travel advisory for Pakistan issued by the US State Department is another denouement of our failed policies.

Washington in the advisory states, “Throughout Pakistan, foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to US citizens. Evidence suggests that some victims of terrorist activity have been targeted because they are Americans. Terrorists and criminal groups have resorted to kidnapping for ransom.”

It further says: “Sectarian violence remains a serious threat throughout Pakistan, and the government (of Pakistan) continues to enforce blasphemy laws. Religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy”.

Obviously, despite our claim that the terrorists are on the run, the world sees us quite differently. The latest incident of lynching of a student by a mob in Mardan speaks volumes about the state of intolerance in the country. In this backdrop tall claims made without much conviction about changing the so-called narrative, sound quite hollow.