Dear Readers,
The judicial commission that was assigned to probe into Memogate finally concluded its findings despite the many twists and turns, some of which were engineered to derail/delay the process and the bizarre claims and countless contradictions that kept cropping up. The forensic reports of Mansoor Ijaz’s Blackberry and laptop were made a part of the documents to be sent to the Supreme Court after compilation. Not surprisingly, the meeting was boycotted by Hussain Haqqani and his lawyers. Looking back on this rather unsavoury episode, the conduct of Husain Haqqani has been extremely inappropriate and unbecoming throughout, especially in his capacity as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States. Having proved himself to be a dubious character, he has further reduced himself in stature (if this is possible) by firstly abusing the concession given by the Supreme Court allowing him to leave Pakistan and thereafter further blackening (if this too is possible) the much-tainted image of his own Government.
While the nation awaits the outcome of the investigations, will anyone actually be found guilty and taken to task? One has doubts on this count, not because of lack of commitment on part of the SC but because this is how things are done in Pakistan when the powerful and the resourceful are involved. Furthermore, in the prevailing circumstances when the Government is extremely non-cooperative, can the Judiciary be expected to do better?
Haqqani is currently living in the US, thanks to the SC’s generosity, as a free man and must be laughing himself sick on having come out unscathed after the muck hit the fan. But true to form, he cannot keep away from stirring up more trouble having recently penned an article that was published in the New York Times that was severely critical of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the Memogate Commission. But as sure as night follows day, his time will come one day and he will have little time to repent. For the benefit of readers I am reproducing my article “The Haqqani Network”.
Erstwhile phone buddies Husain Haqqani and Mansoor Ijaz have amply proven each other to be dubious characters, such people have a recurring habit of falling out. The truth about Memogate’s sponsors notwithstanding, the motivation was primarily to bring the Pakistani security establishment to heel, the ultimate goal being to “de-nuke” Pakistan. Mansoor Ijaz being a born US citizen was safe promoting stated US policy, what was His Excellency Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani upto? The Supreme Court did the right thing appointing a really high powered Judicial Commission (three Chief Justices of Provincial High Courts) to sift fact from fiction.
Mansoor Ijaz scored big by giving his BlackBerry PIN number to the Judicial Commission and offering to hand over his BlackBerry and all related data, Husain Haqqani seemed to suffer from ‘memory loss’ about where his device was, saying it was somewhere in his home in Washington DC. He than later obfuscated, initially flatly declining to have his BlackBerry data investigated, than allowing limited access. The government (and his paid buddies in the media) faithfully parrotted Haqqani’s patent defence about the memo being fake.
Mansoor Ijaz has gone one better by presenting additional forensic evidence in London on May 10 to experts engaged by the “Memogate” Judicial Commission. The eight hour examination of his computer and BlackBerry handsets by forensic experts verified and validated each and every word of all BBM chat exchanges, e-mails, SMS messages and the telephone calls exchanged between him and Husain Haqqani. Many deleted messages were also recovered in the process. Haqqani and his lawyers boycotted the proceedings on the grounds that the examination should have been conducted earlier during the cross-examination of Mansoor Ijaz.
Husain Haqqani started his political career as the President of the extremely militant Student Union of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)), a far right Islamist political party the JI advocates religious fundamentalism and a theocratic-based government system in Pakistan. MQM than not being in existence, JI virtually ruled Karachi. Haqqani academic brilliance was recognized by Ziaul Haq’s Martial Law Regime, they assiduously promoted his career as a journalist. After Zia’s death he started working for the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), created by Zia’s military and civilian supporters to counter Ms Benazir’s resurgent Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). A pastmaster at giving spin to facts, he excelled himself serving the PML(N). His “Dirty Tricks” (DTs) were too much for (than) political neophyte Mian Nawaz Sharif to stomach, he fell out with PML (N) to join the ideologically opposite PPP. Born again as a liberal, Haqqani spewed poison against his former rightist mentors.
The Supreme Court were naïve in generously allowing him to leave the country during the Memogate hearings despite being repeatedly advised that he would never come back. Haqqani never fails to eventually maul whoever helps him, not surprisingly Haqqani has now turned his guns on those Honourable judges. His latest article “How Pakistan lets terrorism fester, why Pakistani courts are biased?” is a shameful attempt at maligning the primary Court of Pakistan. Lashing out at the intelligence agencies, he does not spare the media either, “While fighting Pakistan’s endemic corruption is vital, the media and judiciary have helped redirect attention away from the threat of jihadist ideology by constantly targeting the governing party – a convenient situation for the intelligence services, which would prefer to keep the spotlight on the civilian government rather than on the militant groups they have historically supported”.
Ahmad Noorani unmasked Haqqani’s real face in his excellent rejoinder on May 14, “In his true colours, why is sacked ambassador shy of the truth?”. “He (Haqqani) says our national discourse has been hijacked by those seeking to deflect attention from militant Islamic extremism and General Zia and Musharraf were mainly responsible. What a marvel of a statement if he had only looked at his own career and growth. Was he himself not an Islamist militant student leader? Did General Zia not promote him as a journalist in Far Eastern Economic Review? Was he not advising the dictator, free of cost or for whatever returns. He forgot to admit that he was a member of Team-Zia which played havoc with this country. This scribe has a state-run TV’s video showing Haqqani weeping at the time of the death of his mentor Ziaul Haq. Haqqani accuses the Supreme Court judges of carrying out their ‘own partisan agenda’. What he calls an agenda is actually the blowback of his own party government’s massive corruption, loot and plunder, which Mr Haqqani conveniently refuses to see. The PPP leaders have all along shouted from housetops that in 11 years nothing was proved against them. Now that the courts are proving charges of corruption, judges have become biased and carrying agendas! Is there any limit to the depth of shamelessness that Mr Haqqani and his bosses will stop at?” unquote.
To quote Noorani further, “Haqqani says the Pakistani media done little to help generate support for eliminating extremism and fighting terrorism. What the media has done for him, he will never talk about. Can he tell us how many hundreds or thousands of calls he has made to each and every media person to push his point of view? How many fake websites he and his cronies, getting funds from one secret fund or the other, have been running to malign his opponents and promote him as a victim and as a hero? How many fake names has he been using to respond to legal and criminal questions that he was supposed to answer but ran away? How he persuaded media groups to use fake names to present his point of view in the Memo case, fighting a media war instead of giving or countering evidence that could save him? Will he be man enough to come forward and write under his own name and not hide behind one or the other hired mercenaries in the media?” Haqqani’s cronies in the print and electronic media are ready to do his bidding “as and when required”, in one case coordinated disinformation by three media celebrities on one TV channel in a single day, never ceases to amaze. His “media network” outdid themselves doing an about-turn justifying Haqqani’s excuses to avoid appearing before the Memogate Commission in person in Pakistan.
Haqqani got away with quietly disparaging the country’s institutions while officially being its Ambassador, there is “nothing official” anymore about his venom, or hidden. Americans can sometimes be very naïve but they will never fully trust a man who does not show patriotism for his country, at least while he still claims to be a Pakistani citizen. Having the power of the pen, tarnishing reputations comes naturally to Haqqani, Blogs planted by his minions proliferate like clockwork. He should remember everyone does not play by the “Marquess of Queensbury rules” that others have to adhere to.
Even before the Memogate case came to light, my reply to Quatrina Hussain in her TV talk show as to what should be done about dismantling the Haqqani network in North Waziristan was, “for Pakistan’s sake we should first dismantle the far more dangerous “Haqqani network” in Washington DC”.
M. Ikram Sehgal
