Confrontation in Pakistan

A ‘memo’ leaked by a US-based Pakistani businessman has sent relations between the civilian Government of Zardari and the Army headed by Kayani into a tailspain. The ‘memo’ says Zardari sought US intervention to prevent a military coup in the wake of the Mumbai terror attack. An unstable Pakistan is now witnessing a massive political upheaval

In the wake of the allegations levelled by Mr Mansoor Ijaz, the controversial US businessman of Pakistani origin, against Mr Hussain Haqqani, the Pakistani Ambassador to the US, two separate bouts of boxing are going on simultaneously in Pakistan — Mr Ijaz versus Mr Haqqani and President Asif Ali Zardari versus Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.

There has so far been no smoking gun on the basis of which anyone can be hanged. Mr Ijaz, who has made a series of claims regarding his contacts with Mr Haqqani on May 9, in a London hotel and subsequently, has carefully built up an electronic trail that could support his claims and allegations and handed it over to Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence, during a meeting in London on October 22.

The electronic trail would have been in the Blackberry phone of both Mr Haqqani and Mr Ijaz. Whereas Mr Ijaz would seem to have saved the trail and given it to the ISI, it is not clear whether Mr Haqqani has saved or erased it. He has offered toa hand over his phone for forensic examination to any inquiry committee set up by the Government or the National Assembly. If it turns out during the forensic examination that there is no electronic trail in Haqqani’s phone, he would have difficulty in explaining it and the Army’s suspicion against him would be further strengthened.

If the National Assembly decides to hold a probe it will have to depend on Pakistan’s Interior Ministry headed by Mr Rehman Malik for a forensic examination of Mr Haqqani’s phone. Thus, there could be two forensic examinations — one by the ISI of the material handed over by Mr Ijaz, which must have been already done, and another by the Interior Ministry of the material handed over by Mr Haqqani. Reconciling any contradictions between the two forensic examinations of materials of different origin could further exacerbate the suspicions of the Army against Mr Haqqani and even Mr Zardari himself.

There is a third possibility. Sections of the Pakistani media have reported that a public interest petition has been filed before Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhury of the Pakistan Supreme Court, requesting that he should monitor the investigation into the case. He has not so far reacted to it. If he decides to do so, the ISI may have to suspend its inquiry and the National Assembly may not order its own enquiry.

The matter could get prolonged and the question would arise as to what to do with Mr Haqqani in the meantime: Replace him honourably without waiting for the results of the inquiries or allow him to continue in office and fight it out? Will the Army agree to his continuation in office?

The boxing bout between Messrs Zardari and Kayani is unlikely to lead to any military coup. The Army may not be able to get any coup validated by the judiciary. Moreover, when the probes are still on the Army would have no ground to intervene. The Army would most probably wait and watch while keeping up the pressure for removing Mr Haqqani from office. To build up the pressure, Mr Kayani might refer the matter to his Corps Commanders and get their support for removing the Ambassador.

So long as the Ijaz affair is not settled in a manner mutually satisfactory to the civilian and Army leaderships the uneasy vibrations between the elected civilian leadership and the Army would add to the already existing suspicions between Mr Zardari and Mr Kayani. The civilian leadership might find itself reduced to a lame-duck administration till the next elections due in the beginning of 2013.

The Ijaz issue is Pakistan’s internal affair. However, the resurfacing of Mr Ijaz from oblivion could uncomfortably remind us of the naiveté of the NDA Government which lionised him in 2000-01 and amazingly without verification accepted his claims that he could help in bringing peace to Jammu & Kashmir. The then NDA Government headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee extended to him extraordinary courtesies to facilitate his visits to Srinagar without any paper trail as an interlocutor supposedly blessed by the US. The details of what happened are too well known to need any recapitulation.

Since the middle 1990s, Mr Ijaz has repeatedly taken many personalities in the US, India and Pakistan for a ride by projecting himself as a man of iconic influence and web of contacts in the corridors of power in Washington, DC, Islamabad and New Delhi. Despite this, eminent sub-continental personalities have been walking into his parlour again and again. This shows that naiveté is perennial.

India has put its peace eggs in the basket of the elected Pakistani civilian leadership. The leadership was already weak. Despite that it had been able to carry the Army’s GHQ along with it on some of its peace initiatives. It is likely to be further weakened now if it doesn’t handle intelligently the sequel to the Ijaz affair. What could be the impact of the civilian-military boxing bout on India-Pakistan relations and the peace process? This question would attract the attention of our policy-makers. Discreet silence combined with a discreet watch on the goings-on in Islamabad and Rawalpindi should be our policy till the dust settles down.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and presently Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies)

Courtesy : The Pioneer