US scientists working on a guided bullet for US army, which could hit the moving target by changing its direction.

This bullet actually works on LASER technology. It detects target and select its path to hit it. It can hit the target up to 2KM. Usually, bullets are efficient for near targets but this bullet is more efficient for targets much away.

Sandia technical staff member Jim Jones

There are numerous issues besides ‘Memogate’ that directly affect the people, like the shortage of gas, electricity, clean drinking water, housing, healthcare, employment and so on. But the issue gains significance because so far, no democratically elected civilian government in Pakistan has ever been allowed to complete its tenure and hand over power to the next one through democratic elections (as I outlined in this paper). There were hopes that this government would be the first to do so – a critical step towards the continuation of a democratic political that is necessary to move the country away from the military-dominated politics of the past – something, as it is now all too apparent, is not a thing of the past after all. In this context, it’s important to understand the current situation and its dangers. Myra MacDonald sums it up in an analysis for Reuters. Some insights were posted to this blog earlier (here and here). Additional facts are laid out in a document received today (reproduced below) that outlines some facts about Husain Haqqani and ‘memogate’. Also read this important article, ‘Treason? Under what Constitution? in the New Pakistan blog, which dissects the ‘memo’ contents and notes that each item in the document falls under the constitutional purview of the federal government…

Issue at hand: Former Ambassador of Pakistan to the US, Husain Haqqani, is currently a virtual prisoner as his life is under danger both from the extremists and from the security agencies. He is residing for his own safety at the Prime Minister’s residence. The Supreme Court of Pakistan imposed a travel ban on him on December 1, 2011 restricting him from leave the country. His wife, Member of Pakistan’s Parliament, Farahnaz Ispahani’s life is also in danger, which is why she is currently in the US where she had come for medical checkups.

This situation arose after the false allegations by an American businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansur Ijaz, who claimed that the Ambassador and President Zardari had sought American help to prevent a military coup in Pakistan. Ambassador Haqqani has flatly denied these allegations. Further, Ambassador Haqqani knew Admiral Mullen very well and could have contacted him directly anytime; it defies understanding why he would need Ijaz to convey a message to Admiral Mullen.

A history of false claims: Mansur Ijaz is well-known over the years for self-promotion and false claims. During the mid-1990s he claimed that he had close ties to the Sudanese government and would be able to help the Clinton administration get Osama Bin Laden. However, both Clinton NSA Sandy Berger and the 9/11 Commission that interviewed Ijaz found no credible evidence in what he said. In 1999 Ijaz claimed to be the American envoy to India and Pakistan to help resolve the Kashmir dispute but in the end neither side found him credible or someone who could deliver. In 2004 Ijaz claimed that chemical warheads were being smuggled into Iraq for an attack on American troops which he later denied.

The ‘memo’: Former US national security advisor General Jim Jones conveyed Ijaz’s memo to then Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen. Gen Jones in an affidavit has sworn that he believes Ambassador Haqqani had nothing to do with the memo. According to General Jones the language of the memo was akin to what Ijaz wrote.

Ijaz claims that soon after he wrote an OpEd about the ‘memo issue’ on October 10, 2011, Pakistan’s ISI chief, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha flew to London, met him and examined the evidence and found it credible. However, Admiral Mullen has stated that when he received the memo from Gen Jones, he did not find it credible and took no action on it.

Threats: Asma Jahangir, leading human rights advocate and counsel to Ambassador Haqqani, has stated that Ambassador Haqqani is under threat from his own intelligence-security agencies. In this context Admiral Mullen in one of his final testimonies stated that Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, and the Pakistani military have often lied to the Americans, and provide support to the extremist groups, including those who kill Americans.

Action required: Ambassador Haqqani needs to have his passport returned to him and have his name taken off the Exit Control List (ECL) so he can travel. The due process of law must be applied.

Background: The government’s opponents – in the media, political parties, military-intelligence establishment – have used this opportunity to attack the government and try to make Ambassador Haqqani a scapegoat. Some worrying facts:

• Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif (who in 1999 had Ambassador Haqqani imprisoned and tortured for writing OpEds against his regime)  is the leading petitioner before the Supreme Court.
• • The Supreme Court took up Mr Sharif’s petition instead of sending it to a trial court first.
• The Supreme Court ignored due process of law and immediately placed a travel ban on Ambassador Haqqani without letting him or his counsel appear before court.
• The head of the ISI himself conducted a forensic investigation and the army chief and head of ISI have stated in their affidavits that they believe the ‘memo’ was genuine – which points to an attempt to frame the Ambassador by institutions that have never agreed with his views.
• A political-media trial and witch-hunt has been ongoing since Ijaz’s OpEd first appeared in the Financial Times.

Detailed Background and Information

Background of Memo: The origins of the memo are in dispute. On October 10, 2011 an American businessman of Pakistani descent, Mansur Ijaz, wrote an OpEd in Financial Times alleging that in the aftermath of the Osama Bin Laden raid of May 2, 2011, he was approached by a senior Pakistani diplomat to pass on a memo to enlist the US military’s help to head off a feared military coup, in exchange for overhauling the country’s powerful top security leadership. He said he gave the memo to former NSA Gen (retd) Jim Jones who passed it on to then Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.

In the ensuing weeks Ijaz claimed that Amb Husain Haqqani was that senior diplomat and that he and Amb Haqqani corresponded by Blackberry messenger messages, phone conversations and emails.

Amb Haqqani flatly denied these allegations. Admiral Mullen stated that he had received a memo but he did not find it ‘credible.’ According to Mullen’s spokesman “I have said this before and am saying again today. Nothing about that letter had the imprimatur on the Pakistani Government. It was not signed. And the contents of it Admiral Mullen did not find credible. So he took no action on it.” (November 22, 2011)

Amb Haqqani returned to Pakistan on November 19 and tendered his resignation in order to ensure a free and fair inquiry into the issue. The civilian government, while supporting Amb Haqqani’s account accepted his resignation. His passport was confiscated upon his return to Pakistan.

Supreme Court action: December 23, former Prime Minister and leader of the main opposition party, PML-N, Nawaz Sharif filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) claiming that under article 184(3) of the Constitution, the SCP could take up any issue of public importance which relates to fundamental rights. SCP accepted the petition along with other petitions.

On December 1, 2011 the Pakistan Supreme Court placed former ambassador Husain Haqqani on the Exit Control List (ECL) barring him from being able to leave the country, without giving the former ambassador or his lawyer to appear before the court. So due process of law was not followed and Mr Haqqani’s fundamental rights were violated.

Gen Jones in his affidavit to the Pakistan Supreme Court stated that while he did pass on the memo he does not believe Amb Haqqani had anything to do with the memo.

On December 30, Pakistan’s Supreme Court set up a 3-member judicial commission to investigate the issue. According to the SCP judgment a petition seeking an investigation into the affair had “succeeded in establishing that the issues involved are justiciable.” The court also upheld the travel ban on Amb Haqqani. Further, the court has ordered the attorney general of Pakistan, Foreign Ministry and the Pakistani High Commissioner in Canada to approach the parent company of Blackberry, Research In Motion (RIM).

The government maintains that since Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy the correct forum for any such inquiry should be the parliament. The Parliamentary Committee on National Security was already looking into the case and that should be the proper venue not the Supreme Court.

Counter arguments by Amb Haqqani’s lawyer, Asma Jahangir: According to Ambassador Haqqani’s lawyer, leading human rights advocate, Asma Jahangir, the verdict was the “darkest day for the judiciary because the apex court has subjected fundamental rights to national security.”

Terming the court’s judgment ‘disappointing’, she said, “today we feel that the military authority is superior to the civilian authority. Today, the struggle for the transition to democracy has been blocked.” And, “I am forced to think if it is the judiciary of the people or the judiciary of the establishment.” Ms Jahangir also expressed her deep regrets and said she was totally unprepared for this reward of sacrifices rendered by lawyers’ fraternity, as the Court ‘dimmed even a fraction of ray of hope’, while providing the petitioner with relief beyond what they had sought.

Ms Jahangir said the decision was against the rule of law and had compromised a citizen’s right to justice. The verdict reflected undue supremacy of national security and integrity over human rights. “When order came on 1st December, Husain Haqqani was not heard. He did not even have a lawyer,” she said. “Saying that there is a memo and linking it with Husain Haqqani are two different things, it’s more of a media trial that got hyped after Supreme Court’s order”.

Amb Haqqani’s lawyer and others have pointed to the role of Pakistan’s security services, especially its intelligence agency. Both the head of Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha and Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, submitted petitions before the Supreme Court insisting they believed the memo was genuine and needs to be investigated. Significantly, according to Mansur Ijaz, Lt Gen Pasha travelled to London in October and ascertained that the memo was genuine. Why was Lt Gen Pasha so eager to travel to London and agree with what Ijaz said? Whose permission did he obtain before doing so? Is he the person who should perform a forensic investigation? Mr Ijaz also alleged in an interview in December that soon after the Bin Laden raid Lt Gen Pasha travelled to the Gulf to muster support for a military coup.

Imminent danger to Mr Husain Haqqani: A media trial has been ongoing since Mansoor Ijaz’s OpEd published in FT in October. The involvement of opposition parties and their leaders in this political-media witchhunt.

The judiciary seems to be ruling on the basis of national security ideology instead of constitution and law.

All those individuals who are speaking out in Pakistan for democracy and human rights are being silenced one by one. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, former Governor Salman Taseer, former Minister Shahbaz Bhatti were assassinated. Former Amb Haqqani and his lawyer have received serious death threats.

On January 1, 2012, Ms Jahangir announced that she was quitting the case as she did not have faith in the commission been set up by the Supreme Court. According to Ms Jahangir, the Supreme Court’s decision on the petition was a victory for the country’s establishment, and it was being used to transform the country into a ‘security state.’

Ms Jahangir further stated that her client, Mr Haqqani, was under threat from the security agencies. She feared that the security forces-intelligence agencies would try to coerce a statement out of Mr Haqqani. That is why he first stayed at the President’s House and is currently residing at the Prime Minister’s residence.

(ends)

In a society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught; in a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. That, some would say, sums up the world in which Husain Haqqani lost his job as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.

The swift action to replace Haqqani with Sherry Rehman will probably limit the fallout in Islamabad. But the brouhaha about Haqqani’s alleged guilt should not obscure the compulsory introspection about Pakistan’s relations with the outside world and with itself – both of which are clearly not working.

In the last week as the memo scandal has raged and obsessed the press in Pakistan, the US has been conspicuous only by its silence. “I have nothing to say on this specific issue,” said the state department spokesperson. After Haqqani’s resignation, the deputy spokesman also refused to comment, saying it was Haqqani’s personal issue with Pakistan’s sitting leadership that had appointed him and the US had nothing to do with it. Most recently, US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, also made it clear that Pakistan was on its own: “We just leave it to the Pakistani authorities…Whatever [the] solution…that’s for Pakistan to decide.”

For a country that has so often been characterised as the world’s policeman; that has used the bully pulpit of ‘democracy promotion’ to palaver, browbeat and sometimes even to cheat; that has changed the very definition of “foreign policy leadership” from being about leading the American people in the formation and execution of national policy to the US leading other nations in the international arena, is this sudden, convenient ‘it’s not my tail to wag’ attitude believable?

Washington has through the decades ‘led’ people around the world by helping them remove their ‘inauthentic’ leaders, the so-called enemies of freedom even when the people chose them. In a similar vein, it has also helped protect those it has valued for whatever reason. Was Haqqani, then, as precious to the Americans as he imagined? By extension, should president Zardari, the most important ally in the war against terror, be worried?

For an administration that doesn’t give a toss about anything but cutting a deal in Afghanistan and which has a short timeframe to get this done, what’s a Haqqani? What’s a Zardari?

Not to overstate the point, but that is perhaps the most awkward aspect of the Memogate controversy: that a two-term chairman joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, considered the braggadocio of a unlaundered loudmouth, Mansoor Ijaz, worthy first of a denial and then a confirmation – followed by not a squeak out of anyone in the US administration as the noose was tightened around Haqqani’s neck. Let’s not forget this is the same guy the US has hailed as being a relentless pro-democracy activist, the man who had “an answer to everything,” the only ambassador with the authority to stand in place for his sovereigns.

But in the words, again, of Ambassador Munter: Pak-US relations are stronger than any memo. Which is just another way of saying Pak-US relations are stronger than Husain Haqqani. Which probably comes as a surprise to the former ambassador who was his own one-man PR machine for being the last of few trusted go-betweens in a relationship reduced to bruising political sparring in recent times. And yet, there he was, left holding the bag, abandoned to the storm by his friends in high places. The hardest-working man in Washington left jobless, just like that.

A wise man cured of ambition by ambition itself; or a wise man who wasn’t wise enough to realise he was being set up at multiple levels?

And while we’re on the question of being set up: why did Mansoor Ijaz out a process that, by his own admission, was highly confidential, for which he and the ambassador used fictitious email addresses and code to communicate with each other and about which he has publically admitted to understanding “God forbid this information gets public…”

But there’s more: one conversation with Ijaz and it becomes clear how much premium he purportedly puts on friendship. “When an old friend comes to me and says I got a problem, I go and make sure that problem gets solved.” That’s the kind of great friend Ijaz says he is. The kind who understands that outing the memo would mean outing everyone involved in the chain of delivery, including ‘one of my closest friends,’ General Jim Jones.

So did Ijaz break the one thing fundamental to any friendship – trust – by outing the memo and with it his friends, in passing, in an op-ed? Or did he tell his friends what he was going to do and they gave him the go-ahead, with a full understanding of the implications not just for Haqqani and civilian ascendency in Pakistan but also for the US administration that would inevitably get dragged into the mess, given that Mullen’s fingerprints were all over it?

These are questions better dealt with penseroso than allegro. For now, all we know is that after the Memogate scandal, we are left with an already cuckolded civilian leadership further weakened, the defences of an army unwilling to brook criticism further buttressed – and the ultimate question: has the US abandoned its Pakistani dogs to the storm?

If diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you find a rock, has the US found its rock?

(From The News, Pakistan)

Related articles

• Haqqani leaves for Pakistan over secret memo (nation.com.pk)
• ‘Memogate’ Fallout: Pakistani Ambassador to U.S. Resigns (abcnews.go.com)
• What’s behind the furor in Pakistan? (cnn.com)
• Haqqani wants Ijaz’s records probed (thehindu.com)
• Pakistani Ambassador to U.S., Husain Haqqani, Is Forced Out (nytimes.com)

© 2011, Mehreen Zahra-Malik. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.