PML-N and The Truth: Why So Anti-Army?

By Ahsan Waheed
ZoneAsia-Pk

The aftermath of the OBL debacle resulted in a blame game at almost all levels of state infrastructure in Pakistan. Neither civil government officials not members of the military establishment were spared – by each other, or by the Pakistani media and the speculation-ridden conspiracy-driven people of Pakistan.

The ten hour long in-camera parliamentary session was one of a kind in the political history of this country – where both General Ashfaq Kiyani and General Pasha (DG ISI) were present. General Kiyani, throughout the session, seemed to be much of a silent observer; it was General Pasha, the Director General of the ISI, who beared the brunt of all the barrage of criticism thrown at him. At one point, when he offered his resignation, parliamentarians initiated a ruckus and shouted in the august house that the resignation should be accepted. While many argue that the military establishment of Pakistan is not subservient to the parliament or civil administration, it should also e or outside the legislature – have no respect for the military institutions of the country. This disrespect had obviously crossed all bounds after May 02, as has become obvious to everyone.

According to certain media reports, the most acerbic remarks were given by Ch Nisar of PML-N. He criticized the Army and their role in the politics of the country. He did not stop anywhere, not even where the matters could result in projecting a repulsive image of Pakistan being a terrorist state – where the army was possibly playing a double game by pleasing both the US and the Taliban. Ch Nisar’s rampant opposition for the sake of opposition severely damaged Pakistan’s intelligence sharing mechanism with the US – CIA Director Leon Panetta stated as matter of fact to the DG ISI that when his own country’s opposition leader couldn’t trust him, how could the CIA.

Such criticism needs to be seen in the light of how the whole situation has been outplayed after OBL’s death, and not just the difficulties faced by Pakistan’s institutions because of political ineptitude in general. No doubt that the army gets a major chunk of the budget; such a magnanimous budget endowment means that the army should be doing their job of defending the country and not dabble in the political processes of running the country. It is also important to point out that our role in the War on Terror has been to support the United States; it has only become evident since 2007 that Pakistan is actually a front in the War on Terror, after terrorists themselves declared Pakistan and Pakistanis as legitimate targets, and proceeded to conduct daily attacks ever since then.

Ch Nisar’s brother, Ch Ibtisar, was a high-ranking Pakistan Army official who became Chief of General Staff as well as Defence Secretary – most famously, he refused to sign Gen Musharraf’s removal orders and Gen Butt’s appointment orders, which led to uncertainty that was capitalized on by Musharraf’s corps commanders and helped in the 1999 coup – or Musharraf’s “countercoup” as he himself calls it. When the PPP and PML-N were “allies” before the judiciary issue forced them to part ways, it was assumed that Ch Nisar would be given the post of Defence Minister – obviously that did not happen, because maybe Ch Nisar was not as cultured as his brother.

Ch Nisar, being a representative of the people and a senior leader of the PML-N, should take a look into his party’s history as well. The PML-N was originally the PML reincarnated by Gen Zia – the architect of the Afghan jihad and the first head of state to use Islamic terrorism as national policy – so that he could have a dummy parliament that could rubberstamp his Ordinances into law. Incidentally one of Zia’s ministers is also currently Pakistan’s Prime Minister. Nawaz Sharif – one of Zia’s favorites – took the advantage of a rift between party leader Junejo and president Zia to carve out his own PML, and he attached his own name to it so that nobody could take it away from him. After this, Nawaz took it upon himself as a personal mission to counter Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan’s liberals – at Zia’s death anniversary, Nawaz Sharif swore on his tomb that he would carry forward “Zia ul Haq Shaheed’s Mission”. Again, incidentally, a lot of religious extremists, takfiris, Wahabbi fundamentalists, and traditionalist conservatives in Pakistan are also pursuing Zia ul Haq’s distorted and macabre mission.

Up till certain years ago, it was alleged that links exist between Al Qaeda and the funding of PML-N – especially in the 1997 elections. Gen Musharraf was quick to remind the international community about this throughout the last decade, in order to dissuade world leaders from considering Sharif a valid political contender. However, with immense Saudi backing, and despite the financial malfeasance and daylight robbery the Sharif brothers conducted in Saudi Arabia – while they were the Kingdom’s guests and protectees – the Sharifs were given a new political lifeline after a deal was reached to allow former PM Benazir Bhutto to come back to the country. The judiciary decreed that it was also Nawaz Sharif’s fundamental right to return to his country – that is when everything hit the fan. By this time, Nawaz Sharif had a huge bone to pick with the Army, who had propped him up in the first place. Sharif could act like a reborn Bhutto who had escaped the military gallows and would come back as a revolutionary leader of the masses who is strictly against military intervention in politics – only because it packed up his government the last time it happened. Evidently, Sharif’s politics are not defined by national interest or public progress, but only by his personal sentiments and his prevalent feelings about the country, its institutions and its general political scenario. Of course, if President Zardari does not open the Hudaibiya Paper Mills cases and other scams, Nawaz Sharif will “silently” trumpet the Swiss cases issue, the NRO and other incidents of corruption that put the PPP in the docket. That is why Nawaz is aware that people call him a “friendly opposition”; while he hates the label, he should be glad that he’s not the “King’s opposition” and live with what the people call him – that is his reality.

The closeness of the PML-N to religious extremists and even terror elements like the SSP (Sipah e Sahaba Pakistan), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, now the JuD, or Jamaat-ud-Dawa, led by Hafiz Saeed), and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are well known. In fact, Nawaz Sharif was only recently attending talks and rallies with Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the JuD and India’s enemy number one. India blames Hafiz Saeed and his JuD for the 26/11 attacks. Nawaz Sharif, while claiming that Pakistan’s India-centric military focus should be altered, immediately jumped into Hafiz Saeed’s lap: this was done within days of each other, leading the people of Pakistan to believe that the N in PML-N stands for “neurotic”.

When the ISI indicated last year that some areas in Southern Punjab had become a breeding ground for terrorism, the PML-N refused their intelligence inputs and assessments outright, refuting the argument by saying that terrorists do not belong to any religion or ethnicity, and trying to pin Punjab as the centre of terrorism is a ‘plot’ against the people of the province. Of course, the PML-N – running the Punjab province more dictatorially than Musharraf’s henchmen the Chaudhry brothers – believes ignore and avoid is the best policies, especially when it comes to critical matters of national importance. South Punjab is a hub of extremism and marginalization, which has become more evident after last year’s floods, and the state is completely absent, while madrassas and religious charities have mushroomed. Of course, after giving them the benefit of the doubt, it still remains to be investigated whether terrorists and suicide bombers are being recruited from poor helpless families of South Punjab, or not. The PML-N, since it is indebted to the vote bank of religious extremists and banned political parties, will never let the provincial government, federal government, or even the army, take action in South Punjab.

And so, terrorism and extremism will fester in Pakistan, while Nawaz Sharif dreams of becoming Prime Minister for the third time. He may even become President. After all, the Charter of Democracy is used again and again to imply that the PPP and PML-N are going to take turns ruling Pakistan and administering its federal government. How democratic!

Intelligence Wars

By Ahsan Waheed
ZoneAsia-Pk

All of a sudden, Pakistan’s much maligned but powerful and professional intelligence agency, the ISI, is the flavor of the month. The reason is a law suit in the US against the agency for its ‘involvement’ in the Mumbai terrorist attack in which US citizens of the Jewish faith lost their lives. The government, the media and public opinion have come together like never before against this ‘outrage’; the ISI is being defended, protected and declared off limits for US courts. The US court – probably as a routine procedure – has issued a summons for the head of ISI to appear in the US court, though it would have been better if the law suit had been examined for viability – that is, unless a more sinister game is afoot.

Read Complete Article Here:
http://www.zoneasia-pk.com/ZoneAsia-Pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2966:intelligence-wars&catid=70:free-talk&Itemid=84

Rebuttal: Pakistan’s Invisible Soldiers

Saad Duraiz

Defence analyst Lt. Gen. (retd) Asad Durrani dropped a bombshell recently with his article titled ‘Invisible Soldiers of Islam’. I am assuming most of the readers have already read the rather shocking piece so I won’t repeat his assertions here. Coming from a man of his experience and understanding of Pakistan’s strategic issues, his words have really washed away his credibility and like one reader noted he’s likely not to be taken seriously again.

Taliban fighters want to ensure that their laws are followed and observed by everyone

General Durrani belongs to an era long gone. The choice of his article’s title is compelling evidence of it. Belonging to days when the justification of Holy War was used to draw fighters to join the Afghan resistance, the General seems to be reminiscing the once glorious days as he nears old age. If as a former DG ISI he wanted to praise his old organisation, I am sure he could have found better ways. Moreover, he failed to take into account the sensitivities of the audience he was writing for: lauding the agency’s role in frustrating Nato efforts to counter the Afghan insurgency is talk more suited in the agency’s discussion rooms than in a national newspaper. Our public does not and cannot differentiate between ‘good Taliban’ and ‘bad Taliban’, no matter how important that distinction might be to the Army and the ISI.

I am ready to believe that not being tech-savvy Durrani could not ascertain that Smashing Lists was in no way a credible source of rankings of anything whatsoever. However I could not absorb his assertion that ‘the ratings are done professionally’. The good general should have been aware that to rate intelligence agencies is probably a job left to God alone. They are the black holes of every state, their operations, actions and plans kept secret to guard national security. Even in countries where the Freedom of Information Acts are evoked to declassify old intelligence documents, the national security argument is often used to keep information hidden forever. As with any intelligence organisation the greatest achievements are always the ones mostly closely guarded. In that light how could the general believe that any individual or organisation can actually provide a rating for intelligence agencies? Giving the agency a pan-Islamist outlook in the current times and when it finally views militancy as a greater threat to our national security than India not only hurt his own credibility but did more harm than good to the agency.

Moving forward

Moving forward to the detractors of the agency, from the failed policies in Afghanistan, to questioning its role in the fight against terrorism they lay the blame for everything going wrong today on the ISI. No one is denying mistakes made in the past but isn’t it time that we stop whining about what happened and move on? We often forget that the men in this agency come from amongst us. They too can make errors in judgement. I would strongly advise reading of Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes to highlight the botched history of the CIA. Strategic decisions made decades ago may seem foolish in hindsight but might have been the most prudent back then.

To accuse the ISI for the incompetence and failure of democratic governments is our national sport. Add to that the daily barrage of foreign news reports bashing the ISI and we see it as a sign of Providence! Numerous keyboard gangsters swarm blog sites jumping the opportunity to quote these ‘reliable’ media outlets. They probably don’t know that the first dictum of working in a clandestine service is that ‘there is no glory in intelligence’. Failures are shouted from rooftops but the most remarkable successes are always taken to the grave. The western press does a darn good job of reiterating the ISI’s failures but what of its achievements? Just because we don’t hear any doesn’t mean there aren’t any, it’s just that they aren’t for our ears in the first place. It’s the price all nations pay to safeguard their interests. We need to learn to live with it.

Missing person’s case takes dramatic turn

Police want Army generals to be probed

By Umar Cheema

ISLAMABAD: A high profile missing person’s case has taken a dramatic turn as the police are examining a sitting corps commander and two recently retired ISI officials whereas a former DG ISI, now a corps commander, is likely to be examined following a guarded disclosure by former attorney general Malik Qayyum.

Lt. Gen. Shafqaatullah, Corps Commander Multan, and two retired ISI officials, Brig. Mansoor Saeed and Col. Jehangir Akhtar, have submitted their statements to the Supreme Court through the police as they were allegedly in knowledge of where Masood Janjua had been kept.

Masood Janjua was picked up along with a friend in July 2005 in Rawalpindi and has been missing since then. Amina, his wife, has waged a movement for the last five years, demanding the release of her husband and others. There are more than 3,500 persons reportedly missing of which 250 cases have been taken up by the Supreme Court.

The police have told the Supreme Court they need to further probe these officials as their statements do not answer all the questions required for a thorough probe, a fact confirmed by Kamran Aadil, Superintendent Police, who is in-charge of the investigation.

Why DG ISI confronted Director CIA?

Zahid Malik

After my four hour long informal interaction with Admiral Mike Mullen, the most powerful man in uniform and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the multi-barrel gun directed at Afghanistan and Pakistan, at the residence of US Ambassador on the rainy evening of April 6, 2009, I had in my comments mentioned that now the ISI was the immediate target of the US Establishment. This was no “breaking news” at all as every one who keeps an eye on the ongoing war on terror knew well that US was hell-bent on (i) getting the Pakistan Army sucked in the domestic turmoil in Swat, FATA and beyond Waziristan, and (ii) reining in what the US calls “rogue elements” in the ISI.

There are confirmed reports that to achieve its objectives the CIA hired the services of at least a dozen Afghan warlords inside Afghanistan and provided through them arms and finances to militants in FATA and Swat to carry out murders and devastations in the country. It was like a double-edged sword not only to get the Army launch attacks against Taliban on Pakistani side of the border but also to give a message to the ISI that the CIA can use the Pakistani Taliban against their own security forces. It was in this background that after a long, long tolerance the prime intelligence agency of the country ultimately confronted the CIA Director Leon E. Panetta with some highly classified and irrefutable evidence. Panetta was startled when DG, ISI General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, a no-nonsense General, placed the facts before him in Islamabad on November 20, 2009. The “deliberate leaks” after the meeting of the spy chiefs of the two countries, spoke of the mind of the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan. General Pasha had earlier conveyed the facts about the interference of CIA in acts of terrorism in Pakistan to the Government but on realizing that either the message was not strongly conveyed to the Americans or it had no desired impact on them, finally put his foot down and expressed serious concerns over the CIA’s crude interference in the country’s internal matters. The proof about instances of covert US support to some hardened militant outfits and terrorist activities they carried out over the past few weeks and months, was presented to Panetta. It was indeed a startling revelation for the top US spy and a bold manoeuvre of Pakistan Army. General Pasha’s tactical move baffled Panetta when he was told in categorical terms that Pakistan had incriminating evidence about the CIA officials’ involvement in providing assistance to perpetrators of some terrorist activities within Pakistan, which had negative impact on Pakistan’s efforts towards war on terror and that the CIA must shun such activities. The clarity with which the information was conveyed sent a loud message to Capitol Hills that if it wanted Pakistan’s cooperation in the war on terror, it must give up playing double games. It is a known fact that the Indian intelligence agency RAW is operating in Afghanistan with the active backing of CIA and not only is it involved in acts of terrorism in the NWFP but also in Balochistan. The Indians cannot undertake such wide-scale activities in this region without the tacit approval and backing of the CIA. The question arises how come India has developed a huge presence in Kabul.

How Maulvi Fazlullah and the banned TTP leaders including Hakeemullah Mehsud reached Afghanistan without the knowledge of Americans? There are reports that TTP leaders were provided satellite phones operated by a Gulf based Western company and they talked freely to BBC and other media organizations without any fear of being detected and targeted by drones or missiles. Then there are also credible reports that a helicopter flew from Afghanistan before 17th October, when operation Rah-e-Nejat in South Waziristan was launched, and evacuated the top leadership of the TTP from Waziristan and shifted to Afghanistan. The Americans also vacated some of the crucial posts along the border with South Waziristan in an apparent bid to provide safe passage to the fleeing Pakistani Taliban. The terrorists arrested here in Pakistan during the operation have also told their investigators about their links with the US and Indian agencies. There is a credible information that full logistic and auxiliary support is still being provided to anti-Pakistan Taliban from Nuristan Province and several top officials from Afghan and Indian intelligence networks were seen active in the process.

So, it is CIA agenda to get Pak Army and now Air Force also, engaged in domestic affairs and dismantle the much dreaded ISI so that when Pakistan became spineless its nuclear assets could be targeted in one way or the other. It all started as early as the present Government took over and on many occasions during this period Washington has been publicly blaming ISI for its links with some of the Taliban leaders including the Haqqani group. During a meeting with Prime Minister Gilani in Washington in August 2008, Director CIA presented him with a charge sheet on Pakistani intelligence agencies for their alleged involvement in Jihadi activities. In order to justify their interference in Balochistan, the CIA raised the bogey of presence of Taliban Shura in or around Quetta.

Now what made the whole scenario very grim is the fact that the Government appears to have succumbed to American pressure to cut the ISI to size and make it a carpet lion. It was in this backdrop that a notification was issued in mysterious circumstances placing the ISI under Interior Ministry, which was later withdrawn when the move backfired. It is a strange and baffling coincidence that during the two stints of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto too a perception developed about undermining the strength of the ISI. For instance, on instructions of the BB Government Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi, the then DG ISI posted out 125 officers of the Agency from Major General to Colonel ranks to other destinations because they were believed to be soft in handling Taliban and in the eyes of US they were “rogue elements”. From my point of view, it was a setback to ISI. Now there is a strong perception that the incumbent leadership has not also been presenting the serious concerns of Pakistan to the Americans in true perspective and is just raising the issues in a casual manner. Perhaps that was the reason that the Army leadership had to make unusual public remarks in a press release, issued by the ISPR after the Corps Commanders meeting in October 2009, expressing serious concern over the Kerry-Lugar Bill saying that certain of its clauses were intrusive and against the national interests and were thus unacceptable. It is all the more important that Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar virtually snubbed the Pakistan Army by accusing it of crossing the red lines while the fact remains that he himself crossed the limits.

I have reasons to believe that all this and CIA’s brute as well as crude interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs has not gone well with the Establishment and infuriated the Pakistan Army. If the Americans did not stop these nonsensical activities in Pakistan, the Army may say NO to cooperation with the US. I am quite sure that if the Army says NO then consequently the whole nation will be at its back. It was owing to this reason that COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, while talking to newsmen on the occasion of rolling out of first JF-17 Thunder Aircraft at Kamra on November 24, declared that the US would have to take Pakistan into confidence and taking into consideration the armed forces know-how to defend the country.

I personally endorse the changing mood of the Army and the ISI to preserve the dignity and honour of the country and its institutions and I wish the civilian Government also had the resolve to do this.