One is inclined to ignore PPP Secretary Information Fauzia Wahab’s often ignorant reasoning on various issues, where she could better serve her party by keeping mum. Former American National Security Advisor General James Jones, reportedly, came out with a testimony to the effect that Hussain Haqqani was not the author of the memo, which he wanted Mansoor Ijaz to convey to Admiral Mike Mullen, and that the language and style of the memo was quite similar to that of Ijaz. Fauzia Wahab, during a TV programme, jumped to the conclusion that since the US General had made the statement, it had rendered the memo baseless.
But the Pakistani Prime Minister took the cake in following suit and declaring that after James Jones’ testimony the memo case ought to be put behind us as a non-issue. Mind you, Gilani had earlier, after statement by and questioning of Hussain Haqqani in the presence of the President and the military high command, not only termed the matter as serious and sensitive, but also immediately asked for Haqqani’s resignation and ordered probe into it by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security.
Much worse was support of the government stance by an editor of a daily that testimony by the former US Security Advisor was good enough to make the memo inconsequential. I do not think that his profession allows him to take positions over a case, which is under investigation by the country’s supreme judiciary. In the same TV programme, another journalist of merit drew attention to a very distinct third possibility to which little attention has apparently been paid so far, and that merits an incisive look by the Supreme Court and also by the National Security Committee, particularly in the wake of expression of undue support and sympathy for the former Pakistani Ambassador by the American hierarchy.
What is surprising, however, is that a lawyer of substance like Asma Jehangir presented the same General Jones’ testimony to the Supreme Court, as evidence in support of her client Haqqani. Jones, who has been part of the US administration at the top level, sticking his neck out in defending a Pakistani Ambassador linked to serving American interests, raises many questions. It also beats all reasoning that Lt General Shuja Pasha’s probe with Ijaz over the authenticity of the document seeking American intervention in Pakistan, the document that has cost disparaging aspersions on the Pak Army with implications for its morale should be seen by Asma Jehangir as treasonable. The Army General, one should think, was as much at liberty to take a position as taken by other parties to the memogate.
The few pertinent questions and points arising out of this memo, which has surfaced after continued failure of a series of ploys by Washington to discredit and rein in the sole defenders of Pakistan’s territorial integrity with the help of its agents in and outside the country, which require the indulgence of the Judicial Commission are as follows:
i What prompted the General Jones to issue the above statement and testimony?
i The General says that he had known Ijaz for the last five or six years, but would not categorise his acquaintance as friendship. How could then he have reposed confidence in a person he barely knew, and acted so irresponsibly in agreeing to act as a courier to carry a potentially explosive unsigned memo without verifying the source of its origination and the veracity of its content?
i Why did Admiral Mullen initially deny the existence of any such memo, which he later admitted to have received?
i If Mullen had ignored the memo as being fake, what action in the first place did the American administration take against such irresponsible conduct of no less than a former US National Security Advisor in reaching a spurious message to the top, and against Ijaz a Pakistani American for attempting to further impair and damage already highly soured Pak-American relations? On the contrary, the Admiral’s accusation against the ISI for being behind the Haqqani network fall in line with the contents of the memo.
i The oft repeated statement by the former Ambassador that he neither drafted the memo, nor sent it to Mullen, has never been in question. Ijaz has always maintained that he was asked by Haqqani to convey the message allegedly authorised by his ‘boss’ to the Admiral, the essence of which was dictated to him by Haqqani and accordingly drafted by Ijaz, who got it vetted by ex-Ambassador before using his source (General Jones) to reach it to Mullen. The truth is verifiable by forensic examination of their respective BlackBerries, but how Haqqani conveniently left his BlackBerry back home in America?
If the truth had dawned upon the Prime Minister through General Jones’ statement in preference to his own military hierarchy, he ought to have disbanded the parliamentary inquiry and reinstated the Ambassador to Washington. More importantly, since also implicated, the President ought to have not only filed an affidavit in the court that he was not involved, but also sued Ijaz and the Financial Times for damages and sought apology over publishing the trash tarnishing his image, besides attempting to draw a wedge between Pakistan’s civil and military.
The Supreme Court will no doubt get to the bottom of Ijaz’s dubious role in this whole episode, including that if, indeed, in line with his anti-Pak Army and anti-Pakistan past record, Ijaz was Haqqani’s natural choice for using as a conduit, what made them fall foul of each other and prompt the American businessman to spill the beans and become approver to Pakistan’s armed forces about whom he had never said a kind word.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: zaheerbhatti1@gmail.com