November 25, 2011
‘Memogate’ Stirs Political Crisis in Pakistan
The mystery surrounding the secret memorandum delivered on May 10 to Adm. Mike Mullen, the most senior American General, ostensibly on behalf of President Zardari has stirred such a controversy in Pakistan that some analysts fear even extra-constitutional changes on the political landscape with the army playing the crucial role. Indeed, the army is the chief target of the thrust of the memo.
The memo offers to cleanse the military establishment of elements supporting Islamic radicals and the Taliban, alter Pakistan’s foreign policy to bring it in line with US interests in the region, and to concede space to US military for direct operations in Pak territory - a near surrender or sellout of Pakistan to the United States. The offer, claimed the memo, is contingent upon the US military leadership thwarting the possibility of Pakistan army staging a coup against the elected government to divert attention from the humiliation of the Abbotabad incident. To quote the memo, “A unique window of opportunity exists for the civilians to gain the upper hand over the army and intelligence directorates due to their complicity in the Osama bin Laden matter”.
The memo offers a six-point plan to alter Pakistan’s national security leadership in favor of US interests, including the elimination of Section S of the ISI that maintains liaison with the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
Delivery of the memo to the top military man was arranged by Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani descent. He claims that the memo was drafted by ambassador Hussain Haqqani on behalf of President Zardari who cleared it for delivery.
The ambassador denies it emphatically and maintains that he neither wrote the memo, nor read it, and that he had received no instruction from the President in that context; the entire story has been concocted by Ijaz himself. On his part, Ijaz published an opinion piece in the Financial Times, London, of October 10 in which he reiterated his claim about the authorship of the memo and the approval of its contents at the highest level in Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview, November 17, with The Cable, he alleged that ambassador Haqqani “was not only the author of the memo, but the ‘architect’ of the entire plan to overthrow Pakistan’s military and intelligence leadership, and was seeking US help”.
Who is Mansoor Ijaz? I had read some of his articles in various international papers but he had never excited my curiosity to know more about him as a person. The ‘memogate’ has suddenly placed him in the limelight, giving him the attention that had this far eluded him.
According to Wikipadia, “Mansoor Ijaz (born 1961) is an American businessman of Pakistani Ahmadiya ancestry. He is an investment banker and a conservative media commentator on terrorism … He was an advocate of the Iraq war. He is the founder and Chairman of Crescent Investment Management LLC”. He received his bachelor’s degree in nuclear physics in 1983 and his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1985. His father Dr. Mujahid Ahmad Ijaz was a theoretical physicist. Mansoor is a member of Council on Foreign Relations. He has appeared on several TV news and talk shows and contributed articles to several American and British papers. In his TV program he had endorsed the claim that Saddam Husein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). He claims that Iran has already produced nuclear bombs. He was accused of trying to extort $15 million from Pakistan’s embassy in Washington for a questionable service he claims to have rendered to it.
The noted media man, Hamid Mir, in a lengthy column in The News of November 2, has quoted Benazir as saying , “Mansoor Ijaz is not be trusted”, and he has related incidents confirming her charge. Matter of fact, she refused to meet him for the simple reason that she found him unreliable. In revenge he started tarnishing her image as a corrupt person through press articles. Ambassador Wajid Shamsul Hasan too found him untrustworthy. Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi refused to engage his services as a lobbyist for Pakistan as she found his credibility open to question.
In the present case of the controversial memo, Farhatullah Babar, the President’s spokesperson, has aptly described Mr. Ijaz’s problem in the following words: “Mansoor Ijaz’s allegation is nothing more than a desperate bid by an individual whom recognition and credibility has eluded, to seek media attention through concocted stories”.
Ijaz has all along been a critic of the PPP. Some analysts have attributed this to the declaration of Ahmadis as a non-Muslim community by the government of Z.A. Bhutto. He has been critical of Benazir and Zardari so very often that it does not make sense that Mr. Zardari would make use of him for conveying the message.
Mr. Hussain Haqqani, 55, who has at the time of writing (Nov 19) arrived in Islamabad to answer the charges against him leveled by Mansoor Ijaz and the misgivings about him among the higher echelons of the armed forces, is a high achiever who has served as adviser to three Prime Ministers, as ambassador to Sri Lanka at a young age and has been accepted as professor by the Boston University despite the fact that he has no doctorate degree, and he has been serving with distinction as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US for the past three years. He is one of the most agile and effective ambassadors that I have seen over the past half a century. Unfortunately, he is entangled in the tussle for leadership and power between the army and the civil administration in his native land.
As his book ‘Between the Mosque and the Military’ portrays, Pakistan’s armed forces, he believes, have to be under the civilian leadership like any other country. Four military dictatorships in the short history of Pakistan have cemented an obverse pattern in the country.
The contents of the controversial memo are in line with his thinking and therefore admit of Mansoor Ijaz exploiting it to invite the wrath of the military leadership against Haqqani. Mr. Haqqani will be well advised to quit his diplomatic post and resume teaching.
arifsyedhussaini@Gmail.com
