It is said that power in Pakistan rests on three "A's: America , Allah and the Army. While America was mollified by obedience and Allah by giving in to key demands of religious forces, the army was mollified by following its policies. But for the two years a rift between the Army and the US-client government of President Zardari was widening and the latest Memogate scandal has brought it to an open confrontation.
Perhaps the first major rift between army and the US-client Zardari regime came on July 27, 2009, when the government issued a notification to place the entire financial, administrative and operational control of Pakistan's master spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), with the Interior Ministry. The notification was withdrawn in less than 24 hours amid sharp reaction by the Army.
Apparently, Zardari government tried to put the ISI under civilian control on behest of Washington as after the Mumbai attacks of December 2008, Senator Kerry called for putting the ISI under civilian control.
The second open rift came in September 2009, when apparently Pakistan's ambassador to US Husain Haqqani helped in inserting anti-Army clauses in the Kerry-Lugar Act which demanded an effective "civilian control" of the promotion of senior military leaders, military budgets, the chain of command and strategic guidance and planning.
Sub-clause (15) of Section 302A of the Act calls for an assessment of the extent to which the Government of Pakistan exercises effective civilian control of the military, including a description of the extent to which civilian executive leaders and parliament exercise oversight and approval of military budgets, the chain of command, the process of promotion for senior military leaders, civilian involvement in strategic guidance and planning, and military involvement in civil administration.
The more direct language against military intervention in political and judicial processes was apparently been added by the US legislators on the insistence of the present government of President Zardari through Husain Haqqani who has been critical of the army and ISI while staying in US since 2002.
Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and his top commanders met on October 7, 2009 and expressed "serious concern" about clauses in the bill "impacting on national security."
Another issue of conflict between army and the pro-US government was the matter of visa issuance to hundreds of Americans without prior-scrutiny of the Pakistani security agencies. Despite the army reservations the Zardari regime following US pressure authorized the Haqqani-led Washington embassy to issue visas on its own without referring their cases even to the Foreign Office and the ISI and other security agencies.
Advocate of
the Supreme Court Tariq Asad, who is a petitioner in the memo case, told the
Supreme Court that the Pakistani Embassy in the U.S., headed by Haqqani, had
issued a total of 7,000 visas to U.S. citizens without security clearance from
2008 to date, out of which, 450 visas were stamped in a single night. He said
that from July 14 to Aug. 30, 2010, the Pakistani ambassador in Washington issued as many as 1,445 visas to the U.S.
citizens -- mostly in the garb of diplomats without security clearance.
Memogate Scandal
However,
the Army and the government came on a head on collision on the so-called
Memogate Scandal. The memo was sent on May 10, 2011 to
the US Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen through the former National
Security Advisor Jim Jones. In the memo the Pakistani government sought
Washington's help as it feared a military coup, following the alleged killing
of Osama bin Laden in a US forces raid in Abbottabad. "Civilians cannot
withstand much more of the hard pressure being delivered from the Army to
succumb to wholesale changes." The memo promised to hand over Ayman
Al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Pakistan's
defense and foreign policies, as well as its nuclear deterrent to the USA, so long as
it prevented a military takeover. The memo was written by an American citizen
of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, who claimed that he wrote it at behest of Pakistan's
ambassador to US Husain Haqqani (now sacked).
In a major
setback to the regime of President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's Supreme Court on
December 30, 2011 ordered a judicial probe into the Memogate scandal. The
Supreme Court investigating commission will probe two crucial questions in the
Memogate scandal: (1) whether Husain Haqqani had a role in the conception,
preparation and writing of the memo and (2) whether there was also someone else
behind him, prompting him to produce the memo.
The
inquire commission is headed by Chief Justice Balochistan High Court Justice
Qazi Faiz Isa and will comprise of Chief Justice Sindh High Court Justice
Masheer Alam and Chief Justice Islamabad High Court Justice Iqbal Hameedur
Rehman. The court has ruled that the Commission is required to complete this
task within a period of four weeks. The inquiry commission held its first
meeting on January 2, 2012.
Memogate is really just a byword for a much bigger and complex game of power politics. That is why the government did its best to avoid an investigation by anybody not under its control. It wants an investigation by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, which is bound to have a government majority built in. The Parliamentary Committee has said that it will continue its own proceedings on the memogate affair while the Supreme Court carries out its own.
Pakistan army wants Zardari out but not a coup
Interestingly, on December 22, Reuters news agency quoted military sources in Islamabad as saying that Pakistan's army - the arbiter of power - is fed up with unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari and wants him out of office, but through legal means and without a repeat of the coups that are a hallmark of the country's 64 years of independence.
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