Why I am Sad- Ejaz Haider's Follow up article to An Open Letter to Gen Pasha

As I sit down to write this article, I am sad and deeply troubled for four reasons. I am sad that I had to lose a friend, Saleem Shahzad; I am sad that I had to write an open letter to Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Director-General-ISI; I am sad that letter got such a massive response; and I am sad that far from understanding what I wrote and why, the sleuths decided to respond by leaving pitiable comments through fake names, expressing the same putrid thinking that has brought us to this pass.

The thrust of the letter was simple. I tried to inform the DG-ISI that people were pointing fingers at the ISI and that the agency he heads is deeply distrusted by a very large number of people. Both of these are facts and not a figment of anyone’s imagination. Nor is this an external conspiracy. This distrust is grounded in how the agency has evolved over the years and how it has become unaccountable.

Allied with this was my contention that I consider this disconnect the biggest evolving threat to the state, the entity that has always been my unit of analysis. But because this entity as an organising principle can be easily problematised, being more imagined than real or biological, its cohesion and acceptability are a function of its legitimacy. That legitimacy comes when people accept the state as working on their behalf and when the core aspects of the identity of a state are accepted and internalised by the people to the point and where any external challenges to those core aspects are simply not entertained.

Anything short of this and the state begins to lose its legitimacy. A loss of legitimacy is, in many ways, the gravest threat that a state can face. Pakistan today faces this threat at a very high level. This is because the state first empowered various right-wing elements to fight its covert wars, and then lost control of those elements after staging a U-turn under external pressure. One consequence of this lack of control is that those radicalised elements have since run amok and created a bloodbath within Pakistan. The left-liberal enclave, on the retreat for a long time, has always been alienated from the state which it correctly considers to be heavily biased in favour of the military.

The result of all this is the near-absence of a centre and very deep internal fault-lines that, over the years, have only further deepened. It is woefully inadequate to say that all these fault-lines are produced by conspiracies against Pakistan. And it is downright dishonest to say that anyone pointing out these fault-lines is working for the enemies of Pakistan.

States have faced greater military challenges than the one facing Pakistan today. But those that come out victorious are not fractured nations whose homes lie divided. We are. And no amount of propaganda, dissembling and petty lying can negate that fact. It is these divisions which our external enemies are exploiting. Identifying these divisions therefore does not make one an enemy of Pakistan; in fact it is those ignoring or hiding our divisions who are betraying this country. Let there be no doubt about this.

Any writer would be happy to get a huge response to what he or she writes. Why then did the response to my letter make me sad? Simple. It proves the contention contained in the letter that we now have a disconnect between the military and the civilians, which disconnect is our biggest internal threat. And how does one address it? By being an ostrich? Pretending it doesn’t exist? That all is well? Quite the contrary.

Those Pakistanis who are distrustful of the state, the military, the intelligence agencies – not to mention politicians and political parties – are not enemies of this country. For the most part these are decent people, with families and jobs who would like nothing more than to see their country prosper. They would like nothing more than to hold a green passport with honour and dignity. They are all patriots, and given what they want, probably more patriotic than those contemptible sods who choose to fudge issues and malign others.

Finally, the ghost-written responses to my letter make me despair because they show so clearly what is wrong with us; they also prove, if proof were still required, that our only strategy when in a hole is to dig further. If it were just about myself, I would have written a satirical column, lampooning these ghosts who live in a phantom world. But this is about a state which is my only abode, my only identity, regardless of where I might be. It is home.

Let me reiterate. No matter what these apologists of the old and defeated paradigm might say, Pakistan has to reinvent itself; it has to woo its people and give them a sense of belonging – regardless of caste, creed, colour, ethnicity, religion and religious denominations. The day this happens, the external world will have nothing to exploit. No external intelligence agency will be able to hire its people to advance its agenda and this country will interest the world rather than worrying it. There will be no disconnect between the military and the people. No one will have to write an open letter; no one will read such a letter. No one will be sad.

In Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Life of Galileo, Andrea Sarti, Galileo’s student, is frustrated by his inability to stand up to the Inquisition and says: “Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Hearing this, Galileo replies: “No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

 

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times.

An Open Letter to General Pasha DG ISI, by Ejaz Haider

Dear General Pasha,

I write this letter to you in the wake of the gruesome and gratuitousmurder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, friend to many, including myself.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, the agency you head, is being accused of Saleem’s murder. You must also know that the ISI is widely reviled and dreaded at home. For an agency that was set up primarily for strategic intelligence, this is quite an achievement. It is accused of driving in its own lane, monitoring the media,kidnapping, torturing and sometimes killing dissenters, political and otherwise, determining, arbitrarily, what Pakistan’s national interest is and how best we should go about pursuing it.

You must also know that some former officers have not only admitted to electoral fraud, rigging, making and breaking of political alliances, buying people through a mix of carrots and sticks, and browbeating the media, but consider having done so as part of their remit and in the best national interest. Perish the thought that any one of them would say peccavi, since some actually boast about it.

Whispers there always have been. But now much is being said aloud. The ISI is not accountable to anyone; it is all-powerful; it can kill mercilessly and, in this case, it has killed Saleem, so go these whispers. What would you say to this? Shrug and move on, as if it makes no difference, that this is about a few flies buzzing around, a minor nuisance at worst? The man, who now lies buried after being tortured to death, leaves behind three children and a wife. To me this does not look like anything minor.

And what has the agency you head done so far? Nothing, beyondgetting an unnamed official to say that while the “unfortunate and tragic death of Syed Saleem Shahzad is a source of concern for the entire nation”, “the incident should not be used to target and malign the country’s security agencies”. Well, sir, to me this is totally unacceptable. What makes the security agencies exempt from criticism or accountability, especially if they are considered enemies by the very people they are supposed to protect?

I believe in giving everyone a fair hearing but the ISI has to do much more than get an unnamed official to issue a feeble condolence and follow it up with a veiled threat to the media to deserve such a hearing. And as far as maligning the agency is concerned or knowing what national interest is, this being no time for mincing words, let me assure you that I understand the theoretical and practical dimensions of statecraft better and more deeply than your entire agency. And I am not the only one.

Now, for a moment, let’s assume that the ISI has not killed Saleem. Let’s also assume that much of what is being said about the ISI is the product of a heat-oppressed civilian brain, not a reality. Perhaps you would still like to know why people think such things of the ISI. So, here goes.

Nation-states are not biological entities; they are, to use the cliché, ‘imagined communities’. This, as the starting point, should give you some idea about how easily the concept of the state and its interest can be problematised. Democratic states garner the loyalties of their people through a sense of sharing and participation, through constitutionalism. In comparison, totalitarian and oppressive states use fear to keep the flock together. History shows that the latter break up at some point. No amount of oppression can keep the people chained; it is only a matter of time. Instead, oppression begets violence and deep turmoil. The problem with oppression is thus that it attracts what it sets out to avoid. Therein lies both the irony and the paradox.

Allied with this point is the idea of civilian supremacy, the fact that while the state becomes overarching, those representing it at any point of time have to operate on the basis of accepted and acceptable rules of the game. They are all accountable through two levels of agency. The first and primary level of agency is granted by the people through elections to their representatives; the second, a much more restrictive level of agency, is accorded by the peoples’ representatives to bureaucratic institutions, including the military and its intelligence agencies.

You, sir, are therefore a servant twice over, as are all your officers and other personnel. You are answerable to our representatives and those representatives are answerable to us.

Obviously, theory does not match fact in Pakistan and it is this anomaly which has brought the country to the brink of disaster. I have said this before and I will say it again: The military-ISI combinehas no business defining Pakistan’s interest. That is our job and we, the civilians, will do it through our representatives. Your job is to implement, not formulate, policies.

Since it is your job to identify threats, you must understand the deep fault lines developing in this state. Today’s disarray is the product of flawed policies and even more flawed attempts at nation-building. Strategic vision, like charity, begins at home. If the people of this country feel proud to be Pakistanis, you will have that strength at your back. If they don’t, that makes you very weak too. And you can’t beat people into submission; nor kill them and expect all will be hunky-dory.

It is all about the fundamentals. Unless you get the fundamentals right, no amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff will reduce the threats the country faces. In fact, given what the people think about the agency you head, one of the biggest evolving threats appears to emanate from an organisation whose very reason for existence is to identify and evaluate threats to this state. Could there be a deeper irony than this?

I met you the first time in November 2007 when you were director-general military operations. I know you to be a straight-talking soldier. I would expect that you would do everything to prove that Saleem was not murdered by the ISI. Conversely, if the spoor is traced back to your agency, that you would ensure that whoever is responsible for it, no matter how highly placed, would face the law as a common murderer. That is the only honourable thing to do and nothing less would do, or be acceptable. That is also the only way you can save this country.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2011.