Tag Archives: ISI

Missing in action

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Gulzar Dars, a low-ranking official in the Pakistan Army deployed at Chhor Garrison in Sindh’s Umerkot district, has not returned home since late 2008. When his brother, Isa Dars, visited the garrison in the summer of 2009 to find out what happened, an army colonel told him that Gulzar had been arrested on December 2, 2008. The officer did not explain further. “When I asked him why Gulzar was arrested and what happened after his arrest, the colonel said he did not know,” Isa tells the Herald in his village Tardos, in Chhachhro region of Tharparkar district, right next to Pakistan’s border with India across the Thar desert.

Since then, their family has suffered one tragedy after the other: First Gulzar’s only child, a daughter, died and then his father, Arbab Dars, passed away. But more than three years have gone by since Isa last heard from Gulzar. “We do not know why he was arrested, what happened to him after arrest or if he is even alive.”

Gulzar’s maternal uncle, Mohammad Waris Dars, who retired from the Pakistan Army as havaldar in 1987, has been missing too since February 2, 2009. He was working as a security guard in Karachi when he disappeared and his employer told his family that he never returned to rejoin his duty after having left his workplace a day earlier. When his eldest son, Mohammad Asif, went to the police, they refused to register a case because of his father’s military background.

Many other families in the same area have similar stories. For instance, 80-year-old Ajeemat in the nearby village of Samrar has been waiting for the return of her two sons for the last three years. One of them, Inayat Ali, was still in the army when he went missing in December 2008 and is known to be in the army’s custody, and the other, Wahid Bukhsh, a retired soldier, has disappeared without a trace since early 2009 (see Three Women, Three Stories).

Dost Ali, a resident of Baliari village, also does not know why the intelligence agencies arrested his son Lance Naik Rab Dino from Pannu Aaqil Garrison in December 2009, where they have detained him and whether he is still alive.

The intelligence agencies also arrested Suleman Arisar in December 2009 on espionage charges from Umerkot town where he was running a tea stall after deserting the army. But it was only in February 2011 that his family knew who had taken him away and why and that too after his mother, Jama, filed a petition in the Sindh High Court for the recovery of her son.

Going by such harrowing tales of forced disappearances and clueless families of the disappeared people trying to catch at straws to know about their dear ones, Abdul Razzaq of Samrar can count himself lucky to have returned home alive after he was arrested in February 2009 from Hyderabad garrison where he was working as a naik in the army. “I do not remember the exact day [when] some people barged into my room in the barracks; [they] overpowered and blindfolded me and drove me away,” he tells the Herald.

When monthly money orders stopped arriving from him and he also did not visit his home for months, his family got worried. His brother contacted his regiment but did not get any reply. The family also wrote several letters to the topmost officials of the Sindh Police as well as the chief justices of the Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan but none of them responded. An application that his wife, Jaan Bai, sent to the Chief Justice of Pakistan on October 20, 2009 mentions that even Razzaq’s immediate bosses in his military unit did not disclose his whereabouts when contacted by the family. Then his brother filed a petition at the Sindh High Court and it was in response to this petition that the defence ministry, through its director Lieutenant-Colonel Sarfaraz Khan, informed the court in February 2010 that Razzaq, along with some other soldiers from his native area, were being held under espionage charges.

His months in captivity were tough, to say the least. “The inhuman torture that I underwent during 14 months of my detention not only left me with brutal injuries but also maimed my soul,” he narrates his ordeal to the Herald. He says he had to confess to the crime that he did not even commit to avoid torture but was later able to prove his innocence through documentary evidence (see Manufacturing Confessions).

After his interrogators cleared him of the charges he was facing, Razzaq reported back to his army unit in the Baloch Regiment. His unit head, a colonel whose name he cannot recall, congratulated him on facing the charges with courage and getting a clean chit. But, feeling demeaned and disillusioned by his superiors, he was already thinking of something else. “How could I work for those who suspect my loyalty to my country?” he asks. Wounded and shattered, he quit his job in the Pakistan Army as soon as he returned to his village.

Razzaq, who joined the army in 1996 and served as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone in 2002-2003, no longer sees his stint with the Pakistan Army as a badge of honour. He has confined himself to his village and does not like to use naik, his military rank, as a prefix with his name as most former men in the uniform would.
Dost Ali, Lance Naik Rab Dino’s father, is aghast that his son and other soldiers from the area are being arrested and interrogated for espionage. “Charges of espionage are ridiculous,” he says. It is the third generation of villagers from his area that has been working in the Pakistan Army and there were never such charges in the past. “How is it that all of a sudden they have turned into spies?” he asks.

About 20 in-service and retired soldiers from the area disappeared between 2008 and 2010. While the military authorities never informed their families about their arrests or reasons thereof, documents seen by the Herald suggest that the entire process of investigating and trying them is cloaked in secrecy. When Arisar’s family moved the court for his recovery, for example, the then chief justice of the Sindh High Court Sarmad Jalal Osmany ordered his trial through the Field General Court Martial as early as possible (see General Justice). He also ordered the military authorities to notify the court about progress in his trial. But nobody knows whether he is being tried and if so what stage his trial has proceeded to. During a hearing in February 2011, Deputy Attorney General Mian Khan Malik told the court that the military authorities did not reply to any of the several reminders his department had sent to them regarding compliance with the court orders in Arisar’s case.

Dr Ghulam Haider Samejo, a member of the National Assembly from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party in whose constituency the families of the disappeared villagers reside, says he often hears about such arrests and disappearances but cannot verify them. “The army has its own procedures and if a serving soldier is arrested what can I do about him?” he tells the Herald when asked whether he had raised the issue in the Parliament.

The Herald sent repeated messages through email and cellphone to the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) to know the army’s side of the story but his reply never came.

From the Editorial Desk – All power to the ISI

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The time to pause and think is a luxury that we do not have in Pakistan. And because the country’s internal, regional and international situation changes so rapidly, there never appears to be enough opportunity to formulate a thought-through and well-worked out response. As a result, we stumble from crisis to crisis. While there can be a number of explanations for such a state of affairs, there must be a consensus about the consequence:Pakistanis always in reactive mode vis-à-vis both internal problems and external challenges.

The outgoing month saw both the breakneck speed at which domestic and not-so-domestic incidents unfolded and knee-jerk reactions emanating from the state and from within society. Out of the myriad developments, these included Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s resignation from the National Assembly, followed by his subsequent entry into Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the Nato attack across the border killing 24 Pakistani soldiers and officers, the government’s review petition on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and the ongoing saga of corruption cases.

But let’s just stick to Husain Haqqani,Pakistan’s outgoing ambassador to the United States. Without a well-hewed institutional mechanism to deal with the problem that arose with his alleged involvement in writing and sending a memo to the United States to clip the Pakistan Army’s wings in the wake of bin Laden raid, what we have are calls for his immediate arrest and trial for treason. From declaring him guilty even before he could even utter a single word in his defence, to his unceremonious exit to the filing of petitions against him in the Supreme Court, nowhere did the media, the government, the opposition and the courts stop to think for a moment, about the due process, the rule of the law, and following rules and regulation.

Not that the Herald wants to defend Haqqani or argue for or against the authenticity, origin and the purpose of the memo — far from it. This is to highlight how we, as a state and society, flout the same rule of law and institutionalisation that we so hanker for. The media acts like a demolition squad, cutting loose and running away with whatever half-truth comes its way; the government ties itself in knots by trying to avoid rules and regulations as much as it can and as long as it possibly can; the opposition believes the superior judiciary holds the key to all national problems; and the superior judiciary believes it does.

What would have happened if we had abided by the law in this particular case? An American citizen wrote an opinion piece in a British newspaper claiming that he wrote and sent a memo to the American authorities on behalf of a senior Pakistani diplomat who in turn was acting on behalf of someone at a very high position in Pakistan. The writer also thought the entire memo was a wonderful idea because it purported to rein in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) which, according to him, should be declared a terrorist organisation. It is quite natural that the Pakistani media carried the story — but not as a slander campaign as it did but rather as a balanced piece that, more than anything else, highlighted the need for investigating the whole issue. The government, on its part, should not have limited its response to just denials: It should have promptly constituted an inquiry committee to probe into Haqqani’s role, asking him to resign and face the investigators without the protection of his office. The opposition should have raised the issue in the parliament before its members raised it at public meetings, television talk shows and subsequently in the court of law. After all, it does not take a lot of doing to requisition the parliament to discuss a particular issue. And finally the courts should have declined to accept the opposition’s petitions before all other options were exhausted. But the media knows no patience, the government understands no procedure, the opposition brooks no institutional limits and the courts — well, better left unsaid for fear of contempt of court.

In all this bypassing of procedures, laws and institutions, what has gone unnoticed is perhaps the greatest violation of the constitutional authority and legal processes – the ISI chief travelling to London, sitting with the writer of the memo article and receiving evidence from him against Haqqani. The ISI comes under the prime minister but there is no evidence if the ISI chief even so much as hinted about his London meeting in his interactions with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani – neither before the meeting took place or even after it had happened until somebody leaked it to the press weeks later.

Now logic demands that Haqqani be probed and tried because he allegedly acted without lawful authority and against Pakistan’s interests. But doesn’t the same logic demand that the ISI chief be probed and tried because he has reportedly acted without lawful authority, purportedly undermining the authority of the government of Pakistan? Here the media, the government, the opposition and even the courts display a deafening silence. To answer why this is allowed to happen would take us back to the same old issue of the military’s dominance over the polity in Pakistan— a subject debated unto death in these pages. But the sad truth is that no other institutional framework, legal process and official procedure will ever breathe freely and develop unless this fundamental flaw is somehow taken care of.

At the military’s beck and call

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The civil and military leadership at the All Parties Conference

The civil and military leadership at the All Parties Conference

Only a week before dismissing Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo’s government in May 1988, military dictator General Ziaul Haq angrily remarked to his subordinates in Rawalpindi’s army house, “Have you noticed how arrogant Junejo has become? He even walks and behaves like [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto.”
Zia’s anger was not without cause. A month earlier, the prime minister had not only gone against the general’s advice to sign the Geneva Peace Accord with the Afghan government but had also rallied the country’s political leadership behind this decision. In the process, Junejo isolated Zia and the military leadership and, perhaps, came as close to achieving civilian supremacy over security and foreign policy issues as any civilian leader in Pakistan ever has.
In March 1988, Junejo called an All Parties Conference (APC) on Afghanistan. He wanted Benazir Bhutto to participate in the conference, in order to ensure its success, and she demanded that Zia would not be invited to attend the event. Junejo accepted this condition. A piqued Zia then instructed Junejo not to sign the Geneva Peace Accord in haste. However, buoyed by the APC’s support for his point of view, Junejo dispatched foreign minister Zain Noorani to sign it.
Junejo’s attitude towards the military’s top brass is in stark contrast with the way Pakistan’s present political leadership is playing second fiddle to the military and intelligence establishment’s decisions. In an APC on September 29, leading politicians endorsed a resolution supporting a change of policy in dealing with militants in the tribal areas. The new policy, summed up as “Give peace a chance,” is intended to initiate dialogue with the tribal militants.
As the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Khalid Shamim Wyne, the Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director-General Shuja Pasha briefed the APC participants, no one questioned the rationale for the policy change. Ironically, only two years ago, these political leaders had supported a military operation in Swat — again, no questions were asked.
Some participants at the September APC say the gathering was not meant to encourage, let alone ask, critical questions. Abid Hassan Minto, the senior Supreme Court lawyer known for his left-wing politics, was present at the APC and had some questions; he left the conference midway when he was not allowed to ask any. “The format of the APC was not conducive to questioning and the mood was not of critically examining the issues,” he says. There were dozens of political leaders present and all of them wanted to deliver hard-hitting speeches, he adds.
Minto says nobody questioned the military commanders about Pakistan’s internal security situation or the practical purpose of negotiating with militants after more than seven years of intermittent military operations. The APC did not question the political objective of successive military operations in the tribal areas and numerous peace deals forged with tribal militant groups.
Minto says he did not sign the resolution, “because after listening to the prime minister’s speech and briefings by Kayani, Pasha and the foreign minister, I had a clear understanding of the exact purpose of the APC.” It was, he says, “organised to endorse the decision of the military leadership”.
APC participants from almost all major political parties say they did not float the idea of initiating dialogue with militants. Only minor parties like Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf and extreme right-wing parties urged the government to start the dialogue, sources within the APC say. That they managed to make it the most important part of the resolution confirms that their agenda was being pushed by the military leadership.
The APC was convened at a time when Pakistan’s military leadership came under pressure from their counterparts in the United States military and intelligence establishment. Official circles perceived American allegations that Pakistani intelligence services were providing logistical support to militant groups such as the Haqqani network as threats. However, even before the politicians could meet, the Americans had already started a diplomatic effort to calm the Pakistani leadership’s nerves by issuing conciliatory statements and praising Pakistan for its role in the war against militancy.
No political leader, however, asked the military commanders and intelligence chief about the nature of their interactions with the Americans. None of them knew that Pakistani spies had, indeed, facilitated a meeting between the Haqqani network and American interlocutors only months before they placed their collective weight behind the military as a show of defiance to the United States. This meeting came to light last month when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed the information during her visit to Pakistan.
A senior member of a major opposition party admits that the ISI-facilitated meeting between the Haqqanis and the US has had serious foreign policy implications and should have been critically examined in the APC before any endorsement of the resolution. He cannot explain, however, why this could not happen. The commanders were not asked why or how the Americans accused Pakistan of harbouring Haqqani militants and providing them logistical support only a month after meeting with the militants. Whether the military opts to corral political support for itself only when in trouble and does not even so much as bother to talk to politicians when things are hunky-dory is certainly open to question.
Observers say such a situation usually arises when the line between foreign policy and the murky world of intelligence blurs. When this happens, spymasters take over where politicians and diplomats should have been in charge. Such a shift is not only the result of recent events — the absence of strong democratic and civilian institutions through much of Pakistan’s history has allowed the military and intelligence establishment to dominate the policymaking process, enabled by an eager-to-please political class willing to do the military’s bidding to settle internal scores.
If the politicians had not made their internal discord visible and had avoided strengthening Zia in the wake of the Junejo government’s dismissal, his regime would have collapsed before his plane crashed. Zia was already feeling nervous as he witnessed his trusted officials being shown the door by Junejo in the months preceding the Geneva Peace Accord. Junejo first sacked Major-General Agha Nek Mohammad who was heading the civilian intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau, and was considered close to Zia. He subsequently sacked foreign minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, another close Zia associate. The message was clear — Junejo wanted to exclude Zia and the military from the domain of internal security and foreign policy.
“The single biggest mistake the Pakistani politicians made was that they were not organised when Zia moved against the Junejo government,” says Minto. Some of the politicians, in fact, sent congratulatory messages to Zia over the government’s dismissal. Others joined his post-Junejo administration — Nawaz Sharif opted to stay as chief minister of Punjab, with the general’s blessing, even after Sharif’s seniors and counterparts in the centre and other provinces had been unceremoniously removed.
Even during the post-Zia period, the military continued to dictate the decision-making process. Much to the chagrin of the military establishment, Benazir Bhutto challenged the military’s hold on foreign policy before she was ousted from power in 1990. In the run-up to her sacking, the military leadership as well as the opposition Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) severely criticised her for trying to improve ties with India during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s 1989 visit to Pakistan to attend a summit meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc). Benazir Bhutto also disagreed with the military over the resolution of problems in Afghanistan — while her government favoured the policy of continuing negotiations on the basis of the Geneva Accord, the military and intelligence agencies supported warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in their attempts to take over Kabul by force. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto annoyed the military leadership when she attempted to bring the intelligence services under her control and appointed a committee to review the role and relationship of intelligence agencies in a democratic set-up in February 1989. In May 1989, she replaced the powerful ISI chief Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, posting him as corps commander Multan, a demotion in the military hierarchy.
Benazir Bhutto was cautious when she returned in 1993 — she avoided major foreign policy decisions or interference in security policy during her second tenure. Importantly, she resisted international pressures to decrease defence expenditure, which remained fixed at 26 per cent of the national budget during her two and half years in office. She also vigorously campaigned in Washington to get the military a waiver from sanctions through the Brown Amendment, which made it possible for the United States to supply much-needed military hardware to Pakistan’s armed forces. This mollycoddling did not save her second government from dismissal, that too at the behest of the military establishment. Politicians – both in power and in the opposition – took note and never missed a chance to warm up to the military and intelligence chiefs.
“Over the years, the civilian leadership has conceded its role in security related policymaking,” acknowledges Khawaja Asif, a central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN). “But, in the present situation, this is true only for the government. We in the opposition want to assert our role in the security-related decision-making process,” he asserts. Asif claims his party has shunned the political tactics of the past, when politicians were ready to do the military’s bidding to defeat their opponents. He, however, does not have convincing answers when asked to explain why his party leader and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has had secret meetings with the army and ISI chiefs. Asif was cagey when asked why his party head, Nawaz Sharif, endorsed an unequivocally pro-military resolution at the APC. Before attending the APC in Islamabad, Sharif presided over a meeting of his party leaders in Lahore, seeking their opinion on the question of attending the conference, Asif says. “Many in the meeting opposed going to the APC as they said that it would be useless,” he tells the Herald. “This is a new method that the army has adopted to give cover to its decisions … previously they have been taking decisions on their own without consulting anyone … now they are doing the same with the APC — providing a cover for their continued dominance over the decision-making process on security and foreign policy issues,” says Asif. Nawaz Sharif nevertheless attended the APC and, despite raising a few rhetorical questions as reported in the press, did not press the issue of civilian supremacy over foreign policy and security issues.
This is not the first time Nawaz Sharif has shown such ambivalence towards the military. The first time he did so it cost him his second government. By late June 1999, he was convinced that the army’s intrusion into Kargil was a fiasco; instead of confronting the military leaders, he proceeded to Washington, uninvited, to seek President Bill Clinton’s help for a face-saving arrangement allowing the army to withdraw. The army leadership also knew by then that they could not sustain their Kargil adventure but, according to a former diplomat, “wanted to shift the blame for defeat on to the civilian leadership.” In less than two months, Nawaz Sharif was ousted from power in a bloodless coup.
In this, and so many similar examples of civilian leaders paying heavily for cozying up to the military establishment, is a bitter truth: democratic governments have not survived even after continuing to do the army’s bidding. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari’s government seems to have forgotten this.