Benazir Bhutto has recently remarked about a functioning intelligence-agency state within the dysfunctional state of Pakistan. She refers to the insidious role of the ISI and the MI in “hunting” democratic governments, in running amok in pursuit of a national security agenda “at variance with the popular will” and in “dividing the civilian popular base by holding out to those who cannot win — the promise of power without legitimacy”. She says she was overthrown in 1990 because she chose to dictate her own security agenda. But because the liberal forces which “should have stood by” her failed to do so, she accepted a “historic compromise” by following the security agenda of the agencies in her second stint in office. “I accept my part of the responsibility but others must own up to theirs”, she says.
Much of what she says about the agencies’ dirty tricks during her first term in office is well known and true enough — the shenanigans of the “midnight jackals”, Brig Imtiaz Billa and Major Amer, in destablising her government; the “poisonous” stories of handing over lists of Sikh terrorists to India; the reluctance of the army chief, General Aslam Beg, to salute her and his role in egging on the MQM to split with the PPP and create violent disturbances in Karachi; the role of a serving corps commander and Nawaz Sharif in persuading Osama Bin Ladin to help finance a no-confidence motion against her by sending a cheque for US$ 10 million to General Aslam Beg personally; etc. If she had dilated on how the agencies rigged the 1990 elections to keep her out, how Nawaz Sharif was chosen by Lt General Hameed Gul and Ghulam Ishaq Khan to be PM above Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, how banker Yunus Habib was nudged to give crores to the ISI and how Lt General Asad Durrani, DG-ISI, forked over hard cash to Nawaz Sharif, General Aslam Beg and many others to ensure ‘proper results’ in the 1990 elections, she would have made a formidable case against her detractors.
Ms Bhutto, however, is guilty of selecting her facts to suit her case. She doesn’t acknowledge, for instance, her own secret attempts to turn the tables on Nawaz Sharif by pushing General Aslam Beg in the direction of a coup against the Sharif government in July 1991. Nor does she note how the then Chief of General Staff and COAS-designate, General Asif Nawaz, along with the then DG-IB, Brig Imtiaz Billa, joined hands to thwart General Beg’s threatening moves against a civilian government just prior to retirement. Indeed, after General Asif Nawaz became army chief and developed differences with Nawaz Sharif in 1992, Ms Bhutto redoubled her efforts to establish contact with him and try to pressurize him to get rid of Nawaz Sharif (remember the abortive “long march” in November 1992?). Thus if Ms Bhutto was done in by the national security wallahs from 1988-90, the fact is she did not hesitate for a moment in joining hands with them to try to destabilise and overthrow an elected government when her own turn came to live in opposition from 1990 to 1993.
Ms Bhutto is quite elaborative about what happened to her during her second time in office from 1993 to 1996. She claims that “everything was fine when Lt General Javed Ashraf Qazi was my DG-ISI” until “an officer called [Maj Gen] Shujaat was installed [in the ISI] and all our troubles began”. But she doesn’t explain why and who installed him, nor why, when General Qazi was such a goodie-goodie in her books, he retained Lt Gen Shujaat despite her objections. She says she tried to persuade the next DG-ISI Lt Gen Rana (“good man but quite simple”), and the Defence Secretary, to remove Lt Gen Shujaat but in vain. How was this possible, we wonder, when the Defence Secretary was her own man, the DG-ISI Rana was a “good man” and the COAS General Abdul Waheed was well-disposed towards her, apart from being a non-interfering sort of fellow.
Most surprisingly, Ms Bhutto lambasts Lt General Mahmood Ahmad, DG-MI in 1996 and currently DG-ISI, for conspiring against her, even though at the time she admits she “kept quiet”. Later, however, when Lt Gen Mahmood allegedly continued with his conspiracies, she asked General Jehangir Karamat, the then COAS, to explain Gen Mahmood’s conduct and rein him in, upon which the COAS is said to have written a letter to her saying that if she didn’t trust him he would be happy to resign. But she didn’t ask him to resign. Nor did she insist as PM that Gen Mahmood ought to be sacked or transferred. Yet she now wants General Mahmood to “explain to the nation at whose behest he did these things”.
Ms Bhutto’s story gets more confusing in 1996. She says that Gen Karamat told her in August that, according to Gen (retd) Hameed Gul, President Farooq Leghari was ready to sack her but was simply waiting for a direct nod from General Karamat. Then she says she learnt that General Mahmood, the DG-MI appointed and retained by General Karamat despite objections by her, was urging President Leghari to get on with it even as President Leghari was offering gulab jamans to her and reminding her that she was his “sister” and he was “ghairatmand” and General Karamat was offering to “mediate” between her and her president. She also refers to “some foreign bankers” [Mr Shaukat Aziz, who was also friendly with her, was one such] who called upon General Karamat and told him that the economy was on the verge of defaulting. She says that when she asked General Karamat to go to President Leghari and “ask him point-blank” whether he intended to dismiss her government, she was faced with the stunning murder of her brother Murtaza Bhutto.
Ms Bhutto blithely “exonerates General Karamat and the military as an institution” and lays the blame at the door of “President Leghari in collusion with rogue elements of the intelligence and security apparatus” for her government’s dilemmas during her second stint. Yet she cannot explain why COAS Abdul Waheed wanted a Brigadier accused of sedition “to be hanged” whereas COAS Karamat wanted him “spared”, nor why COAS Waheed had no objections to the pursuit of an enquiry against former DG-ISI Lt Gen Asad Durrani for disbursing ISI funds to politicians in 1990 while COAS Karamat advised against it. The best part of this story claims that “they changed my military secretary after telling me it was a routine change and when the COAS tried to send me a message [on the night of her government’s sacking], he could not get through and when the COAS got in touch with the defence secretary, he too could not get in touch with me”. This is ridiculous. Who are “they”, if not the COAS and Defence Secretary? Nor is it conceivable that the army chief and defence secretary tried to contact her but couldn’t get through, despite all the hot lines and open phone lines and couriers at their service. As for not proceeding against Lt Gen Asad Durrani, Ms Bhutto has conveniently forgotten to mention one salient fact which might shed light on her indecision — Lt General Asad Durrani was “sacked” from the army in 1993 by General Abdul Waheed after it transpired that he had conspired with Ms Bhutto against PM Nawaz Sharif after Mr Sharif sacked him as DG-ISI in 1992 for running with the PM and hunting with the COAS General Asif Nawaz. Thus Lt General Durrani was not kosher when he was conspiring with Sharif and General Beg to keep Ms Bhutto out of office in 1989-90 but he was a “friend indeed” when he was conspiring with her against Nawaz Sharif in 1992-93!
Ms Bhutto’s story is part truth, part fiction. The truth is that the intelligence agencies undermined her government for various reasons during her two stints in office. But it is fiction to claim that they did so as “rogue elements” without the knowledge and approval of each army chief. The truth also is that if she was the hunted, she was not averse to being the hunter in turn. The truth admittedly is that a section of the liberal intelligentsia did not stand by her. But the fiction is that it did so for personal, false or whimsical reasons — indeed the truth is that she was abandoned because there were credible allegations of corruption against her.
But there is also a broader and more unpalatable truth at stake. The intelligence agencies are an organic and integral element of the military establishment at the apex of which sits the COAS with a rigid perspective on the constituent elements of national security. Therefore as long as the military’s view on such matters is at variance with the popular will as reflected in the views of a freely elected government, PM and parliament, there will be no political stability in this country. Both politicians and generals, past, present and future, should try to resolve this dilemma via a genuine Truth and Reconciliation Commission rather than continue to snipe from behind a façade of make-belief.