By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Karachi’s Dawn published a piece by S.M. Naseem on Thursday. It described massive institutional disarray in Pakistan and concluded like this:
"In the wake of its recent twin debacles, the military is increasingly being perceived as a white elephant that grazes well beyond the boundaries it is supposed to protect and is the most obvious candidate for institutional reforms. However, it is obvious that our political class is more likely to be trampled by rather than to rein in the roaming elephant."
Pessimistic? Yes. But it’s hard to get over an infatuation. I refer, of course, to the debilitating dependency that the Pakistani military has nurtured for its own self-aggrandizing purposes, mostly by fear-mongering vis-à-vis India. The Army prospers. The rest of the country starves. So how can the Pakistani army be cut down to size?
A couple of years ago, the lawyers’ movement unseated Pervez Musharraf, the latest edition of military dictatorship in Pakistan, it seemed as if civil society—in this case, civilian society—might have a chance. The movement foundered. However, thanks to three mind-blowing incidents, that possibility has arisen again, but only if the political class can, for a change, think beyond its own narrow interests.
The latest of the three events was a brutal assassination.
When Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote his final column for Asia Times on Line, he was acting as that treasured necessity for democratic society, the investigative reporter. In this devastating piece made possible only by access to well-informed sources, Shahzad asserted that the Pakistani Navy was riddled with militants. He also wrote that the nocturnal raid on the Mehran naval base was an inside job designed to punish the Navy for detaining known Taliban sympathizers while conducting an internal investigation to determine the extent of the infestation.
Here are some passages that might have been construed as offensive to a military already on the defensive:
"Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port. The... grouping was against the leadership of the armed forces and opposed to its nexus with the United States against Islamic militancy. When some messages were intercepted hinting at attacks on visiting American officials, intelligence had good reason to take action and after careful evaluation at least 10 people - mostly from the lower cadre - were arrested in a series of operations....Those arrested were held in a naval intelligence office behind the chief minister's residence in Karachi, but before proper interrogation could begin, the in-charge of the investigation received direct threats from militants who made it clear they knew where the men were being detained. The detainees were promptly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued. Officials involved in the case believe the militants feared interrogation would lead to the arrest of more of their loyalists in the navy. The militants therefore made it clear that if those detained were not released, naval installations would be attacked. It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information...."
ISI, Pakistan’s quasi-independent military intelligence service, is widely assumed to be guilty of abducting, torturing and killing Shahzad, although various official spokesmen have issued vigorous denials. The denials don’t ring true for many reasons, among them the fact that Shahzad had already been interrogated by ISI. The military had wanted him to name sources for his reportage on militants’ activities. Like the journalist par excellence that he was, he refused to cooperate. More recently he had received fresh threats from ISI.
Shahzad’s sources were so good, in fact, that I had doubts about his sympathies when I began reading his reports. I found myself wondering if he was a willing conduit for morale-sapping messages from the Taliban. He seemed to know so much and his sources in F.A.T.A. seemed amazingly hospitable to him. Be that as it may, his reports were full of useful information. Ironically, my lingering doubts were finally laid to rest by the piece on the Mehran incident. Far from being a partisan, I saw, he was a hard-headed journalist so objective and so trustworthy that well informed people on all sides would dare to talk turkey with him. They’d leak the important stuff. They’d blow whistles. I felt a little ashamed of myself for doubting him.
Objectivity can be dangerous, of course. From ISI’s point of view Shahzad was a loose cannon. They couldn’t control him. So what to do? Although largely autonomous, ISI is part of the military, and both had been made to look unprecedentedly fallible. The previous norm had allowed carte blanche for both. ISI and its parent could do anything with impunity. Dictate to Pakistan’s civilian politicians. Mount coups. Bomb India’s Parliament building, via proxies. Attack India’s financial center, also via proxies. Take America’s billions and stick a finger in America’s eye. Would this freedom to act be curtailed thanks to the likes of Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was telling the world that the emperor's clothes were in tatters?
That message was convincing because of the two previous events that had put the military on the defensive. First, there had been the embarrassment of Abbotabad. Either, unbeknownst to the U.S., the Pakistani military (or elements therein) had given Bin Laden a safe house—or the Americans, having located bin Laden, had pulled off a successful operation without telling Pakistan or being detected in the process. Two damning interpretations were possible, complicity in terrorism or gross incompetence, both humiliating.
As if that weren’t enough to set the military’s teeth on edge, Wikileaks chose that moment to release U.S. diplomatic cables pertaining to Pakistan. One of these cables revealed that the Pakistani military had been lying to the Pakistani people. The very drone attacks of which the military had strongly disapproved for public consumption had been sanctioned at the highest command levels. In short, not only was the much vaunted military not infallible, it couldn’t be trusted.
And now this journalist was trumpeting the fact that the Pakistani Navy had been massively penetrated by militants. In so doing, Shahzad was also laying the Pakistani military establishment open to one of America’s greatest fears: the fear that the army might be incapable of keeping its nuclear stockpile out of the hands of terrorists. This presented a very interesting question: would the U.S. decide, unilaterally, to do something about that, too?
Now imagine the rage, as Shazad faced his captors. The interrogators ask again and again. Who are your sources? Shahzad keeps his mouth shut. They ask again. Then they try persuasion. (Pause here to remember that the U.S. is no longer well positioned to protest the use of torture to wring information out of those who might know something.) Whether the ensuing death was intended or whether the interrogators were simply so enraged they lost control and couldn’t stop doesn’t matter. A good man is dead and the whole world knows it. What a stupid move. When you kill the reporter, the everyone assumes he was on the right track.
Even The Nation, a religiously conservative, ultra nationalistic, mostly anti U.S. daily published in Lahore, ran a column by Javid Husain which endorsed statements by Hilary Clinton and concluded as follows:
"The precarious security situation in the country and the relentless external pressure should leave us in no doubt that terrorism has emerged as the most formidable threat to the stability, security and progress of the country. The people and the government of Pakistan must take decisive action to eradicate this menace which is eating into the vitals of the society. The seriousness of the matter does not allow any ambiguity or prevarication in the fight against terrorism. Any group which uses violent means for political ends must be dealt with an iron hand. The terrorists who target innocent people and valuable national assets are among the worst enemies of Pakistan. The same conclusion applies to those groups which operate from our territory to launch terrorist attacks against other countries. Under the present circumstances when the international community has accorded the highest priority to the fight against terrorism, to allow it would be nothing less than suicidal.
"It is true that the government of Pakistan has unequivocally condemned terrorism in any form or manifestation. But it is equally true that many of Al Qaeda leaders have been captured by our own authorities in Pakistan where they had been living clandestinely. The US operation which led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, who had been living in Abbottabad undetected by our intelligence agencies, amply proves the point. It is also a fact that the links of many of the terrorists arrested abroad for alleged terrorist activities have been traced to some group or the other in Pakistan. The obvious conclusion that can be drawn is that our law enforcement authorities, particularly our intelligence agencies, have failed miserably in their mission to identify and neutralize terrorist cells in the country. It is not clear whether this incompetence is due to some policy failure at the governmental level, the infiltration and compromise of our security and intelligence agencies by the extremist and terrorist elements, or lack of focus on the part of our intelligence agencies because of their involvement in political activities, or, perhaps, a combination of all the three elements."
Back to the original question: will the Army ever be sent back to the barracks in Pakistan? It's not for me to answer. Meanwhile, this is the situation: Syed Saleem Shahzad was not the first reporter to die in the struggle to make the military accountable to the people, and he will probably not be the last journalist to face the ultimate penalty for taking his job seriously. A final concern: there was evidently to be a sequel to Shazad's fatal article. Its title: "Recruitment and Training of Militants." Did Shahzad leave a draft? Will we ever see it? What a shame if it is lost.
A final note: I met Syed Saleem Shahzad several years ago when Santa Fe was one of the stops on his State-Department-sponsored tour of the United States. My job was to set up his two-day schedule in Santa Fe and to accompany him when he visited institutions and met counterparts. He was, in fact, the ideal IV visitor, the type of invitee the program was designed for and the reason why Congress should fund this program at maximum levels. For all his sophistication about the politics of Pakistan and its neighborhood, his understanding of the U.S. was quite superficial. I had a sense that some of his prejudices were being softened in the course of his encounters in the U.S., and I wouldn’t be surprised if this deepened, more personal understanding had some impact during his conversations with tribal leaders in F.A.T.A. Not as brainwashed propaganda. Not as cut and dried speeches. Not without an admixture of reservation. Most likely only in odd comments revealing otherwise unlikely glimpses of the diverse realities of America. In a world that is governed largely by ignorance and unconsidered prejudice any program that can consistently promote a more generous understanding of the U.S. is worth investing in. This is public diplomacy at its best.