Today in my Echoes of the Heart, I want to co-relate some major contemporary news and events, and thereby draw some shocking conclusions.
News number one is the return of the Memogate issue on which there was a Commission judgment to the effect that Hussain Haqqani had acted in compete defiance of national interests and colluded with a foreign power, to damage Pakistan’s Military in a substantial way. In technical as well as quintessential way this had amounted to TREASON.
The ghost of the Memogate has returned after Hussain Haqqani (for inexplicable reasons) has chosen this moment to make a stunning disclosure that in the case of the issuance of Visas to hoardes of CIA agents and operatives, his ‘treason’ had the backing of the government of Asif Ali Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani. Meaning thereby that the ex-President and the ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan had been accomplices in the act of TREASON.
It has taken the ISPR a number of days to state that the confessions made by Haqqani in his Washington Post ‘oped’, vindicate the standpoint the Military had taken at that time.
This long delay in the Military’s response to Haqqani’s disclosures doesn’t fail to give an impression that our Army leadership remains suspended in a state of uncertainty. This state of uncertainty had allowed the memogate issue to dissolve in the air. And in recent times this state of uncertainty has caused the equally dangerous case of Newsgate (in which too the corridors of civil power had engineered a sinister ‘journalistic’ activity to damage our Army’s image and thus jeopardize national security) to evaporate gradually in the atmosphere.
For the people of Pakistan, the anti-state and self-serving acts and policies of our political leaders are alarming enough, but more alarming is the disturbing permissiveness and inertia of our Army leadership.
Of course our Army is honourbound to act within the framework of the Constitution. But isn’t its main responsibility the Defense of Pakistan? And if Pakistan is attacked from within, by its own leaders, which option should our Army go for?
There is a disturbing news that India’s National Security Officials have secretly met the ambassadors of America, Russia and Israel in New Delhi. This meeting cannot but have an agenda. The inclusion of Israel in this agenda is alarming.
Is a takeover of Pakistan through its Civil leaders being envisioned by its enemies?
Should our Army leadership remain suspended in the domain of uncertainty?