Raja Javed Ali Bhatti
Shahab Qarni moved to US in 1988 and is presently co-owner of a multimedia firm “World Media City”. As part of ongoing campaign against Pakistan Army/ ISI in the West in general and US in particular, Qarni is all set to air a live radio show titled “Free Pakistan State Over State: 20 Crore Pakistanis Demands Freedom after 70 Years of Garrison Rule”. Qarni is not the first Pakistani in US to have been used to defame Pakistan Army/ ISI. Earlier Hussain Haqqani was effectively used for the purpose and is still being used. As a “pro-American ambassador in Washington,” Haqqani provided visas for a large number of US operatives to enter Pakistan,
Qarni is likely to prove to be another “Hussain Haqqani” in the coming days. His nefarious designs need to be exposed in your write up.
It is obvious that the radio show is not in the interest of Pakistan and warrants necessary steps to uproot the nefarious designs of Shahab Qarni.
As a result of activities of traitors like Hussain Haqqani and Qarni, few politicians and liberals in Pakistan have also started embracing such ideas.
They are often seen accusing Pakistan Army and ISI of their involvement in the politics and indirectly responsible for the mis-governance of the country. Hussain Haqqani) is a Pakistani journalist, academic, political activist and former ambassador of Pakistan to Sri Lanka and the United States. Haqqani has authored three books on Pakistan.
The first, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, was published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2005. In the book, Haqqani examines the relationship between Pakistan’s armed forces and Islamist groups as a function of Pakistan’s search for identity and security.
Haqqani’s second book, Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding, was published by PublicAffairs on 5 November 2013. In this book, Haqqani reviews the history of U.S.-Pakistan relations. Magnificent Delusions was included in a list of the “best books about the rest of the world” by The Daily Beast, who called it “compulsory reading for members of Congress and officials at the State Department.”
Haqqani published his third book in May 2016. Titled India vs Pakistan, it is a short history of the India-Pakistan relationship published by Juggernaut Books
Haqqani worked as a journalist from 1980 to 1988, and then as political adviser for Nawaz Sharif and later as a spokesperson for Benazir Bhutto. From 1992 to 1993 he was ambassador to Sri Lanka. In 1999, he was exiled following criticisms against the government of then-President Pervez Musharraf. From 2004 to 2008 he taught international relations at Boston University.[10] He was appointed as Pakistan’s ambassador in April 2008, but his tenure ended after the Memogate incident, when the claim was made that he had been insufficiently protective of Pakistan’s interests. A judicial commission was set up by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to probe the allegations against him. According to commission’s report which was issued in June 2012, Haqqani was declared guilty of authoring a memo which called for direct US intervention into Pakistan, though Pakistan’s Supreme Court noted that the commission was only expressing an opinion. Roughly a week after the raid on Bin Laden, Haqqani reportedly asked a Pakistani American businessman Mansoor Ijaz to pass a message to the Americans, at the request of President Zardari, that the Pakistani military was planning to intervene. Ijaz revealed this in an opinion column in the Financial Times in October 2011, and mentioned that the message was communicated in an undated and unsigned memo sent to Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military. Later released to the press, the memo also spoke of a “unique window of opportunity” for the civilian government to gain the upper hand due to the military’s complicity in the Bin Laden affair. According to Ijaz, the military intended to stage a coup to wash off the embarrassment issuing from the raid on Bin Laden, and he drafted the memo in consultation with Haqqani. He was recalled to Pakistan and accused of high treason. On the basis of a petition filed by the PML-N, the Supreme Court of Pakistan launched an investigation overriding the government, which had also started a parliamentary investigation.
While a judicial commission appointed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan investigated, Haqqani was not allowed to leave the country. He sought refuge in the presidential palace and later the Prime Minister’s residence, citing threats to his life by extremist groups that accused him of treason.
In January 2012, Pakistan’s Supreme Court allowed Haqqani to leave the country. The Judicial Commission completed its investigation apparently without hearing from Haqqani, and submitted its report in June 2012 in sealed envelopes. It asserted that Haqqani had indeed authored the memo, whose purpose was taken to be assuring the United States that the civilian government was its ally. It also declared that Haqqani had undermined the country’s security and he had misled Ijaz to believe the memorandum had the Pakistani president’s approval. The commission’s report further stated that “Husain Haqqani was not loyal to Pakistan” in drafting that memo.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court noted that the commission was only expressing its opinion. Husain Haqqani has described radical Islam as “the single most dangerous idea that has emerged in the Muslim world”. He has called on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist militants, and has cautioned the U.S. against trying to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, who he describes as “a movement with an extreme ideology [that] will not compromise easily on their deeply held beliefs.”
The Wall Street Journal described Haqqani as “a hostage” while he was in Pakistan and published an interview with him from the Prime Minister’s house in which he outlined why he was hated by Pakistan’s intelligence services and Jihadi groups. Michel Hirsh, writing in The Atlantic, described Haqqani as “The Last Friendly Pakistani” towards the US. Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for The Atlantic and Bloomberg News, has been a consistent supporter of Haqqani, calling him “The Hardest Working Man in Washington” and criticising Pakistan’s military and security services. Simon Tisdall of The Guardian called Haqqani “an instinctive ally of the west” and attributed Memogate to the ambassador’s difficult relationship with Pakistan intelligence service.
In 2017, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister alleged that Haqqani had authored US President Donald Trump’s South Asia policy. Earlier that year, Haqqani co-authored a report on Pakistan with Lisa Curtis, who would go on to become Senior Director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council. His critics in Pakistan describe him as a sympathizer of the Indian lobby in the US. Haqqani has been vocal against the sale of F-16 fighter jets and AH-1Z Viper helicopters to Pakistan. He testified in the US Congress in December 2015 stating that the sale of F-16s to Pakistan would only lead to their usage against India, The Indian government also opposed and protested against the proposed sale of 8 F-16s to Pakistan. Pakistan’s Senate Defense Committee blamed him for working with pro-Indian lobbyists in Washington.
