Will Pakistan’s “memo-gate” end Asif Ali Zardari’s charmed run in office as President, put Indo-Pak relations back on ice and see the Army take control of government? In other words, are we seeing the opening moves of an all too predictable coup against the elected government of the Pakistan People’s Party?
High-level sources said on Sunday that the climate of suspicion between the Army and the Asif Zardari-led civilian government was a cause for concern to India.
The unspoken worry is that once again with Pakistan, the tiny window that had opened for the Manmohan Singh government on Pakistan, both in Bhutan and the Maldives, with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, the man he described as “a man of peace,” that window could be closing.
And once again in Pakistan, no man of peace has been able to live up to the promise of peace. Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif’s plans for a rapprochement with India were stymied by their respective army chiefs. Even a “man of war” like former president General Musharraf found he could not carry the militants he had nurtured with him, beyond a certain point when he wanted to make peace.
The storm in Pakistan which has led to the ISI sending its vice-chief to the US to verify whether Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani had acted on his own in reaching out to Washington or was acting on the Pakistani President’s orders, demonstrated how seriously this was being taken by the military, the sources said.
It was also not lost on India that several forces were consolidating front and centre behind cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who heads Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which in the 15 years that it has been in existence has won only one seat — Imran Khan’s own Mianwali.
Imran has won rare praise from Gen. Musharraf, who had picked him as his civilian face when the military ruler wanted to consolidate his hold on the country after the coup in ’99, before they parted ways.
Imran has attracted the ISI-backed former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi to his party alongside several other bigwigs from a faction within the Pakistan People’s Party, left out of the gravy train by President Zardari.
“All the right-wing elements have lined up to stand with Imran Khan and that is worth watching,” the source said.
Mansoor Ijaz, the whistle-blower who outed the story on Zardari’s plea to the US for protection against the Army after Abbottabad in an article in FT last month, has come out strongly this last week to give the lie to the denial by Zardari’s office and US’ Admiral Mullen that any such communication had taken place.
Admiral Mullen has since accepted that he did receive such a note and that he had dismissed it as of no value.
“We are keeping an eye on developments in Pakistan. We will wait and see,” the ambassador said.