Special
SAT Report
WASHINGTON:
Finally, the Pakistani military establishment has lost patience with
a long time ally, who, for them, had turned into a renegade some months
ago and had started writing nasty pieces in the real media which hurts,
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
If
that was not enough, journalist and writer, Hussain Haqqani, joined
Carnegie Endowment, a known US think tank, as a Fellow, and started
giving talks and lectures to the US audiences. One of his lectures,
on the Pak army establishment, turned out to be the so-called last
straw on the camel's back last week.
Secret
and not-so-secret official authorities in Islamabad raided offices
of Hussain's Public Relations company, CRC, sealed all the records
and almost forced them to close shop. National Bank of Pakistan, a
major client, was told to cancel their contract. It was also made
clear that back-dated Income Tax Notices were coming for him to cough
up millions, a standard procedure used by the Establishment against
any business entity. The largest newspaper group "Jang"
which also produces the English newspaper "The News" and
Najam Sethi's "The Friday Times" have in the past been targets
of similar notices by Sharif and other governments.
"I
know the workings of Pakistan's bureaucracy too well to think that
all these events are a coincidence," said Haqqani, who served
in the administrations of former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif and as Pakistan's Ambassador to Sri Lanka. "Senior
government officials told me that I was crossing permissible limits
in criticism of government policies and one went to the extent of
saying that the government was reacting to 'anti-Pakistan' writings".
"I
have written nothing against Pakistan ever and I am as patriotic as
anyone in government service who is ordering the harassment. We just
have different ideas of what is best for the country", he said,
adding that the Pakistani bureaucracy had a tradition of using other
means to pressure a relatively free press.
What
was going on behind the scenes was more interesting. SA Tribune has
learnt that Hussain was called for a quiet sitting by out-going Ambassador
Maleeha Lodhi and lectured at length on how powerful the "State"
was and why was he taking up a fight with them. "Why are you
trying to become a Najam Sethi or a Shaheen Sehbai", Hussain
was told by the ambassador. The message was clear: stop writing in
the major US newspapers against the Musharraf Government.
In
a side move the Brigadier in charge of ISI in the Pakistan Embassy
also called Hussain and gave him a similar message.
Sources
say the Information Secretary of the Government of Pakistan in Islamabad,
Mr Anwar Mahmud, directly accused Hussain of "supporting the
Indian line" in his lecture given to Center for Strategic &
International Studies (CSIS). More painful was the fact that Hussain
was considered to be an "insider", having worked in the
governments of both political prime
ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, in top positions and as
Ambassador of Pakistan in Sri Lanka. "Our guy, turning against
us, is not acceptable," was the thrust of all the messages.
To
save his company and the employees, Hussain resigned last Thursday
from the CRC and dissociated himself from it totally. But will this
be enough to stop the military government and the ISI from chasing
him? The obvious answer is no because it is not the company which
is bothering the government, it is Hussain's writing in the US media.
Hussain
says his company had Public Relations contracts for the Central Board
of Revenue (CBR), the giant but most corrupt government department
which controls the Customs Department, Income Tax and Excise Departments
and regulates all the import and export tariffs. The very fact that
CBR had to hire an expensive media person to improve its public image
shows how mutilated its face is.
But
he argues that he was not expecting anymore Government Department
contracts, including CBR, after he started "objective and balanced"
opinion writing "to restore my credibility as an independent
journalist." Hussain has been correspondent for the Far Eastern
Economic Review in Pakistan for many years, specially during the days
of another military dictator, General
Zia ul Haq.
He
was kidnapped and arrested in 1999 by the then government of Nawaz
Sharif, which imprisoned him for three months on the pretext of investigating
misuse of authority while in office. "There is selective press
freedom in Pakistan. Owners of newspapers work within parameters set
by the authorities and there is a lot of self-censorship though individual
journalists demonstrate considerable courage" Haqqani said.
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