Farahnaz Ispahani is a member of Pakistan’s Parliament and the wife of former Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani.
As U.S.-Pakistani relations plunge to new depths, Americans need to look beyond media reports on tactical issues such as aid and counterterrorism. The direction Pakistan takes will be of great strategic significance to the world. The manner in which my husband, former Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani, is being treated in our homeland reflects the shrinking political space there for anyone who advocates positive relations with the West or stands up for religious-cultural tolerance and pluralism.
Husain resigned in November after successfully making Pakistan’s case in Washington for more than three years. He was implicated in a controversy sparked by an unsigned memo sent to Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after the U.S. raid inside Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden in May. The memo, written by a Pakistani American businessman, ostensibly sought U.S. support for Pakistan’s civilian government against its military. The idea of an elected government seeking foreign help in reining in its military leaders is anathema to Pakistanis, who are rightly protective of our national sovereignty.
(AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES) - Husain Haqqani exits a Pakistan court last month in Islamabad. The former ambassador to the United States is embroiled in an investigation about a memo regarding the Pakistani military.
Mullen has said he did not consider the memo credible. Former national security adviser Jim Jones, who passed the memo to Mullen, has said that he saw it only as the creation of its author. Unfortunately, U.S. officials considered the memo so unimportant that they did not bother to promptly set the record straight regarding Husain; this allowed misinformation to spread in Pakistan, inadvertently creating concerns that should have been nipped in the bud.
After he resigned, Husain could have stayed in the United States. But he returned to Pakistan to seek an impartial inquiry into the controversy. Some in the Pakistani media, illustrating how our society has been poisoned by extremist views, launched a propaganda campaign accusing him of treason. Last month Pakistan’s Supreme Court barred him, on national security grounds, from leaving the country while a judicial probe is conducted. Husain appeared in court Monday and was asked for evidence of his innocence — even though no charges have been officially leveled against him. Human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir and other legal experts consider the court’s order of an inquiry a denial of due process. A country’s highest court should be the last avenue of appeal, not the first stop. In a democracy, the rights of a citizen should not be trumped by an intelligence service’s assertions of national security interests.
But my husband’s case is not simply that of an individual who has been wrongly accused and denied due process. It is part of a broader issue: the systematic elimination or marginalization of every intellectual and leader in Pakistan who has stood up to the institutionalization of a militarized Islamist state. Ever since the military dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq created the well-oiled machine of religious extremism, Pakistan’s progressive and liberal voices have faced allegations of treason and corruption.
Loading...
Comments