The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  59 Interview with Ambassador Marc Grossman, 16 November 2016.

  60 ‘Pakistani Foreign Office Issues Longer Statement after bin Laden Raid’, Newsline, 3 May 2011, http://newslinemagazine.com/pakistani-foreign-office-issues-longer-statement-after-bin-laden-raid/

  61 Op. cit. Morell, pp. 172–73. Morell’s security detail was caught unawares of this move. They had to scramble in the dark streets of Rawalpindi to chase the car being driven by Pasha to the gates of the Army House, where the security detail leader had to talk his way into the compound to ensure that his ward, Mike Morell, was safe.

  62 Private communication from a now retired senior Pakistani general. Pasha, who had earlier spoken with me on a number of issues, recently did not respond to written requests for information and avoided a promised face-to-face interview. He did deny forcefully having given any interview about bin Laden to two British co-authors, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, for a book entitled The Exile (Bloomsbury, 2017).

  63 Leaked early draft of the Abbottabad Commission Report, reportedly authored by Amb. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, published by Al Jazeera on its website: Al Jazeera, ‘“Document:” Pakistan’s Bin Laden Dossier’, 8 July 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/binladenfiles/2013/07/201378143927822246.html; While the recommendations were the result of the proceedings, they failed to be of ‘consequence’ in the larger order of things in Pakistan’s politics.

  64 Coll, Directorate S.

  65 The Supreme Court had taken cognizance of the role of intelligence agencies in the disappearances of individuals from civil society. Some of these persons had eventually been produced in court. In more recent times, unexplained disappearances of bloggers were alleged to have been linked to intelligence agencies, especially when some of the missing persons were produced in court following judicial orders.

  1 Dawn, ‘Terrorists Attack Navy Airbase in Karachi, Destroy Three Aircraft’, 22 May 2011, http://www.dawn.com/news/630878

  2 Syed Saleem Shahzad, ‘Al Qaeda Had Warned of Pakistan Strike’, Asia Times (online), 27 May 2011, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME27Df06.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4dde264f700949a3%2C0

  3 Dexter Filkins, ‘The Journalist and the Spies’, New Yorker, 19 September 2011.

  4 Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt, ‘Pakistan’s Spies Tied to the Slaying of a Journalist’, New York Times, 4 July 2011.

  5 Agence France-Presse, ‘Inquiry Commission Formed to Probe Saleem Shahzad’s Murder’, 16 June 2011, https://www.geo.tv/latest/24526-inquiry-commission-formed-to-probe-saleem-shahzads-murder

  6 Salman Siddiqui, ‘Saleem Shahzad Murder: Commission Report Points Out Everything, but the Murderers’, Express Tribune, 13 January 2012. https://tribune.com.pk/story/320957/saleem-shahzad-commission-report-released/

  7 Mansoor Ijaz, ‘Time to Take On Pakistan’s Jihadist Spies’, Financial Times, 10 October 2011.

  8 Interview with Gen. Jim Jones, Tyson’s Corner, VA, September 2016.

  9 Copy of email of 10 May 2011 from Ijaz to Jones, provided by Mansoor Ijaz directly to me at my request.

  10 Telephone interview with Mansoor Ijaz in Europe from my home in Alexandria, VA, 14 December 2016. Subsequently, I had several telephone conversations with him to clarify issues related to this episode. I also spoke with Husain Haqqani on the telephone and met him once during December 2016 to receive documents related to the case and to clarify issues.

  11 Witness statement of Mansoor Ijaz before Supreme Court Judicial Commission.

  12 Op. cit. Witness statement of Mansoor Ijaz.

  13 Kim Barker and Habiba Nosheen, ‘The Man behind Pakistan’s Spy Agency’s Plot to Influence Washington’, Pro Publica, 3 October 2011, https://www.propublica.org/article/the-man-behind-pakistani-spy-agencys-plot-to-influence-washington

  14 US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, ‘Virginia Man Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Conceal Pakistan Government Funding for His U.S. Lobbying Efforts’, 7 December 2011, FBI Archives, https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/washingtondc/press-releases/2011/virginia-man-pleads-guilty-in-scheme-to-conceal-pakistan-government-funding-for-his-u.s.-lobbying-efforts

  Today, Fai admitted that, from 1990 until about July 18, 2011, he conspired with others to obtain money from officials employed by the government of Pakistan, including the ISI, for the operation of the KAC in the United States, and that he did so outside the knowledge of the U.S. government and without attracting the attention of law enforcement and regulatory authorities.

  To prevent the Justice Department, FBI, Department of Treasury and the IRS from learning the source of the money he received from officials employed by the government of Pakistan and the ISI, Fai made a series of false statements and representations, according to court documents. For example, Fai told FBI agents in March 2007 that he had never met anyone who identified himself as being affiliated with the ISI and, in May 2009, he falsely denied to the IRS on a tax return for the KAC that the KAC had received any money from foreign sources in 2008.

  In addition, according to court documents, Fai sent a letter in April 2010 to the Justice Department falsely asserting that the KAC was not funded by the government of Pakistan. Later that year, Fai falsely denied to the IRS that the KAC had received any money from foreign sources in 2009. In July 2011, Fai falsely denied to FBI agents that he or the KAC received money from the ISI or government of Pakistan.

  In fact, Fai repeatedly submitted annual KAC strategy reports and budgetary requirements to Pakistani government officials for approval. For instance, in 2009, Fai sent the ISI a document entitled ‘Plan of Action of KAC / Kashmir Centre, Washington, D.C., for the Fiscal Year 2010,’ which itemized KAC’s 2010 budget request of $658,000 and listed Fai’s plans to secure U.S. congressional support for U.S. action in support of Kashmiri self-determination.

  Fai also admitted that, from 1990 until about July 18, 2011, he corruptly endeavored to obstruct and impede the due administration of the internal revenue laws by arranging for the transfer of at least $3.5 million to the KAC from employees of the government of Pakistan and the ISI.

  According to court documents, Fai accepted the transfer of such money to the KAC from the ISI and the government of Pakistan through his co-defendant Zaheer Ahmad and middlemen (straw donors), who received reimbursement from Ahmad for their purported ‘donations’ to the KAC. Fai provided letters from the KAC to the straw donors documenting that their purported ‘donations’ to the KAC were tax deductible and encouraged these donors to deduct the transfers as ‘charitable’ deductions on their personal tax returns. Fai concealed from the IRS that the straw donors’ purported KAC ‘donations’ were reimbursed by Ahmad, using funds received from officials employed by the ISI and the government of Pakistan.

  15 Telephone interview with Lt. Gen. (retd) Naeem Lodhi, 10 March 2018.

  16 Communication to author, 10 April 2018.

  17 Munizae Jahangir, ‘Parliamentary Committee on National Security to Investigate the Scandal: PM’, Express Tribune, Pakistan, 28 November 2011, https://tribune.com.pk/story/298746/parliamentary-committee-on-national-security-to-investigate-the-scandal-pm/

  18 Dawn, ‘Defence Secretary Naeem Lodhi Sacked’, 12 January 2012, https://www.dawn.com/news/687507

  19 Supreme Court of Pakistan’s Judicial Commission Report, issued June 2012, pp. 111–12, Section 25.

  20 Email to author.

  21 News International, ‘David Frum Denies Receiving Money from Pakistan Embassy’, 30 May 2012, in which he stated,

  On Wednesday, Google Alerts brought me a piece of startling news: A lawyer speaking to a tribunal of the Supreme Court of Pakistan had accused me of acting as a paid agent of the government of Pakistan.

  No, seriously, that’s what the man said.

  Frum was responding to a reported statement of prominent SC lawyer Akram Sheikh who, it was reported, had ‘claimed in a statement that Pakistani Embassy provided funds to Harlan Ullman and David Frum for damage control after the memo controversy.’ In hi
s response Frum wrote on CNN.com he was so taken aback by the claim that he telephoned Sheikh to ask whether it was true. ‘We had a short but intense exchange.’ He said given that charges against him have gained a hearing inside Pakistan, some kind of answer seems due. Frum wrote: ‘Where is the fake evidence? The forged check, the bogus wire transfer, the suborned courier? Money always leaves a record.’ He said Mansoor Ijaz, the Memogate character, told the Memo Commission that he had sued me for libel. He quoted Ijaz as telling the Commission: ‘In view of the fact Mr Frum defamed me, my lawyers in Washington informed him that if he does not retract, I will be taking legal action against him.’

  https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/28/opinion/frum-pakistan-accusation/index.html

  22 Peter Bergen and Andrew Lebovich, ‘What’s Behind the Furor in Pakistan?’, CNN, 25 November 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/24/opinion/bergen-memogate-pakistan/

  23 Harlan Ullman, the other non-Pakistani allegedly named in the Supreme Court proceedings, wrote an article rebutting Ijaz’s allegation in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times. This was reproduced on the Atlantic Council website. Ullman was associated with the Council as a senior adviser. I was then director of the Council’s South Asia Center. Ullman was close to President Zardari and Benazir Bhutto and had spent some time travelling to Pakistan, including on a fact-finding trip with me and others on a report on a comprehensive US policy for Pakistan, which was issued in early 2009. Ijaz had been a member of the Atlantic Council Board of Directors and was on the task force that produced the 2009 report, sponsored by then senators John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.

  24 Report of the three-judge judicial commission of the Pakistan Supreme Court to investigate Memogate, headed by Justice Qazi Faez Isa, and including Justices Mushir Alam and Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman, 4 June 2012, https://pakistanconstitutionlaw.com/detailed-order-in-memo-gate-case/

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistani-probe-finds-former-ambassador-husain-haqqani-was-behind-memo-seeking-us-help/2012/06/12/gJQAtaSpWV_story.html?utm_term=.d2b05d1bf71f

  25 ‘During today’s proceedings, the bench remarked that the commission had only expressed its opinion and not declared Haqqani a traitor.’ See: Agence France-Presse, ‘Memo Commission Didn’t Declare Husain Haqqani Traitor: SC’, Geo.tv, 12 July 2012. https://www.geo.tv/latest/79498-memo-commission-didnt-declare-husain-haqqani-traitor-sc

  26 Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC 2004).

  27 Mateen Haider and Raza Khan, ‘PPP Disowns Husain Haqqani’, Dawn, 24 June 2016.

  1 Variously ascribed to Aeschylus, US Senator Hiram Johnson (1866–1945) and, among others, the edition of the Idler magazine from 11 November 1758, which says, ‘Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.’ (The last reference courtesy of Andy Ward in the Guardian.) See also Arthur Ponsonby’s Falsehood in War (1928), also available as Falsehood in War Time: Containing An Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War, Kessengir Publishing, reprint, paperback, Whitefish Montana, USA, 2010, and Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), staring down at me from my bookshelf.

  2 Final report on Salala attack by Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark (Unclassified), CENTCOM, December 2011, p. 10.

  3 Candace Rondeaux and Karen De Young, ‘US Troops Crossed Border, Says Pakistan’, Washington Post, 4 September 2008.

  4 Salala garnered one paragraph in Coll’s Directorate S, p. 626.

  5 A Marine, Laster was then head of joint operations at ISAF Joint Command. Later he was promoted to lieutenant general and made director, Marine Corps Staff, in the Pentagon.

  6 Later appointed commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, Nicholson had deep experience in Afghanistan, commanding troops in the south and also helping manage the war effort. From December 2010 to January 2012, he served as Deputy Commanding General for Operations of US Forces Afghanistan and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations of NATO’s ISAF where he was responsible for operations, planning and assessments of ISAF ’s comprehensive COIN campaign waged by roughly 140,000 troops from fifty nations in partnership with the Afghan government, Afghan National Security Forces and interagency partners. https://www.eastwest.ngo/sites/default/files/COM%20LANDCOM%20Biography%20JAN27.pdf. An interesting footnote to his genealogy is an alleged link to Maj. Gen. Nicholson who helped quell the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and to whom an obelisk monument sits next to the Grand Trunk Road between Rawalpindi and Hasan Abdal.

  7 Statement provided by Pakistan Army HQ via Lt. Gen. (retd) Ishfaq Ahmed, former DG Military Operations at GHQ at the time of the Salala attack. Military-style abbreviations in original spelled out in full here.

  8 Author interview with Gen. John Allen, August 2016, Washington DC.

  9 Pakistan Army GHQ statement.

  10 This account is based on the final declassified Clark report and the transcript of Brig. Gen. Clark’s teleconference from Hurlburt Field, FL, of 22 December 2011.

  11 ‘Pakistan’s Perspective on the Investigative Report Conducted by BG Stephen Clark into 26th November 2011 US Led ISAF/NATO Forces Attack on Pakistani Volcano and Boulder Posts in Mohmand Agency’, 23 January 2012, https://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/press/pakistan.pdf

  12 Clark report, p. 14.

  13 Author interview with Kayani, February 2016.

  14 Karin Brulliard, ‘Pakistani Officials Say Alleged NATO Attack Kills 24 Soldiers’, Washington Post, 27 November 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistani-officials-say-alleged-nato-attack-kills-at-least-12/2011/11/26/gIQA2mqtxN_story.html?utm_term=.471e5621260f

  15 Author interview with Hina Rabbani Khar, Lahore, 21 February 2016.

  16 A senior foreign office staff member confirmed this.

  17 Report of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security on guidelines for revised terms of engagement with USA/NATO/ISAF. See also: Web Desk, Zahid Gishkori and Huma Imtiaz, ‘Nato Attack: Parliamentary Committee Says Pakistan Should Demand Apology’, Express Tribune, 20 March 2012, https://tribune.com.pk/story/352546/nato-attack-parliamentary-committee-says-pakistan-should-demand-unconditional-apology/

  18 Clark media briefing, 22 December 2011.

  19 Op. cit. Pakistan Army report.

  20 Private email exchange between a senior Pakistani general and his American colleague in Afghanistan.

  21 Communication via email from retired Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, 16 January 2018.

  22 Even the FC is now wearing regular uniforms and adopts the traditional garb only for ceremonial occasions.

  23 Associated Press, ‘Text of Clinton Statement on Pakistan’, San Diego Union Tribune, 3 July 2012, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-text-of-clinton-statement-on-pakistan-2012jul03-story.html

  24 Author interview with Gen. Mattis, 2016.

  25 Author interview with Gen. Allen, August 2016.

  26 Greg Grindley, ‘Mitigating Supply Chain Risk: What the Military Does and You Should Too’, Llamasoft, 11 October 2017, https://www.llamasoft.com/mitigating-supply-chain-risk-military/

  27 Clinton apology. Associated Press, ‘Text of Clinton Statement on Pakistan’, San Diego Union Tribune, 3 July 2012, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-text-of-clinton-statement-on-pakistan-2012jul03-story.html

  28 Private email exchanges between a Pakistani and an American senior officer.

  1 Saba Imtiaz, ‘Pakistan: WikiWreaks Havoc’, Express Tribune, 2 December 2010, http://tribune.com.pk/story/84795/pakistan-wikiwreaks-havoc/

  2 WikiLeaks, ‘Re: Compilation of Pak Related Wikileaks Stuff ’, 21 February 2013, https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/10/1039592_re-compilation-of-pak-related-wikileaks-stuff-.html

  3 Issam Ahmed, ‘Rumors of “Silent Coup” as Pakistan President Zardari Heads to Hospital’, Christian Science Monitor, 7 December 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/1207/Rumors-of-sile
nt-coup-as-Pakistan-President-Zardari-heads-to-hospital

  4 Salman Masood, ‘Secretary’s Ouster in Pakistan Adds to Tensions with Army’, New York Times, 11 January 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/asia/firing-of-pakistans-defense-secretary-raises-tension-with-army.html

  5 Express Tribune, ‘No Love Lost: Army Has No Stake in Treason Trial, Says Defence Aide’, 8 January 2014, https://tribune.com.pk/story/656278/no-love-lost-army-has-no-stake-in-treason-trial-says-defence-aide/

  6 I recall getting a message from a US journalist from the Rawal Lounge for VIPs at Islamabad airport that the journalist was interviewing US General David Petraeus, commander CENTCOM, as he left Pakistan after one of his many visits. Across the aisle from him was Defence Minister Mukhtar. The amused journalist noted that they had not acknowledged each other and seemed to not even recognize each other.

  7 Manoj Gupta, ‘Pakistan Ex-Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar Drops Political Nuke Bomb, Says Osama bin Laden Was Their “Guest”’, CNN-IBN, 13 October 2015, http://www.news18.com/news/world/pakistan-ex-defence-minister-ahmed-mukhtar-drops-political-nuke-bomb-says-osama-bin-laden-was-their-guest-1151478.html

  8 Global Terrorism Index, http://www.visionofhumanity.org/sites/default/files/Global%20Terrorism%20Index%20Report%202014_0.pdf

  9 Interview with Hina Rabbani Khar, Lahore, 2016.

  10 Conversation with me in his office at GHQ, Rawalpindi.

  11 Conversation with author, August 2018.

  12 Interview with Hina Rabbani Khar, Lahore, February 2016.

  13 Interview with Hina Rabbani Khar, Lahore, 2016.

  14 This remarkably honest man admitted publicly at Cadet College, Hassanabdal, that he had never gone to school. Dawn, ‘I Have Never Gone to School, Says President Mamnoon’, 22 December 2016, http://www.dawn.com/news/1303732

  15 Azhar Khan and Baseer Ahmed, ‘What Are the “Dawn Leaks”? A Look into Pakistan’s Headline-Making News Scandal’, arynews.tv, 2 May 2017, https://arynews.tv/en/what-are-the-dawn-leaks-a-look-into-pakistan-infamous-news-scandal/