The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Interior Ministry are all gunning for Haqqani. Currently, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC, Haqqani co-authored a report last year which more or less asked the Donald Trump administration to place Pakistan in the list of terror states if it persisted with providing havens to jihadi terrorists. A report for Different Truths.
What suspended Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar is to Indians, former Pakistan ambassador Husain Haqqani is to Pakistanis – fierce opponents of their home countries and routinely branded ‘traitors’ and anti-nationals. But while Aiyar gets away with his diatribes against India from Pakistani soil, Haqqani cannot from the American and Indian soil. The other day, Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant against its former envoy to Trump’s America, who was last month in Mumbai shooting at Pakistan with some serious ‘Off the Cuff’ remarks.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Interior Ministry are all gunning for Haqqani. Unlike Aiyar, Haqqani is pitted against a half-baked democracy. Aiyar is lucky he lives in a country where Freedom of Expression (FoE) gives its citizens the right to ask for a regime change. Pakistanis risk getting picked up at high noon and disappear.
Aiyar goes to Pakistan and spews venom against India and gets hugs and much “love” from Pakistanis for the anti-India bile he vomits on Pakistani soil. Pakistanis, however, aren’t as lenient to their own county man though some of them wonder if Pakistan has the mojo to get Haqqani arrested. “All he has to do is stay outside of the SC-of-Pak jurisdiction, which is 99% of the rest of the world,” one Javed wrote to a newspaper.
Apparently, a committee has been constituted to take up the issue with the United States. The FIA approached Interpol and asked it to issue a “red warrant”. Interpol told FIA the way it went there should be an arrest warrant in Pakistan. So, the Pakistan SC issued one. Husain Haqqani among other things stands accused of not keeping a pledge to return to Pakistan when he left Pakistan the last time he was there.
Haqqani, whenever he gets the chance, which is quite frequently, blasts the incredibly horrible Pakistani army-establishment. “Is it useful to us to have jihadi groups in the country? Is dependence on China a good thing for Pakistan? The point is: we were in the arms of Uncle Sam before; now we are going to fall into the arms of Aunty China, and that should not be the way it should be. We should be thinking about ourselves. We should first have good relations with our neighbours,” Haqqani told journalist Shekhar Gupta last month.
December of 2017, three people separately lodged FIRs against Husain Haqqani in two police stations in Pakistan for “delivering hate speeches and writing books and articles against the armed forces and ‘sovereignty of Pakistan’. Haqqani was accused of being behind the ‘Memogate scandal’ – sending a memo to the US seeking US intervention to prevent an army coup – and of issuing visas to CIA and “Indian agents” while he was Pakistan’s envoy to the US. All of which “proves that he is a traitor,” the three said in their FIRs.
Haqqani, according to a news website, has “read with mild amusement” the Pakistan Supreme Court’s latest move to get him. “Nowhere in the world do Supreme Courts issue warrants; that being a function reserved for trial courts,” Haqqani mocked. “It is sad some judges of the highest court of Pakistan persist with such antics for local TV.”
Currently, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC, Haqqani co-authored a report last year which more or less asked the Donald Trump administration to place Pakistan in the list of terror states if it persisted with providing havens to jihadi terrorists. Clearly, Haqqani and the establishment ruling his home country are more than at odds. They are gunning for each other with all that is at their command.
Haqqani says the arrest warrant is not going to change his life in any manner and he will continue to live his life the way he is living it right now. That being said, he shouldn’t take chances. Travelling out of the US, he should always have an eye over his shoulder. The Interpol acts funny, sometimes, just to prove that it is beyond countries and borders. Many Interpol agents are corrupt and will do for money what our own Mani (Shankar Aiyar) will do for hugs and love – betray!
Apart from being former diplomats, Haqqani and Aiyar are also word-warriors. They carry dictionaries in their heads. And though Indian-origin Americans beat Pakistani-origin Americans hands down in the Spelling-bee, Haqqani has with his cache of words become a bee in the Pakistani bonnet…err skull cap. Like one Pakistani reacted to the Pak-SC arrest warrant, “Best of luck!”
Sushil Kutty
©IPA Service
Photo from the Internet
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