POREG VIEW: Islamabad date-lined Alex Rodriguez’s despatch in the Los Angeles Times says ‘A breach that sent the CIA’s top spy in Pakistan out of the country with his cover blown is likely to cause friction between U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agents, who have worked closely, if not always with mutual trust, in the battle against insurgents along the volatile border with Afghanistan’.
It quotes experts saying that although harm the episode has done to the relationship isn’t irreparable, it will breed ‘mistrust’ between the two sides at precisely the time Washington is urging Islamabad to shoulder a bigger responsibility in the war on terrorism.
Like many American and British dailies, LA Times reports that the U.S. officials suspect the hand of Pakistan’s intelligence community in the ‘disclosure’, which, it says, has long been ‘plagued by divided’ allegiances. The daily adds that Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI has denied any role in the breach; it quotes an unnamed Pakistani intelligence source as saying that the agency did not know the source of the disclosure. ‘That’s a mystery we have not been able to solve’.
Only the naïve will expect the ISI to be forthcoming with a confession. It is the nature of the game to come up with a denial with a poker face.
The ‘disclosure’ has to be seen in ‘context’ – heat on ISI to deliver in Waziristan and two law suits against the ISI Chief Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, a close friend of the army chief Gen Kayani. Even after the Supreme Court has literally started hounding the army and the ISI in the ‘missing persons case’, the Pakistani society and the media are unwilling to cross the line. That is clear from the limited exposure to WikiLeaks’ disclosures vis-a-vis the army.
Another give away to the ‘context’ is the way a non-descript lawyer Shahzad Akbar was chosen to sue the United States one year after two deaths in an American drone missile strike on Dec. 31, 2009, in North Waziristan.
Akbar said he obtained the CIA station chief’s name from two Pakistani journalists, whose identities he would not disclose. He did not know how the journalists learned of the agent’s identity.
Well, there is no need for him to go into these details because WikiLeaks cables and ‘PakiLeaks’ that followed clearly showed the strong bonds the ISI maintains with selected Pakistani journalists and commentators, and the way the agency uses them to ‘spread stories’.
Lawyer Akbar’s client in the case is a faceless journalist Karim Khan, who says he had lost his brother and son in the missile rain.
Pakistan is critical to the American plans for Afghanistan. Unless tangible progress is made in checking, if not eliminating, the terrorist bases in North Waziristan, the Obama deadline for troops’ withdrawal will remain a mirage.
It is for this reason, that Adm Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other American top functionaries have become blunt in their interactions with the Pakistani brass even as they give the impression of mollycoddling them in the public.
And the result is the dip in the ISI-US relations which have been rocky in recent months as brought out by the WikiLeaks cables.
There is another dichotomy in Pak-US ties. It is that the government of Pakistan and its army have been cooperating with the US strikes, with the drones often taking off from a Pak base in Balochistan, but they denounce the US actions to the public.
The CIA’s Pakistani station is the epicenter of the spy agency’s programme to target militants with missile strikes from unmanned aerial vehicles. The head of the station, despite the low profile he maintains, is a visible face to the journalistic, political and bureaucratic circles.
Blowing up the cover is not a big deal but is not the done thing for the host country, which is also the front line ally in the US war against terrorism. It shows desperation.
