Save the Children was ready not to cross the ‘red line’

ISLAMABAD: Although formal orders for sealing the Save the Children offices were issued a couple of days ago by the interior ministry, its MoU with the Economic Affairs Division had expired on May 15 and its operations at the district level were discontinued soon after.
Chief Minister Punjab constituted a committee to look into the matter and the NGO volunteered to close its operations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to signal its willingness not to cross the ‘red line.’
Already Oxfam (Great Britain), involved in humanitarian work in KP, has been ordered to pull out. Oxfam (Great Britain) and Save the Children are among those 19 international NGOs working in Pakistan whose MoUs have expired and renewal has not been granted yet.
Save the Children hired the services of Justice (retd) Malik Qayyum for legal opinion in order to steer itself out of the current crisis but in vain. The NGO became controversial for running a polio vaccination campaign to assist the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. It bailed itself out of the Abbottabad Commission through a support network cultivated by Lt. Gen. (retd) Nadeem Ahmed, member of the commission, revealed an internal memo of the NGO referring to Nadeem as ‘our friend’.
Insiders confided to The News that a British diplomat led the efforts for the renewal of the registration of Save the Children and some other international NGOs. Later on, the CM Punjab constituted a committee comprising provincial ministers and bureaucrats to look into the matter.
Included among the committee members were the provincial education minister, law minister, CM’s advisor on health, chairman planning and development, secretary health and secretary education.
Rana Sanaullah, Punjab’s law minister, confirmed the committee’s formation which held a couple of meetings to look into the matter. However, he feigned ignorance about the outcome of this exercise saying he could not attend meetings due to his engagement in budget-related issues.
Justice (retd) Malik Qayyum also conceded that he had been advising the NGO on legal matters but refused to share details.
While the NGO tried to appease the security agencies by signalling its willingness to pull out from KP and Balochistan in order to avoid crossing the ‘red line’, the agencies are said to be more concerned about the foreign nationals working for the NGOs.
Save the Children tried to address their concerns about the foreign nationals by employing dual nationals, including its country director. However, the agencies have their reservations about dual nationals as well, according to officials privy to details.
As far as the penetration of Save the Children into the Abbottabad Commission is concerned, it was revealed through internal emails of the NGO and reported in The News in August 2013.
Mind-blowing details had emerged from the internal correspondence disclosing its infiltration into the Abbottabad Commission to save its skin following allegations of the CIA’s penetration into the NGO in a hunt for Osama bin Laden through Dr Shakil Afridi, now under arrest in Peshawar.
“Some of us suspected that the khakis had access to the record and receive daily updates but never realised an NGO had infiltrated too,” said an official privy to the Commission’s working.
The leaked communication indicated that Lt Gen (retd) Nadeem Ahmed, an unofficial representative of the army and ISI in the Commission, was allegedly cultivated by Save the Children and would offer it ‘how-to-do’ bailout advice, even sharing details about the internal politics of the Commission and classified records, something in stark contradiction to his reputation as a thorough professional and a man of integrity.
He briefed the deputy country director of Save the Children, according to the email, about the views of different members, and the staunch opposition from a panel colleague, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, which resulted in his dissenting note on the NGO and other institutions. Gen (retd) Nadeem effectively countered this note in collaboration with Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal, the chairman.
Another member, Abbas Khan, was neither willing to sign the report in its existing shape, discloses the email record, nor wanted to put forward a dissenting note. Hence he decided to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the pretext of ‘medical grounds’.
More alarmingly, the NGO was granted access to the Commission’s report well before it was sent to the prime minister. Save the Children had uninterrupted access to the four drafts prepared in June 2012 by the members, including the chairman, the email record available with The News indicates. All favours granted to Save the Children on behalf of the Commission were in clear breach of the public trust raising question marks about the integrity of the members.
Nadeem also felt confident, the email record shows, that he would be able to convince the panel with the answers given by the NGO and urge his colleagues to go by the facts presented by Save the Children instead of believing the contents of Afridi’s statement.
The News then contacted the country director of Save the Children. He initially agreed to meet but later stopped taking calls and did not respond to messages sent to him.
Gen (retd) Nadeem also advised the NGO, an email of the country director revealed, to fight the expulsion of the expatriates as otherwise the ISI would move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report came out.