establish where the buck will stop for the prime minister. But one thing is for sure — the former spymaster had been backing Imran since 2011. To recall, the largest-selling British national daily The Sunday Times had claimed in a story on November 21, 2011 that Imran Khan was recently introduced to Cameron Munter, American Ambassador to Pakistan, in the presence of Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI chief. The report stated: “Imran Khan is said to have gained the backing of the all-powerful security establishment, which has grown tired of the corruption pervading the two traditional political groupings, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), led by President Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), led by Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister”.
The Sunday Times report further added: “Although they do not publicly admit to favouring any party, it is an open secret that the military leadership, and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), are backing Imran Khan’s campaign. A senior official confirmed that he had the support of the army, but said his rise would cause more political damage to Sharif, the opposition leader and an outspoken military critic, than to the ruling PPP. Others view Imran Khan as a third force to break the dominance of Pakistan’s two largest political parties. Imran Khan is reluctant to criticise the military establishment publicly, but he emphasises that he will not be a puppet of the generals. “Obviously you have to work with them but it doesn’t mean you have to work under them,” he told The Times.
To tell the truth, Lt Gen (retd) Ahmed Shuja Pasha was overwhelmingly involved in national politics till his retirement in March 2012. He was the only ISI chief to have been accused of hatching conspiracies not only against the PPP government but also against the PML-N. While former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani had accused Pasha of taking up the Memogate scandal to pressurise the government into granting him yet another extension in service, the PML-N had described him as the most terrible ISI chief Pakistan has had since 1988.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on March 11, 2012, the then opposition leader in the National Assembly Ch Nisar Ali Khan had openly accused Ahmed Shuja Pasha of indulging in politics and misusing the political cell of the ISI to persuade several politicians to join Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf. It was in this background that the PML-N leadership had heaved a sigh of relief when the Zardari-led PPP government had decided not to grant a third extension to the controversial spymaster. While the PML-N top brass had publicly campaigned against Pasha, the PPP leaders, including Asif Zardari and Yusuf Raza Gilani, were not less thrilled after finally getting rid of the controversial spymaster.
That the ISI had been deeply involved in politics under Lt Gen Pasha’s command since the 2008 general elections can be further gauged from a US diplomatic cable, which was made public in December 2010. In that cable, the WikiLeaks had quoted interior minister Rehman Malik as telling the then American ambassador Anne Patterson that it was not General Ashfaq Kayani but Ahmed Shuja Pasha who was hatching conspiracies against President Asif Zardari.
The US Embassy cables revealed that Rehman Malik had sought an urgent appointment with Ms Anne Patterson in November 2009, saying that Ahmed Shuja Pasha was hatching plots to dislodge President Asif Ali Zardari, and adding that the president needed political security at this stage. However, Patterson was certain that the ISI chief could not do it alone. Although, Shuja Pasha’s close circles strongly refute all these allegations as a pack of lies, his critics insist that his tenure (October 2008 to March 2012) will always be remembered for all the wrong reasons, mainly due to his overwhelming involvement in politics. But quite interestingly, despite the fact that he is now stationed in Dubai as the National Security Adviser to the UAE government, Pasha is still being discussed in the power corridors as someone who is still trying to promote Imran Khan as the next ruler of Pakistan.