PPP leader Khursheed Shah calls Hussain Haqqani a traitor

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stalwart and the opposition leader in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed on Monday called former Pakistan ambassador to Washington Hussain Haqqani a traitor, a day after the former envoy sparked  controversy with a Washington Post article in which he said he had facilitated presence of CIA operatives in Pakistan by acting under the authorization of PPP government.

Haqqani wrote that presence of CIA operatives helped track down al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Ladin without the knowledge of Pakistani military.

Khursheed Shah said Haqqani’s statement was not worthy of being debated in parliament. “This man is issuing statement in an effort to gain attention of new US administration,” said he, reffering to Haqqani, a former member of  the PPP.

Khursheed Shah said people who are born on Pakistani  soil and then commits treason after going to US should not be accorded much importance.

He wrote In his latest article — "Yes, the Russian ambassador met Trump’s team. So? That’s what we diplomats do” — published in The Washington Post, Haqqani identified the then president Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani as his “civilian leaders”, and revealed, “In November 2011, I was forced to resign as ambassador after Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus gained the upper hand in the country’s perennial power struggle. Among the security establishment’s grievances against me was the charge that I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives who helped track down bin Laden without the knowledge of Pakistan’s army — even though I had acted under the authorisation of Pakistan’s elected civilian leaders.”

Haqqani wrote: “The relationships I forged with members of Obama’s campaign team also led to closer cooperation between Pakistan and the United States in fighting terrorism over the 31/2  years I served as ambassador. These connections eventually enabled the United States to discover and eliminate bin Laden without depending on Pakistan’s intelligence service or military, which were suspected of sympathy toward Islamist militants.”

The former ambassador said, “Friends I made from the Obama campaign were able to ask, three years later, as National Security Council officials, for help in stationing U.S. Special Operations and intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistan’s civilian leaders, who approved. Although the United States kept us officially out of the loop about the operation, these locally stationed Americans proved invaluable when Obama decided to send in Navy SEAL Team 6 without notifying Pakistan.”

Haqqani explained, “I became Pakistan’s ambassador in May 2008, soon after the country’s return to civilian rule after nine years of military dictatorship under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The George W. Bush administration had forged an alliance with Musharraf in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, hoping that economic incentives and offers of military hardware would turn Pakistan away from its long-standing policy of supporting Islamist militants, including the Afghan Taliban, as instruments of regional influence.”

He added, “By 2007, Bush had realised that Musharraf either 'would not or could not' fulfill his promises in fighting terrorism, as he wrote later, and the president welcomed Pakistan’s return to democracy. The civilian leaders who appointed me as ambassador — President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani — looked forward to U.S. backing in reversing Musharraf’s policies at home and abroad. They said they wanted to end Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, improve relations with India and Afghanistan, and limit the role of Pakistan’s military intelligence service in defining the country’s foreign policy. In return, they sought generous US aid to improve the ailing Pakistani economy.”