Pakistan: Is the U.S. undermining our president?

Cyril Almeida

Dawn

Pakistanis have a new conspiracy theory to chew on, said Cyril Almeida. We’re calling it “Memogate.” Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz claims that Husain Haqqani, who resigned this week as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., wrote a memo last May to Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, begging the Americans to intervene to prevent a military coup. Ijaz, “a smarmy self-promoter,” says the Pakistani government had been so humiliated by the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden that it feared it would be toppled. If it’s true that President Asif Ali Zardari ordered such an appeal to a foreign government, it’s a real scandal.

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But the story makes no sense. After the bin Laden raid, the public wasn’t angry with our civilian government; it was lambasting the generals, who failed not only to locate the world’s most wanted man hiding near their military academy, but also to prevent an American raid deep in Pakistani territory. That’s why many here rejected the memo as a “preposterous” fabrication—but now Mullen himself has confirmed that he saw the memo. With that, he has thrown “Haqqani, and possibly Zardari, under the bus.” Is this how America promotes regime change in Pakistan?