State behind shadows

Kamila Hyat

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

The demand by French parliamentarians that allegations by a newspaper regarding the payment of $4.3 million to Asif Ali Zardari and other Pakistanis in kickbacks from a 1994 submarine sale to Pakistan be investigated opens up many possibilities.

The insinuations that stem from that deal take the case well beyond the league of other major scandals involving defence deals, such as that which surfaced in the 80s, linking the then Indian prime minister Rajeev Gandhi to massive kickbacks paid out by the Swedish firm, Bofors. Such bribery of course takes place around the world. However, the Pakistan case appears to be unique. French investigators say Pakistanis, displeased with the failure to pay all the money promised as kickbacks, may have had a hand in the 2002 suicide bombing that killed 14 people, including 11 French naval engineers working on the submarines.

The attack was one of the earliest by a suicide bomber in the country where such means of mass murder were virtually unknown till after 2001. It remains, to this day, an attack which killed the largest number of westerners. The killing was at the time blamed on groups linked to Al Qaeda, and two members of a jihadi organisation were indeed found guilty by a lower court in Sindh but were acquitted by the provincial high court due to lack of evidence. In France, since this summer, investigators have been looking into the possibility that Pakistani intelligence officials were behind the bombing — which they think might have been intended to send out a message to Paris. The kickback payments were stopped after a change in the French government and in 2000, France moved for international conventions that banned kickbacks to be put in place. French officials who back this theory say the logic of the attack would have been similar to traditional mafia hits on those who fail to pay back debts: to make an example of someone who is seen as unlikely to pay up, and thereby send a message to others, even while officially being able to point the finger at someone else.

In President Zardari’s, defence it must be said that in 2002, he was indeed in jail. As his spokesman has said, while denying the story, it is hard to see how he could have been behind the attack carried out at a time when General Pervez Musharraf was at the height of his power. The French president — Nicolas Sarkozy — a minister at the time the submarine deal was signed, has also denied the story though there is a suspicion this is tied in to his attempts to alter France’s independent investigation system rather than any genuine knowledge about the events of 2002. It is also apparent that the story, coming as an anti-Zardari campaign gains momentum, has been played up. The Pakistan government has ordered a new investigation into the attack, though it is hard to believe that much credible evidence will emerge from it.

There are a number of important implications in the whole sordid business. The links between elements in the intelligence agencies and the militants have only recently been broken, as the military takes on the Taliban. The attack on the GHQ a few weeks ago and more recently on the ISI office in Peshawar is an outcome of this breakdown in a long relationship. But if elements other than the militants are capable of organising suicide attacks, more questions arise as to the nature of our state and the shadowy network that links groups within it, creating a labyrinth that makes it extremely difficult to distinguish truth from fiction.

The existence of outfits that mirror the working of militants or that incorporate them in their own efforts is relevant to other cases of terrorism too. The 2007 murder of Benazir Bhutto remains a mystery. We are, almost two years after it took place, no closer than before to solving what happened though the killing has had a huge impact on our political system, badly weakening it and the democratic set ups that stem from it. The status of Pakistan’s own probe into the death is unknown. Certainly it has faded rather unexpectedly into the background given that Benazir Bhutto’s own party is in power. A UN investigation — for what it is worth — continues. There are many who suspect that Baitullah Mehsud, the man named as having plotted the murder, indeed had little to do with it. We know the assassination was meticulously planned, involving bombers and multiple sharp-shooters. It is possible that the extremist shield was used to provide cover to other killers.

This has happened in the case of other deaths — including that of Major General Faisal Alvi, killed by unknown gunmen in 2008. In April this year, a former military official admitted to the murder – claiming he had carried it out in revenge for the death in Afghanistan of his brother, a militant. But other suspicions linger on, with some reports suggesting the flamboyant Alvi could have been preparing to expose links between elements in the intelligence agencies, the Taliban and other extremist outfits. There is no way of knowing if there is any truth in this.

The possibilities are quite obviously limitless. Extremists could be used to cover up other crimes, committed for completely different motives, and to deflect blame from their true perpetrators. Even petty criminals seem to be able to resort to this. In 2008, a businessman in Bhakkar ‘hired’ a young suicide bomber to target a rival and staged an attack that killed 20 people. The motive was initially believed to be sectarian. If ordinary murderers can hide behind militancy, it is obvious that more powerful elements can do so too.

In the state we have created, it is hard to know what is mirage and what reality. The intelligence agencies that manipulate so much of what happens are a factor in this. The French submarine story suggests suicide bombings may not always involve extremists; the origins of such attacks may have been different. The games played are dangerous ones. They continue today, and they will indeed not come to an end until we can find a way of more effectively controlling our agencies, limiting their size and bringing them under some kind of centralised command within a state that is not run from secret locations scattered across its territory but only by the institutions constitutionally assigned to do so.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com