ISLAMABAD: Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has urged the president to act against the “abuse of power and violations of our laws and of the Constitution,” and define “clear operational lines” of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan Army.
In a letter addressed to Arif Alvi on November 6, Khan charged the military with abuse of power and obstruction of justice, before appealing to the president to take note of “serious wrongdoings” which he said undermined the national security of Pakistan.
He also asked Alvi to identify the “guilty” and hold them accountable, in an apparent reference to the top army brass.
Analysts understood to be sympathetic to the political role of the army have blamed Khan for “needlessly antagonistic behaviour” before, and after, the toppling of his government, denouncing political rivals as “traitors” and taunting the military as “neutrals,” in a sardonic reference to its historical role as kingmaker.
Last week, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed Anjum, director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, gave an unprecedented press conference, the first time the spymaster has ever addressed the media, during which he accused Khan of duplicitously — “negotiating with the military at night while denouncing them during the day”.
In his letter, the former prime minister lamented that since the ouster of his government, his party had been confronted with “an ever-increasing scale of false allegations, harassment, arrests and custodial torture”.
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He noted with concern that Rana Sanaullah Khan, the minister for interior, had repeatedly issued death threats against him. He also reiterated his claims about a conspiracy being hatched to assassinate him by the minister, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a general working under Anjum.
“The plot was operationalised earlier this week during our long march but Allah saved me and the assassination attempt failed,” he said.
He raised three separate points regarding the leakage of confidential conversations from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the controversy surrounding the diplomatic cypher and the role of the military’s media wing.
He observed that Official Secrets Act, 1923, the anti-espionage law, was breached when a “confidential conversation between myself as prime minister, the chief of army staff and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), on a supposedly secure line, was ‘leaked’ to the media”.
“This raises a very serious question as to who or what organisation was involved in doing a clearly illegal wiretap of the PM’s secure phone line? This is a breach of national security at the highest level,” he said.
A series of separate audio recordings surfaced in September, allegedly featuring the leadership of the PTI and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) holding informal conversations never meant to be heard by the public.
Khan also went on to talk about the cypher controversy, which the former premier has long touted as evidence to overturn his government through a foreign conspiracy.
He noted the National Security Committee (NSC) meeting held during his tenure had “decided this was an unacceptable intrusion into our internal matters” which was also later reaffirmed during the meeting held after Shehbaz Sharif became the prime minister.
However, the joint news conference of Anjum and Lt. Gen. Babar Iftikhar, director general of ISPR, had the “former contradicting the decision made by the NSC under two governments and stating that the message of the US government conveyed by our envoy in Washington in the cypher was not an unacceptable intrusion into our internal affairs but simply a case of ‘misconduct’.”
“The question that needs to be examined is how two military bureaucrats can publicly contradict a decision of the NSC? This also raises the serious issue of these military bureaucrats deliberately trying to create a false narrative.”
Khan also posed two further questions: how the head of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency could hold a public press conference and how two military bureaucrats could hold a “highly political press conference”.
“The parameters of a military information organisation such as the ISPR also need to be clearly defined and limited to information relating to defence and military issues. As supreme commander of the armed forces, I call on you to initiate the drawing up of these clear operational lines for the ISPR.”
He concluded his letter by urging the president to protect the country’s democracy and Constitution.
“No person or state institution can be above the law of the land. We have been seeing a massive abuse of citizens at the hands of rogue elements within state organisations, including custodial torture and abductions all carried out with impunity.
“You hold the highest office of state and I am requesting you to act now to stop the abuse of power and violations of our laws and of the Constitution, which ensures the fundamental rights of every citizen,” he wrote.
