STOP me if you've heard this one: a visitor was being given a guided tour of hell, and he saw cauldrons full of sinners from different nations. Huge fires burned below, and a giant stood outside with a club to push back anybody who tried to escape this eternal torment.

When the tourist reached the Pakistani cauldron, he noticed there was no guardian to prevent captives from leaving. On asking his guide for the reason, this was the reply he got: “Pakistanis pull each other down themselves, so there's no need to guard them.”

The hand Husain Haqqani must have felt on his ankle as he clutched the rim of the cauldron was clearly Pakistan-American Mansoor Ijaz's. But who was adding their weight to pull down the ex-ambassador is still unclear, although we have a pretty good idea that it had something to do with our shadowy military establishment.

For the record, let me say I have never met Ijaz, and judging from his words and actions over the years, I have no desire to do so either. Anybody who announces to the media that he is “super rich” — as Ijaz has reportedly boasted — is not somebody I would like to spend any time with. Nouveau-riche types like to flaunt their wealth, but even they do not go around bragging to strangers that they are “super rich”.

But crassness and bad taste are the least of Ijaz's faults. In a wonderful old movie, Danny Kaye played Walter Mitty, the fantasist who imagined he was a dashing hero in his vivid daydreams. So, too, does Ijaz think he is a major player on the world stage, boasting of solving problems from Kashmir to Sudan.

However, after his latest foray into the murky world of snakes and ladders, Ijaz is going to find it difficult to find anybody who will trust him. Even a pushy person like him will discover that there are limits to human gullibility.

This brings us to the question of how and why a seasoned and very smart man like Husain Haqqani allowed himself to be in the position he finds himself in. Again for the record, while I have met him a few times over the years, we are hardly friends. I opposed his earlier politics when he was a hatchet-man for Nawaz Sharif, but he redeemed himself in my eyes by opposing military rule, and by writing his book Pakistan: Between mosque and military .

However, his views clearly got under the army's skin, and he is seen with suspicion in GHQ. This animosity increased sharply as the Kerry-Lugar Bill made its way through the US Congress. This legislation, while it contained generous provisions for economic assistance to Pakistan, angered our top brass due to the safeguards it contained to prevent military intervention in politics. There were also provisions about Pakistan's nuclear programme that annoyed our military. Haqqani was suspected of having these clauses inserted into the controversial act.

Having gone through the explosive memo, I was offended as a Pakistani that anybody in a position of authority should be seeking external assistance to cut the military down to size. Don't get me wrong: I consider placing our defence forces under firm civilian control to be an entirely legitimate aspiration. But this is something we have to do independently, and not demean ourselves by asking for American help.

I will return to the question of the memo's authenticity in a moment, but here, let me just say that the best way to assert the elected government's control over the army is to provide decent, reasonably honest government. By not addressing the country's enormous problems effectively, politicians allow the military space, and encourage the opposition and the public to demand extra-constitutional intervention.

What I find highly suspicious in the memo to Mullen is the fear expressed about a possible military coup following the American raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden on May 2. My memory is not yet so poor that I have forgotten the humiliation the military suffered after that incident. Anybody thinking that our generals would have chosen that moment to seize power clearly inhabits some alternative universe.

However, the memo also speaks of a “historic opportunity” for cutting down the military to size. This view is more believable. Given how defensive and disgraced the high command was after the discovery that Bin Laden had been living in a major army cantonment like Abbottabad for five years, this would have indeed been the moment to strike.

But anybody even vaguely familiar with the troubled relationship between our army and the US administration would have realised that there was no way Gen Kayani would have accepted dictation from the Pentagon. So how and why would a very savvy diplomat like Haqqani have dictated a memo that, apart from being unsigned, also simply did not ring true?

A Google search about Mansoor Ijaz reveals some odd details. According to some reports on the web, he allegedly demanded $15m from the PPP government in 1995 to secure congressional support for aid to Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto refused to pay, and in the transcript of the supposed Blackberry exchange between him and Haqqani released by Ijaz, there is a reference to BB's decision and the dismissal of her government the following year. This can be taken both as a boast and a threat.

I am writing this in Washington where several Americans have asked me to explain the background to the scandal. A friend at the State Department spoke well about Haqqani's deep knowledge of the dynamics of power structure in the US capital, and his effectiveness as a diplomat.

So clearly, his successor, Sherry Rehman, has a tough act to follow. But as an old friend, I have a lot of respect for her intelligence and her capacity for hard work. I have no doubt she will be very successful in representing Pakistan in the United States, and wish her luck in her new assignment.

The writer is the author of Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West.

irfan.husain@gmail.com