With Haqqani’s resignation and return to Islamabad, one thought the matter would be left at that. But it was just the beginning. —AP/File Photo

With the country consumed by ‘memogate’ in November and December, the speculation and conjecture about its outcome ranged from the dreary to the diabolical.

If crystal-ball gazers were looking at the gleaming glass object in their hands to foretell the fate of the president, his prime minister, the former ambassador to the US and the rest of the Pakistan People’s Party government, it would have been alright.

But most ‘analysts’ were hardly providing an analysis of a very complex situation rendered even more complicated by the perpetual emergence of new angles. They were digging deep into their biases to find newer pegs to hang their prejudiced positions on.

Was it surprising that we were none the wiser? This was a tough maze to negotiate anyway. Even the basic outlines of the story were murky. On Oct 10 the Financial Times ran an op-ed article by Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz claiming he had secretly passed on a cry for help to the then American military chief from a Pakistani president and his ambassador who feared a military coup in the aftermath of the Osama bin Laden raid. Records of alleged Blackberry Messenger, phone and text-message exchanges between Ijaz and the Pakistani envoy to the US, Husain Haqqani, provided a juicy peek into real or imagined behind-the-scenes brinksmanship over the fate of a nation.

With Haqqani’s resignation and return to Islamabad, one thought the matter would be left at that. But it was just the beginning.

Nawaz Sharif’s petition to the Supreme Court added booster rockets to the saga when the SC received conflicting replies from the cast of characters involved. The military and Inter-Services Intelligence chiefs claimed the memo was real and should be investigated and implied Haqqani was involved; the government denied any link to it and asked for a dismissal of Sharif’s petition, pointing out that a parliamentary committee was already looking into the matter. Rumours surfaced that a coup had been planned in May. All of which led to rumours of a coup in December.

Meanwhile, the president’s sudden departure for Dubai on December 6 made the web of intrigue impenetrable, despite his return two weeks later. The multiple explanations for his illness provided by a disorganised PPP media machine added several layers to the shroud of mystery.

There is no point in recalling all the tiny, intricate twists and turns that accompanied these events, because that’s been done to death already. But it won’t be out of place to look at some broader, related issues.

The army never camouflaged its disdain, expressed through the whole range of its surrogates in the media, for Haqqani, who refused to buy into the institution’s strategic-depth and other policy obsessions. In fact, the ambassador left no stone unturned to press for civilian supremacy. The ambassador’s attitude was also upsetting for the mandarins of the Foreign Office who, though never having resisted the GHQ-Aabpara domination of what should be mainly their domain, were resentful of being bypassed by this independent, headstrong presidential appointee and ally.

One can disagree with it as much as one likes, and one does, but it is true that only the army has a clearly stated Afghan policy. The civilian government doesn’t. It allied itself quietly with US policy because it rightly identified militancy as the major threat to the country.

Haqqani embodied this thinking and the army, a state within the state, felt that neither its views nor its concerns were being represented in Washington. In fact, the ambassador often used sarcastic language to describe the generals. ‘Memogate’ gave GHQ the perfect opportunity to humiliate and axe a foe they had found impossible to subdue since his appointment after the transition to civilian rule following the 2008 elections.

But did the army have plans in place to widen the net of its targets, now that it had netted Haqqani? Or was it rank opportunism that dictated a cleaning out of the stables if possible? Shaikh Rasheed, the Rawalpindi politician whose proximity to GHQ is one of our best-kept secrets, had almost licked his chops when he said on television that the president was unlikely to return from Dubai.

On the other hand, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz legislator Ayaz Amir said the boat had been rocked enough on account of a “piece of paper”. His warning to possible adventurers that there are more real, important issues to warrant our attention was endorsed by eminent lawyer Salman Raja, who also said the SC may stay its hand in the petition if it feels its verdict would deliver an advantage to one political player over another.

Both Amir and Raja made sensible points. The country is, after all, being held hostage by the claims of a ‘witness’ whose credibility everyone questions. And if an ambiguous denial by the military is enough to rubbish Ijaz’s claim about the spy chief making coup-planning visits to Arab states, it should also be enough to rubbish his claims about Haqqani and the president. Normally, the web of intrigue would have lifted.

But we also know our history is represented by a pile of shredded common sense. This feels like a drama that will continue to play out in 2012.

— Abbas Nasir is a former editor of Dawn