Spy vs Spy: Look who is watching

The issue in Raza Hiraj's disclosures is not about the attendance of legislators -- it's about whether a minister should be spying on parliamentarians

By Adnan Rehmat

A simple question: Does a country's cabinet of ministers -- that embodiment of representative will in a democratic dispensation -- have sovereignty over the intelligence agencies? In Pakistan's case the answer is not a simple 'yes'. If any proof is required it came through news reports in this newspaper earlier this month that a minister spied on not only his cabinet colleagues but also his fellow parliamentarians on behalf of the intelligence agencies. State minister for parliamentary affairs Raza Hiraj confessed to sending detailed reports on the attendance of legislators in parliamentary sessions to Inter-Services Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Intelligence Bureau and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, which regulates the three armed forces.

The focus of the ensuing brouhaha has sadly been restricted to which parliamentarians take their primary function of legislation seriously and which ones are playing the truant. The issue here is not the attendance of legislators in parliamentary sessions or their absence from it but whether a minister or legislator should be spying on parliamentarians for the intelligence agencies. If it were just a matter of keeping a tab on the attendance of parliamentarians, surely this could be determined from the attendance registers with the office of the speaker of the National Assembly. The real issue here is who controls the intelligence agencies? The parliamentary affairs ministry has demeaned itself by submitting an assignment to the intelligence agencies that are, by law, subservient to them. Incredibly, the list also includes the names of Aftab Sherpao and Rao Sikandar who, as interior and defence ministers, actually are supposed to control some of these agencies rather than the other way round -- a case of the office spying on its chief!

But then what can be expected of a cabinet that surrenders its sovereignty to the very offices it regulates and one that is drawn from a parliament that legislated away its own sovereignty. It has been reported that it was Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who sanctioned a register of attendance of parliamentarians be maintained but Sher Afgan, the federal parliamentary affairs minister, emphasised that his junior minister acted alone in passing on the information to the intelligence agencies.

Again, the real issue here is not whether the premier was not privy to this act -- and therefore exonerated of guilt -- but whether the prime minister and the cabinet have held the minister and the intelligence agencies accountable for passing on and receiving information that is none of their business.

If there has been no action taken, then the prime minister and cabinet are both guilty by association. Considering the constitutional arrangements the irony cannot be stark: a minister spying on his own colleagues! If at all, the parliamentary minister should be spying on the intelligence agencies to determine whether they are transgressing their limits by spying on people's elected representatives.

Shockingly, the attendance register of the parliamentarians have also been sent to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Why should an attendance report of parliamentarians be sent to a government servant? The chairman should instead be sending an attendance report to the cabinet outlining which serving generals and soldiers are absent from duty and in violation of their original terms of contract, running the country's myriad civilian organisations. Clearly the soldier most absent from service is the army chief who is spending quality time in the President House.

Again the real issue is who controls the intelligence agencies? Clearly because the civilian government isn't controlling them, they are not held accountable. Even now there is a constitutional petition -- filed by Asghar Khan -- pending in the Supreme Court regarding meddling of ISI in politics and making illegal payments to politicians from the public exchequer. At least one former ISI chief (Lt Gen Retd. Asad Durrani) and an army chief (Gen Retd Aslam Beg) have openly confessed to distributing money among politicians and crafting electoral alliances.

It is precisely because the intelligence agencies have not been held accountable despite overwhelming evidence against them that make them so powerful. Not for nothing do twice elected prime ministers of Pakistan -- Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- term them 'a state within a state'. Again, it is precisely because of misplaced national priorities that while the intelligence agencies kept busy making and breaking governments, nuclear proliferation was taking place right under their noses -- remember, Dr A Q Khan publicly confessed to nuclear proliferation while President General Pervez Musharraf stressed that neither any government nor the military were ever involved in the proliferation.

The sharing of information with intelligence agencies that has nothing to do with them has been possible because the parliament is considered an accomplice in the military-driven political priorities that favour the Establishment. Spying on parliamentarians by intelligence agencies should be considered a breach of the sovereignty of parliament. But who will hold the intelligence agencies accountable? If there ever is a desire to do this, the Pakistani parliament will form standing committees on intelligence a la the parliaments of the United States and United Kingdom and like them summon the intelligence chiefs to see what they are up to and how much money to give them.

As long as the parliament does not stop being unintelligent, it will have to contend with intelligence agencies.