Scepticism over Faizabad Commission report

KARACHI: The Faizabad Commission’s investigation leaves much to desire, say legal and political experts who also question whether the commission even adhered to the TORs it had signed up for.

The Faizabad Inquiry Commission -- formed to investigate the Faizabad dharna -- has in its report ‘exonerated’ former ISI DG Lt-Gen (r) Faiz Hameed while also not finding any evidence of the involvement of a state institution or secret agency, and suggested passing legislation related to the country’s intelligence services.

Speaking to Shahzeb Khanzada on Geo News Tuesday night, Geo News Special correspondent Azaz Syed said that the Faizabad Commission had 11 TORs out of which numbers 6 and 7 were the most important -- “Were intelligence agencies involved in the dharna? And that responsibility has to be ascertained.”

According to Azaz, that responsibility as such has not been assigned by the commission’s report. Saying that no one -- including politicians or anyone else -- “appeared in front of the commission and discussed an intelligence agency role [in the dharna]”, Azaz added that the exception was “Absar Alam who was the lone man who as Pemra chair talked to the commission and named Gen Faiz Hameed.”

Azaz Syed also mentioned that the annexures to the commission’s report are “very important. One of these is related to the Nov 22 meeting in the PM House. Points 22 and 26 of this annexure are very important. They talk about how Gen Faiz Hameed told the meeting that, although the protesters were few, force should not be used. And that the TLP’s supporters were spread across the country and this could lead to a backlash.”

Azaz Syed has also further reported that in addition to the former prime minister and members of the federal cabinet, the then Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah also participated in the meeting as did former COAS General Bajwa, former ISI DG Naveed Mukhtar, and Gen Faiz Hameed.

Further details of the meeting minutes say that former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal stated that the TLP was not ready to withdraw their demand for the resignation of the law minister while the participants of the meeting deemed Zahid Hamid’s resignation unnecessary and indefensible saying that the legislative amendments were a joint action of the parliamentary committee and so the resignation was not justified.

According to Azaz, in meeting minute number 28, it was directed to resume negotiations and facilitate the DIG in it. In the sub-section of the same minute, the force commander was appointed to lead the overall operation against the Faizabad sit-in. Azaz Syed also spoke about how one of the statements recorded in the commission pointed to differences between the then PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and then Punjab CM Shehbaz Sharif over the resignation of the then law minister, Zahid Hamid.

Did the commission’s inquiry look into everything? There is scepticism surrounding that. For example, during his Tuesday night show, Shahzeb Khanzada asked whether the commission looked at the transmissions of channels? What about the channel that was reportedly asked to be placed back on air? Did the commission see what that particular channel was reporting at that time? Khanzada asked: “Did the commission not even do that? And what about the reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa? Did the commission not look into why the reference was filed against him?”

For his part, former Pemra chairman Absar Alam spoke about the inquiry commission’s report during a TV appearance, calling the report a “lecture” that has been given many times before. According to Alam, “The commission should get a Tamgha Imtiaz....The recommendations given are not new. And there’s also no point in them.”

Not only that, much like Shahzeb Khanzada, Absar Alam too has questions regarding the commission’s omissions. For him, the commission seems to not have adhered to the TORs assigned to it. During his comments on TV, Alam also asked whether the commission said anything about how CCTV cameras were stopped from working and their wires were cut and whether it asked why channels were stopped from working.

Meanwhile, talking to journalist Asma Shirazi on Tuesday night, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif called the commission report a “joke” and said that it holds no significance and is neither credible nor trustworthy.

Pointing out that two of the “main characters” [Gen (r) Faiz Hameed and Gen (r) Bajwa] did not even appear before the commission, the defence minister said that “only political workers like himself presented in front of the commission”. Saying that his experience with the commission left him with “a bad taste”, Asif also added that what he thought would be a “serious exercise” instead was just regular ‘chit-chat”.

Perhaps a better summary of just how the Faizabad Commission report can be seen is in the comments made by lawyer Reema Omer on Geo News Tuesday evening. Omer believed that, while criminal accountability is tough to prove, we have to look at the Faizabad dharna/sit-in through the context of history.

She first explained that if a commission of inquiry has to fix responsibility it needs evidence. With 7-8 years having passed it would be tough to find evidence now. Which is why, said Omer, “we need to look at these things with different perspectives”. How to do that? For Reema Omer, the starting point should be the Supreme Court’s Faizabad judgment: “The way issues were framed in the judgment was the correct way given Pakistan’s context.”

Omer reiterated that “if we want to hold someone criminally accountable for the Faizabad sit-in, we won’t find evidence for that but if we use a historical, contextual perspective to look at this, we would find evidence.... For example, when the judgment came, how was it taken, who reacted, and how -- this would give the full story.”

Another important aspect of the Faizabad time was how the media was manipulated at that time. Reema Omer asked this very pertinent question as well: “Was it coincidental that the media was showing hate speeches and incitement to violence was being fuelled?

This is why, as Reema Omer, put it: “There is a whole context to the Faizabad issue; making it into an administrative or law-and-order issue will be a limited way of looking at it. If all this was just about the government and the agencies had no role in any of it, then why were there reprisals against Justice Qazi Faez Isa? Why was a reference filed against him?”