Dear All,

ome of the events which took place in Pakistan exactly 35 years ago have cast a very long shadow over parliamentary democracy in the country. On November 1, 1989, a no-confidence resolution was moved against the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who had been in office for less than a year. Although Bhutto survived this attempt to topple her, the way in which legislators were influenced (bribed, threatened and abducted) created a template that endured.

Subsequent revelations and court testimony have confirmed the widely held understanding that the 1989 no confidence motion was engineered by an establishment characterised by a deep distrust of Bhutto. They had tried to stop her from succeeding in the 1988 elections by creating and supporting an alliance of right-wing parties (the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad). Their purpose was to stop her party from coming into power. The no confidence motion against her was the establishment’s bid to topple her and replace her with a more pliable alternative. Top officials (the president, the army chief and several powerful generals) were involved in this bid to overthrow the government. In constitutional terms, this amounted to treason. Somehow, this has not really sunk into the national psyche.

The machinations of the right-wing establishment (the officials who had acted as partners to Gen Zia-ul Haq might have succeeded were it not for the fact that the Intelligence Bureau was not headed by one of their men. This allowed the civilian government to keep tabs on the anti-Bhutto plots and stay ahead of the game. This was done through a covert IB operation known as Midnight Jackals where attempts to bribe and buy legislators were recorded. In later testimony before the Supreme Court, in 2013, the then IB chief Masood Sharif said that the driving forces behind the plots to contain and destabilise Bhutto were the then president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the then army chief Gen Aslam Beg.

Masood Sharif made the statement in a court in a case alleging that the IB had misappropriated funds for political purposes. What is often overlooked or remains unmentioned is the funding of the anti-Bhutto coalition through secret funds and other agencies. Some very interesting revelations did surface over the course of what is now known as the Asghar Khan case. Among these revelations was Lt Gen Asad Durrani’s admission that money had been distributed to opposition leaders. He said the purpose was to defeat Bhutto. Gen Durrani said that this was done on the orders of the then army chief. He also gave the names of some journalists, editors and newspaper owners who had been paid and were complicit in the project.

Air Marshall Asghar Khan, a former chief of the Pakistan Air Force chief and the PIA, had a reputation for integrity. Although he and his party, the Tehreek-i-Istaqlal, did not enjoy electoral success he placed himself on the right side of history through his initiation of the court case looking into this political funding and his refusal to let the case be derailed or quashed.

The case started as a human rights petition filed by Asghar Khan in 1996 and was based on accusations by a former interior minister, Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar, that the establishment had bribed and bought the loyalties of several politicians in 1990. Despite the shocking allegations, nobody was ever brought to trial. The hearings dragged out, things became confusing and attempts were made to obstruct proceedings. There was a demand for a court martial of those responsible but that did not come to pass. In 2018, the Federal Investigative Agency tried to get the Supreme Court to close the case since “too much time” had elapsed since the events in question and it “did not have any evidence” to launch criminal prosecutions. Asghar Khan had passed away by then but his family refused to withdraw the case.

In the 1989 Intelligence Bureau covert operation, two establishment men were found trying to ‘buy’ legislator’s votes. They were Brigadier Imtiaz and Major Amir. The army leadership later said that the two had been ‘rogue operatives’ and dismissed them from service. In later years, both were rehabilitated and given government posts by Nawaz Sharif. (Brigadier Imtiaz was, ironically, appointed to head the IB, the intelligence agency that had exposed the 1989 plot). Had Brigadier Imtiaz, Major Amir and their superiors been guilty of treason? They had, after all, plotted against the government and used millions of rupees of public money to effect regime change and corrupt the parliamentary system.

This is all on record but, as with most aspects of Pakistan’s political and parliamentary history, things are deliberately obfuscated and confused. The waters are muddied. One example of this is Operation Midnight Jackals. Although this was the name of the IB covert op that exposed the 1989 plot, many people seem to think it was the name of the op.

The pakmilitarymonitor website has an interesting piece on this chapter in Pakistan’s political history. It says: “This episode exposes how civilian governments in Pakistan have had to fight on so many fronts at the same time. It is all very well to say that they ‘fail at governance’ but the fact of the matter is they are so busy defending themselves against various assaults from their own institutions that they are hardly able to focus on policy or its implementation (they need to concentrate on a strong defence against Defence).”

Sadly, November 1989 marks a turning point in the country’s parliamentary history.

Umber Khairi