New Delhi: Late one December morning two years ago, the most important Generals in Pakistan headed into a Dubai hotel for a secret meeting with a man the army had once accused of treason. Former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and former spymaster Lieutenant-General Faiz Hamid, sources familiar with the meeting have told ThePrint, had initiated the meeting, hoping the diplomat and scholar Husain Haqqani could help repair Islamabad’s ties with India and the United States.
The meeting, the sources said, led to nothing. But it has now set off a political firestorm, with a former minister accusing General Bajwa of “plotting regime change”. The General, Shireen Mazari claimed, had made payments to Haqqani, to undermine the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Evidence for Mazari’s allegations is contained in documents filed under the United States Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which prescribes harsh penalties for failure to disclose lobbying on behalf of foreign entities. The documents show former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Robert Grenier made two payments (of USD 20,000 and USD 10,000) to Haqqani, for ‘conducting research’.
The revelation of payments to Haqqani — forced to resign as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States in 2011, because of his alleged role in ensuring civilian control of the country’s military — is being used by the PTI to fuel claims that Imran’s fall was engineered by the United States.
FARA records, however, show Grenier was hired by a key aide of Imran Khan, but offer no insight on why he then made payments to a trenchant critic of the former prime minister.
“Someone has added two plus two to get nine,” Haqqani told ThePrint. “I have no relations with the Pakistan military except with friends and family members who serve in it. Given that I was vilified for being anti-Pakistan and anti-military for years, questions about whether the then-army chief met me should be directed at the military.”
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Imran’s CIA lobbyist
The tangled story dates back to April, when — faced with growing pressure from General Bajwa to leave office — Imran claimed to be the victim of a United States plot. The allegation was based on a diplomatic cable sent by Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed, recording a testy conversation with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu. Lu, Majeed wrote, had warned that Imran remaining in office would damage ties between the two countries.
However, documents show less than a year before Imran claimed the United States was plotting to bring down his government, his special advisor Iftikhar-ur-Rehman Durrani retained Grenier to provide “public information and advocacy as related to relations between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.
FARA disclosures — first reported by the journalist Waqas Ahmad — show Durrani paid consulting fees of USD 150,000 to Grenier in four instalments through 2021. Mazari claims the payments were made “covertly, with no cabinet approval and bypassing procurement procedures”. Filings also show Grenier received USD 50,000 for “extensive media research” conducted in June and July 2022 — the months immediately after Imran made his allegations.
The disclosure that Grenier had been hired raised eyebrows since Imran had repeatedly alleged that the CIA was using mercenaries to destabilise Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Long believed by India’s intelligence community to have been among a group of key United States officials sympathetic to Islamabad, Grenier served in Pakistan at the time of 9/11 and went on to become its top counter-terrorism official from 2004-2006. Following the al-Qaeda attacks, Grenier argued in a top-secret cable, the Pakistan army had entrenched a new, moderate leadership that was “motivated to cooperate fully with the CIA in the war on terrorism”.
Though it is unclear whether Durrani used personal or government funds to pay Grenier, the former special advisor remains a member of the PTI. Imran has made no comment on the issue.
“I have never interacted with Durrani,” Haqqani told ThePrint.
Adding, “I have never had an interest in working with PTI, and my stance against the military’s role in Pakistan’s politics is well known and unchanged. I am currently only engaged in research and consulting work and have not had anything to do with Pakistan’s domestic politics for many years.”
General Bajwa’s outreach
Little evidence exists of what dividends, if any, Islamabad gained from Grenier’s lobbying. Efforts to secure a one-on-one phone conversation between Imran and President Joe Biden ended without result. Imran did secure a one-on-one meeting with former diplomat Robin Raphel — a diplomat many in New Delhi consider to have harboured anti-India bias — but the value of the engagement is unclear.
The two payments to Haqqani, a source familiar with the transaction said, were made to build a list of politically-influential individuals for Grenier, who had little on-ground contact with Pakistan after leaving the country in 2003.
Following the collapse of the Imran government, a group of ambassadors including Haqqani issued a report calling for a “modest pragmatic relationship” between the United States and Pakistan. There is no evidence, though, that these recommendations were obtained through lobbying activity — and, in any case, they came after Imran was evicted from office.
General Bajwa’s own outreach to Haqqani, Indian diplomatic sources say, was likely driven by the failure of the Imran government’s lobbying efforts in Washington.
Following the killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in 2011, Haqqani was alleged to have written a private memo to Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff committee, asking for his help in ensuring civilian supremacy in Pakistan. Haqqani had denied the allegations, which were made by the prominent businessman Mansoor Ijaz — a billionaire who had once offered to help the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) make peace in Kashmir.
The memo evoked a furious reaction from Pakistan’s army, which saw it as an effort to undermine its primacy in the country.
Even though the allegations were never proven, Haqqani was forced to resign and spent several months in de-facto incarceration before leaving for the United States. He has not returned to Pakistan since, a family source said, even when his brother passed away in March 2021. Although General Bajwa had held out guarantees of safe passage, the source said, Haqqani believed the Imran government could endanger his life.
Moreover, the sums paid to Haqqani for a regime change operation seem implausibly small. Haqqani and his wife, politician Farahnaz Ispahani, are, moreover, believed to be independently wealthy. Their home in Washington is valued at over USD 5 million on property websites.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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