Pakistan: Why PM Gilani fired Durrani?

Posted on 09 January 2009. Tags: Durrani, Mumbai militancy, Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani

The main reason why Prime Minister Gilani fired Mr. Durrani is because it was Mr. Durrani that sabotaged The Prime Minister’s trip to Washington by implanting a story with the Bush Administration which said that Gilani’s attack on the madrassas was a sort of a stage event because the madarsa owners had been tipped off by the military. The implanted story was supposed to embarrass the Prime Minister and pave the way for Mr. Zardari to take over the government.

Pakistan: Hawks reign. Doves wane. Durrani Fired for misstatement on Kasab

Washington’s sanguinity was not increased when Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, arrived in Washington over the summer for what turned out to be a disastrous first visit. Gilani, as the country’s first civilian leader in more than a decade, was under huge pressure to show he could bring the intelligence agency, and the country, under control. He couldn’t – a brief effort to force the ISI to report to the civilian leadership was quashed – but he thought he had better show up with a gift for President Bush.

Times Topics: PakistanGilani wanted to tell Bush that he had sent forces into the tribal areas to clean out a major madrassa where hard-line ideology and intolerance were part of the daily curriculum. There were roughly 25,000 such private Islamic schools around Pakistan, though only a small number of them regularly bred young terrorists. The one he decided to target was run by the Haqqani faction of Islamic militants, one of the most powerful in the tribal areas.

Though Gilani never knew it, Bush was aware of this gift in advance. The National Security Agency had picked up intercepts indicating that a Pakistani unit warned the leadership of the school about what was coming before carrying out its raid. “They must have called 1-800-HAQQANI,” said one person who was familiar with the intercepted conversation. According to another, the account of the warning sent to the school was almost comic. “It was something like, ‘Hey, we’re going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram.’ “

When the “attack” on the madrassa came, the Pakistani forces grabbed a few guns and hauled away a few teenagers. Sure enough, a few days later Gilani showed up in the Oval Office and conveyed the wonderful news to Bush: the great crackdown on the madrassas had begun. The officials in the room – Bush; his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley; and others – did not want to confront Gilani with the evidence that the school had been warned. That would have required revealing sensitive intercepts, and they judged, according to participants in the discussion, that Gilani was both incapable of keeping a secret and incapable of cracking down on his military and intelligence units. Indeed, Gilani may not even have been aware that his gift was a charade: Bush and Hadley may well have known more about the military’s actions than the prime minister himself. New York Times Magazine. David E. Sanger is chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. His book “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” from which this article is adapted, will be published this week by Harmony Books.

It is fascinating to note the role of the Fifth Column during the visit of PM Gilani. It is pedagogical to note the games played by Haqqani and Durrani during the trip of Mr. Gilani to the US. –to malign the ISI, the army and Pakistan. No wonder the poor guy didn’t have a ghost of a chance in Washington and was the laughing stock.

Ironaically Gilani was pusing for the US to share intelligence with Pakistan and Pakistan would take action.

Mr. Gilani has been monitoring Mr. Durrani for a while and he was finally fed up with the activities of the mole in his administration. The leak about “Ajmal Khattab” was the final domino which fell and got him fired.

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2 Responses to “Pakistan: Why PM Gilani fired Durrani?”

Wajahat Anwar says:

January 16, 2009 at 8:38 am

Pakistan Needs a Prime Minister Who Have Intelligence, As Well As The President.

Gillani Is Suitable For A “Peon” Position In PM House.

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irfan khan says:

January 16, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Given pakistan,s present setup , literacy etc Democracy would never let some serious leadership get to the top. It will continue to elect these opportunist landlords and industrialists. They come in power not to serve the country rather on a money hunt from whatever is left. Their greed knows no bounds. Until by some miracle we could devise an election methodology where a common person could stand for nomination without spending millions therz no hope. Our people are sick of these PPP and PML nonsense but have no alternate

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