Former army chief Raheel Sharif thwarted plans for coup in 2014
Former US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson has disclosed that former chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif had thwarted a coup attempt in 2014.
“We received information that Zahirul Islam, the InterServices Intelligence (ISI) director-general, was mobilising for a coup in September of 2014.
“(Army Chief) Raheel (Sharif) blocked it by, in effect, removing Zahir, by announcing that his successor (Zahir) was talking to the corps commanders and was talking to likeminded army officers.
“(Zahir) was prepared to do it and had the chief been willing, even tacitly, it would have happened. But the chief was not willing, so it didn’t happen,” Olson was quoted in the recently-launched book The
Battle For Pakistan, The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood, by Shuja Nawaz in its chapter titling, Mil-to-Mil Relations: Do More.
Olson made this comment in the context of the protest sitins, or “dharna”, of Imran Khan in 2014.
Nawaz has authored a 373page book covering the US-Pakistan relationship and important political events of the last decade and a half in Pakistan.
Nawaz, the brother of a former army chief, the late General Asif Nawaz Janjua, is an acclaimed author and well-reputed intellectual.
His book, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within, is considered the most authoritative history of the Pakistan army.
In his latest book, Nawaz reveals that for Americans, the former ISI chief LieutenantGeneral Ahmed Shuja Pasha was “straight shooting super nationalist general who had come into the world of intelligence on the insistence of General Kayani.”
According to the book, he (Pasha) became an activist and an aggressive head of the country’s largest intelligence agency, expanding its operations and remit virtually at will and demanding greater access to information on US operations and operatives inside Pakistan.
According to Nawaz, Pasha was a prime target of American surveillance.
He was being tracked during his travels abroad.
The book provides details on the surveillance of Pasha.
Nawaz also states that during his (Pasha’s) tenure, three Pakistan-US joint intelligence fusion cells were shut down.
According to Nawaz, Pasha was a bête noire for Americans.
While quoting an unnamed US official as saying, the author touches on the subject of US intelligence surveillance inside
Pakistan and said that the US had penetrated many Pakistani organisations.
The book says that, after Pasha’s retirement, the new ISI head Lieutenant-General Zahirul Islam was consumed by domestic issues.
Islam spent most of his time on the political turmoil following the 2013 elections, which produced public sit-ins, or “dharnas”, by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and allies against the government.
“Both Pasha and Islam’s names were associated with the street opposition to then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif; though no solid evidence came to the surface.
“Islam was also a former head of one of the ISI’s wings or directorates, and then had been in the hurly-burly of Karachi politics as the corps commander there,” notes the book.
Nawaz adds that Islam’s earlier experience at the ISI had been in monitoring Pakistani internal politics.
Zahir’s activism was not “lost on US embassy”.
It is pertinent to mention here that Islam and Pasha have not given their views regarding their role in service.
Nawaz adds that US surveillance of the ISI and its head continued after Pasha.
Islam’s successor at the ISI, Rizwan Akhtar, was a UStrained officer and maintained a good relationship with his US counterparts.
However, he struggled to make an impression on his interlocutors, especially when it came to matters of detail discussions about the Afghan war. American criticism was harsh. One US official recalled that in a meeting on Afghan reconciliation, Akhtar did not even remember the names of leading Afghan Taliban field commanders.
He was a hands-on ISI director-general and reportedly showed up in Karachi frequently, where he had earlier served as Rangers director-general.
According to Nawaz, Akhtar took charge of the Karachi operation without even informing the ISI’s sector commander in that city.
Due to his hands-on approach, Akhtar was unpopular in the ISI and even in the army, according to Nawaz.
While giving details of Akhtar’s exit from the ISI and later from army, Nawaz adds that “Akhtar failed to win the confidence of the new army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and resigned by taking early retirement”.
The book by Nawaz is filled with firsthand accounts of Pakistani and US officials with direct purview of important political events in Pakistan and Afghanistan for a critical period of the region’s history.