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PAKISTAN PANORAMA: Spy who loved me breaks bond – and a few others! (by KAMRAN REHMAT)

ABOUT ten days ago, I received a call from a friend, who is the editor of Pakistan’s largest circulated English daily, asking me to suggest a headline for a news story.

It was about the dismissal of a British military attaché in Islamabad after he “lost the confidence of the British High Commission” following what London called his “inappropriate relationship” with a Pakistani female ‘spy’.

Brigadier Andrew Durcan, 56, was recalled in January this year but the news story – brief to the point of being curt – was circulated via foreign wire services around the world only a few days ago.

Drawing a bit of inspiration from James Bond, the famed secret service agent and his standard hand-in-glove spy in quite a few such epics, I suggested, half tongue-in-cheek, that the editor could do with Spy who loved me breaks bond.

The derivation followed the title of the 1977 Roger Moore starrer. The only addition was the breaking part. For the record, in no Bond movie, does the secret agent go kaput – for good. But in the real life drama, the British military attaché did.

Little did I know that silly imagination at my end would create a sensation in the media, even spawn a battle of attrition between two female media persons, one a hardcore reporter with a nose for investigative journalism, and the other, a defence academic and director-general of Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS) Islamabad, a thinktank with an assembly of some of Pakistan’s finest brains.

All hell broke loose after Aroosa Alam, the aforesaid reporter of an Islamabad daily, Pakistan Observer, ventured with what she claimed was an expose on how the drama involving the British military attachÈ and the female spy played out.

Alam pointed to a certain research fellow, who happens to work for the ISS as the spy in question. This infuriated Dr Shireen Mazari, the ISS boss, who then went to town with a rejoinder that attempted to cut Alam down to size, but which in turn, drew the fury of the offended daily. Credibility was at stake, after all.

It is no secret that in diplomatic missions, some officials serve time for work other than their stated job-description. It is quite probable that Brigadier Durcan had a few skeletons in his cupboard, which is, in part explained by his rather secretive dismissal following a “loss of confidence” at the High Commission. Islamabad’s statement that it was never informed of the decision is, again, a pointer.

British Ministry of Defence, which seconds senior officers to the Foreign Office as military attaches in embassies around the world, confirmed the dismissal but declined to discuss the disgraced official’s future postings or whereabouts.

“The High Commissioner in Islamabad considered his platonic friendship with a Pakistani national inappropriate and, as a result, lost confidence in him. He has been investigated and cleared over potential breaches of security,” is what a statement from the ministry said following the revelation.

The married Durcan is a former commander of the Gordon Highlanders, 52nd Lowland Brigade and deputy inspector-general of the Territorial Army. He was nicknamed “the tartan barrel” by officers under his command in Scotland because of his girth.

But to most Pakistanis, it is the alleged involvement of their compatriot, a female at that, which is the most intriguing element of the soap opera. Alam, the daredevil reporter, decided to put them out of their misery with this expose:

“Careful and thorough investigation and a number of background interviews with military diplomats close to Brigadier Durcan revealed that a research fellow from Institute of Strategic Studies is the lady behind the whole affair.

“Holding dual nationality, one Pakistani and other British, Ms M K, has been associated with the Institute for many years. She deals with a number of defence-related issues and has written many research papers particularly on conflict resolution, non-proliferation, and EU.

“She frequently travelled between England and Pakistan. In Pakistan, she sought many interviews with various high-level defence officials even in Pakistani military hierarchy. She came under suspicion by M16 undercovers in Islamabad mission when she sought interviews with defence officials of the High Commission to be used in her research papers.

“According to sources, she would ask some very pointed and pertinent questions. But when she went back she never used these interviews and wrote nothing on these issues. Intelligence authorities in the High Commission were then alarmed and started suspecting that these questions were asked by her for not her own research papers but for the consumption of some one else. This was some time last fall. The girl and the Brigadier were monitored. Phones were bugged. Even the room and the house of the British Military Attache were bugged.

“Some sources claimed that some filming was also done to prepare incriminating evidence. Both were also spotted intimately together at some social functions. Sources claimed that the Brigadier also travelled to England many times to spend time with her and his engagements in England were also watched and closely monitored.

“A team arrived from London in early January this year after Christmas holidays and the Brigadier was confronted for the first time about the status of his relations with the young lady. He was asked to report back to London where, according to sources, he appeared before a three-member military tribunal along with the internal inquiry report, and evidence based on phonic conversations and perhaps with some pictures”.

Alam drew a swift riposte from Mazari, who called a press conference the very next day, refuting the allegations point-by-point. She said although the research fellow mentioned in Alam’s report did work for ISS, all references to her subordinate’s name – right from the work specifics to foreign travel and dangerous liaisons with the disgraced British official – were factually wrong.

Mazari was clinical in her assertion and rounded off the rearguard by demanding an apology from both the reporter and her paper, failing which she threatened to seek legal redress.

However, her charge that the paper was undermining national interests and becoming a tool for vested interests, drew a scathing rejoinder from the paper, which made no secret of its displeasure by stating that it did not need a sermon from someone under the microscope. In fact, it went on to suggest that it had done a favour to Mazari by publishing what it did since that “put an end to wild guesses being made in the city about some of the known media-related female academics, including Dr Mazari herself, for being the lady in question”.

The prime time battle was apparently, won by Mazari, when the paper finally, issued a front-paged “clarification” by its editor last Friday, regretting the “inadvertent” nomination of the ‘spy’ (MK) in the story, which it denied was true.

TAILPIECE: Courtesy an unimpeachable source, it has emerged that the alleged ‘spy’ is, indeed, not the one named in Alam’s controversial story but someone else. However, some contents of her story, apparently, do hold ground. For instance, the incriminating evidence one got to see clearly belies London’s claim that its official did not have the kind of relations with the ‘spy’ that a certain Bill Clinton allegedly had with the most known intern in history.

-The Peninsula

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