Exclusive: Durrani faces wrath for speaking unpalatable truth

Aditya Sinha, the co-author of 'The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace', gives his take on the raging controversy.

Pakistan army GHQ on Monday summoned the former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director-general General Asad Durrani to question him about things attributed to him in the book - The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace - co-written by him, former Indian spychief AS Dulat and myself, The army's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Twitter announced that "a Court of Inquiry headed by a serving Lt Gen (sic) has been ordered to probe the matter", and that Durrani was placed on the exit control list (ECL), banning him from leaving Pakistan.
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Durrani will no longer be attending book events that were planned over the summer in London and in North America. Readers, both among policy-makers and in the general public showed great interest in this book, an unprecedented joint project by the former chiefs of the spy agencies of the bitterly hostile neighbours that are India and Pakistan. Worse, he will not be able to visit his son Usman, a software executive in Germany, who makes an appearance in the book's chapter three.
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This comes after Durrani's inability to visit India for the book's official release last week: he applied for a visa in early April but had still not received word from the High Commission in Islamabad, thanks to the highest levels of India's security establishment which has been irritated with the fact of this book.

The GHQ summons came late Friday night on Twitter, and on Saturday Durrani was upbeat about the matter. At the most, a Pakistani academic confided to me, Durrani, a retired three-star general, would get a 'friendly spanking'. After all, it seemed likely during our sessions - which began in Istanbul two years ago - that his "establishment" knew of the project. (In India, Dulat and I tried keeping it a secret but I suspected that National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had somehow found out.)

By Sunday evening Durrani was no longer sanguine. There has been a Twitterstorm against him for "walking into an Indian trap". Even active politicians have on social media criticised his participation in this book. The blitz against him exactly mirrors the abuse that rightwing trolls have hurled against Dulat and I: they call us anti-nationals, Pakistani agents and jihadis.

On the other hand, a section of Pakistanis have supported Durrani's efforts - #ThankYouAsadDurrani trended on twitter - for speaking unpalatable truths that they never expected to hear from deep within the establishment. Logically, he would have a constituency within the army itself.

The army, it seems, did not anticipate the intensity of the controversy, and now probably wants to keep the dam of memoirs from bursting open. Hence this action: to send a message down the line that such a book can never be the norm, just the first and last exception. It is likely that Durrani's memoir - Pakistan Adrift - that was to come out later this summer, may be withdrawn from publication, and he is likely to be told to lay low and not speak publicly. It is a setback for those of us who wanted more official openness in South Asia. Our establishments, unlike their counterparts in Western countries, are absurdly cagey.

When Durrani realised he wouldn't get a visa to India, he sent a message that we played at the beginning of the book launch. He thanked the "Indian Deep State" for not allowing him to visit, for it saved him from the "wrath of the hardliners", who without reading the book would have shouted betrayal from the rooftops. Today, we feel rotten about poor General Saheb, whose only crime was to hope for peace.

- Aditya Sinha's latest book, The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace (HarperCollins India), is available now.

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