Since the arrest of Faiz Hameed, former Director-General Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, we are witnessing a circus which is both amusing and deeply disconcerting.
Amusing because it’s farcical. Disconcerting because when states find themselves on a slippery slope, like Pakistan does today, the fall can have tragic consequences for the people. A wider view of the globe can tell us what happens when states and societies implode.
Hameed is now like a target at a firing range. Anyone can aim and shoot at him. The print space and airwaves are now primarily devoted to his evil deeds. From what is being put out, it should be clear to anyone that a lot of it, if not all of it, is being fed to the media.
Hameed, like Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, is to be pulled down.
For instance, we are told that Hameed was running a network within the ISI, an ISI within the ISI, if you will. He was using his position to enrich himself and even engineered an armed robbery at the residence of Akram Sheikh, a senior lawyer. He is also said to have colluded with Justice Saqib Nisar, a former Chief Justice of Pakistan, to help Imran Khan, former prime minister and currently a prisoner in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail — et cetera et cetera.
The list of Hameed’s alleged misdeeds is long and it is safe even for a non-betting man like myself to wager a penny that it would get longer in the coming days. I also believe that in a twisted and warped way the sensationalism associated with the fall of someone who considered himself above the law on the basis of his position grounded, ironically, in the law feeds the hungry, wolfish news cycle.
The broader picture is inevitably lost in the yearning for instant gratification. Dismaying that might be, unsurprising it is not.
Who is Faiz Hameed? Is he an individual accused of evil deeds or is he the product of a system that is primed to produce, in varying degrees, other Faiz Hameeds?
Take one story: the armed robbery at Mr Sheikh’s farmhouse. Knowledgeable sources knew about it when it happened and Mr Sheikh narrated it on a television channel last year. We are told that former Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Bajwa invited Mr Sheikh, feted him, confessed that the robbers were their men and apologised.
It should be fairly obvious that Hameed could not have done what he did if the organisation’s ethos were different. Imagine if the ISI had evolved differently; imagine if it played by the law.
If ever one were required to suspend belief willingly and in dollops, this would be it. The army chief acknowledging that his officer, a lieutenant-general heading the ISI had arranged a robbery at a private citizen’s house. In any civilised dispensation, this action would not only be considered criminal and prejudicial to any military’s good order and discipline but should also have ended Hameed’s career there and then. More so because people in the know already knew what had happened with the Top City case.
Instead, he remained DGI until November 2021 and was then moved to XI Corps as Corps Commander. If this is not on par with Mexican telenovelas about the web of corruption, deceit and abuse of power in that country’s system, I don’t know what is. But it also seems par for the course.
I have noted this before but it bears repeating given the importance of this point for the broader picture: Hameed is an individual, for sure, but he also symbolises the ISI, an agency that has become a behemoth and combines in a single body the functions normally performed in other states by at least three different agencies: external intelligence, counterintelligence and the internal wing (DG-C).
In other words, there are no checks on how it functions. In the case of the ISI there’s no oversight, parliamentary or otherwise, to keep it in check.
It should be fairly obvious that Hameed could not have done what he did if the organisation’s ethos were different. Imagine if the ISI had evolved differently; imagine if it played by the law. Could Hameed have survived in such an organisation, much less use it and its resources like a mafia boss — unchecked?
And what about General Bajwa and the dinner at Army House after the “robbery”, the mea culpa? That goes beyond the ISI and implicates the army as an organisation. Not just that, it tells us that the army’s own ethos might now be under threat, an inevitable regression that began in the 50s when it contracted the praetorian virus. That virus has now become both more infectious and more virulent.
The problem with breaking rules is that there’s no limiting principle, no real line about where to stop.
Generally, the internal organs rot first with the microbes invading the gut. But there’s truth in the adage that a fish rots from the head down. Organisationally, the head denotes the leadership. Just like leaders can make an organisation professional and successful so they can cause it to rot and fail.
The problem with breaking rules is that there’s no limiting principle, no real line about where to stop. Let me explain with reference to political scientist James C. Scott’s Two Cheers for Anarchism. Scott was in a German town, the terrain as flat as a pancake, where he would see people wait patiently at an intersection. Even though they could see on both sides for miles whether a train was approaching, they would wait for the light to turn green. Scott would stand there with the rest for as long as it took for the light to change, “afraid to brave the glares that awaited me if I crossed.”
I [could] cross against the light, thinking… that it was stupid to obey a minor law that, in this case, was so contrary to reason. It surprised me how much I had to screw up my courage merely to cross a street against general disapproval.
On another occasion he was in Wageningen, a small town in The Netherlands, meeting a Dutch scholar, Dr Wertheim. On an intersection where, like the town in Germany, one could see for miles…
There was nothing coming. Without thinking, I stepped into the street, and as I did so, Dr. Wertheim said, “James, you must wait.” I protested weakly while regaining the curb, “But Dr. Wertheim, nothing is coming.” “James,” he replied instantly, “It would be a bad example for the children.” I was both chastened and instructed.
An organisation can either adhere to laws or break them. Breaking laws begins with breaking minor rules, from petty theft to grand larceny. Where it starts with leaders breaking the rules, rule-breaking would become the norm in such an organisation.
These vignettes are important in understanding two vital factors for societal stability: general disapproval of breaking a law, which implies the evolution of a normative standard and the reference to children. The evolution of a norm is a process and elders set the standards of good societal behaviour for the children. That behaviour, if society has to retain stability and balance, is grounded in a normative acceptance of laws.
Ditto for the ethos of an organisation. An organisation can either adhere to laws or break them. Breaking laws begins with breaking minor rules, from petty theft to grand larceny. Where it starts with leaders breaking the rules, rule-breaking would become the norm in such an organisation, a precise reversal of Scott’s observation with respect to obeying rules and why they must be followed.
One of the charges against Hameed, we are told, is that he was politically active post-retirement, presumably in violation of the Army Act. This is an officer who was deeply politically involved while serving. In fact, as DG-C and later as DGI his entire service was about political machinations and manipulations. What the charge basically boils down to is absurdity at its most absurd: officers can play politics while serving, but doing so after retirement constitutes a violation of the Army Act. Try wrapping your head around this.
To be precise, I am not here to commiserate with Hameed for his acts of omission and commission. My essential point is that Hameed could do what he allegedly did because the organisation he belonged to and later headed does a lot of the same every day. Until something can change the poison that now runs through the body of that organisation, we will see more Faiz Hameeds emerge. That’s not theoretical physics, that’s plain common sense.