More of the same
Just when we thought we knew everything...
Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the Chief of Army Staff, has gained acclaim for removing army presence from civilian departments, putting his foot down when the Americans chanted "do more" and not toppling the feeble civilian government. The general, however, didn’t come so clean in the WikiLeaks.

Leaks say...
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
President Asif Ali Zardari
He wanted powers concentrated within his family. And so, he asks his son Bilawal, chairperson of the party, to make his sister Faryal Talpur Pakistan’s president in case he is assassinated. He wants UAE rulers to take care of his children.

analysis
Known and classified
Are WikiLeaks indeed a conspiracy against Pakistan?
By I. A. Rehman
Will WikiLeaks have any effect on the ways of the government of Pakistan and its leaders? The way some people are using diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to target the country’s political leaders suggests that they do consider some changes morally warranted. They are likely to be disappointed, for a cynical dismissal of censure on grounds of making false, mean or foolish statements is an integral part of our elite’s mindset.

"Information for all"
-- Aamer Ahmed Khan, veteran journalist and
head of BBC Urdu
The News on Sunday : Your take on the view that WikiLeaks may prove to be the end of investigative journalism.
Aamer Ahmed Khan: Far from it. I think WikiLeaks has given a new direction to investigative journalism, wresting it from the manipulative influence of "sources" and freeing it of the crutches of speculative analysis.

New face of diplomacy
Space on frank diplomatic exchanges shrinks
By Imtiaz Gul from Washington
Within days of the release of the American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, mere coincidence has brought me to Washington, the capital of the world’s sole super power. The deluge of diplomatic correspondence hardly seems to have affected the pace and course of life here. Neither does the subject figure in the national television and radio debate. Most Americans take it as given: no emotional debate; no knee-jerk reaction; they treat the matter as yet another incident in the life of the Empire, unlike Pakistan and some other countries shaken by the revelations.

There is nothing earth-shaking about the recently-released US State department diplomatic cables, at least so far.

Earlier this year, in April, the WikiLeaks posted a video of an incident in 2007 where a US Apache helicopter had killed 12 people in an attack in Baghdad. In July, it released more than 76,900 documents about the war in Afghanistan. In October, it released a set of 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs. Yet these did not turn into world-shattering events. The US fighting immoral wars in some God-forsaken countries (or which became God-forsaken after the US invasion) did not bother the world as much as its diplomatic dealings with more countries of the world. UK, Italy, Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan -- this time almost everyone was drawn in.

One thing is common though. Just as the world ignored the content of the earlier leaks, so it has done now. Thus the discussions and the analyses are dominated not by its content, much of which is trivial and already known, but by the question whether an absolute freedom of speech of this manner is in order or not.

Those who hold that WikiLeaks must not be allowed to go to this extent have built a strong case. The immorality of the act apart, for them the world affairs cannot be left at the mercy of the chaotic machinations of a few people. They use the word anarchist too often. The international system demands a certain order without which everything will crumble and fall flat. The present leaks being about diplomatic cables, it is said that diplomacy works best in secrecy. Examples are given from other aspects of life where secrecy is maintained -- between two stakeholders or in-camera trials etc. It is unbelievable but Official Secrecy Acts used by governments are being quoted as proof.

"What international system!" the other side retorts. The world is not such a perfect place, these leaks testify. Now the other side is not referring to the present set of leaks. It is concerned about the leaks that came before this: the ones about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore it sees no problem in the people’s right to know what their governments are up to and why.

This is where it becomes imperative to defend WikiLeaks and all other such initiatives that let the truth be known to public, well in time. Not after 30 years just because some wise man thought it proper to mark certain information as ‘classified’ and fixed a period before it could be ‘declassified’. By then it was already irrelevant except for the journalist and the historian.

The public’s right to know is enshrined in the constitutions of all civilised countries and hence the arrest of Julian Assange on supposedly trumped-up charges. A wave of support for Assange is actually a support for the idea that people do have a right to information.

The link between what has been on offer by WikiLeaks for the past fortnight and whether anyone anywhere in the world is interested in it is in itself interesting. Citizens and civil society everywhere are salivating, of course, and their thirst for more is growing. Governments, political actors and diplomats, in the meanwhile, are petrified and running scared because the leaked cables are putting them in the dock. The media everywhere is loving it because it’s bringing them record audiences and fodder for unending news and analysis.

What is also clear is that the latest set of WikiLeaks is one of those rare events that help focus the attention of most people on the planet on a single issue at the same time. The last time something with this level of media pervasiveness, focus, and persistence happened was the 9/11 attack and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- both in terms of significance and impact.

The significance of WikiLeaks, of course, lies in the nature of information on offer: the story behind the story -- how states, governments, and both state and non-state actors influence local, regional, and global events that shape and seal the fates of millions and even billions of people. The impact, on the other hand, lies in the rule-changing debate on the nature of the fundamental right of people to information (and the attendant access to it) and the concept of secrecy without which diplomacy cannot survive on which is predicated the world order, for good or for bad.

WikiLeaks, of course, has been around for some years and has continued to shed light into the dark corners of all manner of public and private transactions. Indeed, the concept behind WikiLeaks was to offer people a platform where information could be placed that mainstream media would either not dare dream to peddle, or be able to access. It’s ironical, therefore, that mainstream media is now revelling in being the supplementary vehicle of classified information by lifting it from a place that aims to serve as a sanctuary for untouchable information.

Right to know

Should information that is formally designated by states and governments as classified be made public, if access is available (through whatever means), is at the heart of the WikiLeaks debate. And since the debate is going global and helping galvanize opinion on whether the overlap between right to know and right to privacy should shrink or stay represents a shift in the evolution of the global information system.

There is the traditional argument mounted by the right to information supporters that everything the government does is funded by the taxpayers and, therefore, they have the inherent privilege of knowing what the money is spent on and the value it generates for them. The establishment, of course, benefits from hiding information that either makes their accountability hurtful or which reveals them to be in breach of public trust on issues that may be against public interest. What the establishment articulates is national interest and what is in public interest is not necessarily the same although the public interest should certainly be the same as national interest.

Right to ‘no’

It is interesting how governments as diverse as those of the United States and Pakistan may officially find themselves in consensus about the impact of allowing free reign to WikiLeaks. The US government is fiercely opposed to making the classified information public saying it may put some people in harm’s way. It did not hide its glee at the arrest of Julian Assange in the hope that it may keep the 200,000 classified documents still under wraps. The Pakistan government -- the political and military leadership coming together in a rare meeting of the Defence Committee of the -- declared the leaks of cables relating to Pakistan as a "conspiracy" against the country. A conspiracy! As if people finding out what their political and military leaderships have been saying about each other behind their backs to foreigners, or what foreigners -- friends or foes -- think of our leaders is a conspiracy! They fail to see the irony that what the foreigners think of native leaderships -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- is little different from what the people themselves think of them.

However, there are two sides to the impact of WikiLeaks on Pakistan. One is legal and the other political. On the legal side, at least in the Pakistani context, the Lahore High Court mercifully threw out a petition by a lawyer seeking a ban on WikiLeaks and its leaks about Pakistan on the grounds that these amounted to a conspiracy against the country and an attempt to sour relations between the country and its friends. The court -- in a welcome departure from its less tolerant view of international social media websites dabbling in non-Pakistan specific instances of alleged blasphemy that earned embarrassing and unhelpful ban on them earlier this year -- ruled that access to information is a fundamental right under the Pakistani constitution and the people have a right to know what’s going on and to see what their leaders are up to.

Know to write

The same week the same court also ruled that the media had a right to report court proceedings that were not formally held in camera. This verdict was also stood on the same yardstick of people’s right to know and access to information. Both these are extremely interesting because they will also serve as precedents if there are cases between Pakistani citizens and their governments that seek to access information in public interest, or to curb access. And yet, the same Lahore High Court has ruled in the Facebook and YouTube ‘blasphemy’ cases relating to the controversial ‘draw Muhammad’ contest that freedom of expression, also guaranteed in the Constitution, does not include freedom to offend religious sentiments, particularly those relating to the Prophet. The interface between freedom of expression and right to information, therefore, as far as Pakistan is concerned, retains its legal grey space -- stern and forbidding instead of merging naturally.

On the political side, the impact is deeper than being given credit for. The classified cables leaked by WikiLeaks have not only served to confirm what everyone knows about Pakistan’s skewed civil-military equation but also revealed the large distance between the reality of public interest and the fiction of national interest. The astonishing political, economic and military subservience to not just the West but also the Middle East has been laid bare. America and Saudi Arabia have been shown to lean regularly on the state to meet their interests and engineer abrupt changes in policy and direction regularly. Political and military favourites are promoted unabashedly, or put on trial as also the foreigners making the decisive pushes when it came to changing governments and holding elections. While virtually everyone in Pakistan splits hairs about the extent of US influence in Pakistan, the stinger was this boast of Saudi envoy to US speaking to a high ranking official: "We are not observers in Pakistan; we are participants". And yet the Pakistani media refuses to talk about the Saudi influence in the country.

Write to know

On the flip side of the political impact, the military has been exposed as having merely painted over its spots rather than losing them as it has been trying to convey these past three years, forcing the army chief to say he respected all political leaders. Memory does not recall another instance of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ for the army. The leaks have even ultimately shown that by merely surviving and soldiering on over the phenomenal odds, the political classes have the moral upper hand over the military notwithstanding the bullying might of the latter. WikiLeaks have been very, very good for Pakistani public and on the yardstick of public interests, all power to WikiLeaks.

Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the Chief of Army Staff, has gained acclaim for removing army presence from civilian departments, putting his foot down when the Americans chanted "do more" and not toppling the feeble civilian government. The general, however, didn’t come so clean in the WikiLeaks.

Two separate cables by the then American ambassador, Anne Patterson, reveal that Kayani and Zardari planned a systematic but "honourable exit" for Musharraf. Those weary of the US influence in Pakistan should see two rays of hope. According to the leaks, the US disapproved of Chief Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar’s reinstatement. Ambassador Patterson bagged the PPP leaderships’ support but not of Nawaz Sharif and Justice Iftikhar was re-instated nevertheless.

Later, in 2009, while Obama ensured the world that Pakistan’s nuclear bomb is immune to militant interception, Ambassador Patterson had cold feet. However, the government did not allow the removal of enriched uranium from its nuclear weapons, fearing public backlash. The uranium that US proposed to be isolated was given to Pakistan by the US in the 1960s.

According to US, Admiral Mike Mullen during a 2008 stay in Pakistan, Patterson stated, "As expected, (Gen) Kayani is taking slow but deliberate steps to distance the army from now civilian President Musharraf." She also stated that Kayani disallowed his generals to meet the then president Musharraf personally, to prevent any presidential extensions.

In March last year, Kayani wanted to replace Zardari with ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan. The cables disclose that US Vice President Biden told Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain in March 2009 that Zardari had declared that "ISI Director General and Kayani will take me out," the New York Times said, quoting the cables. Kayani is quoted as telling the US Ambassador Anne Patterson during a March 2009 meeting that he "might however reluctantly" pressure Zardari to resign. Gen Kayani made it clear that regardless of how much he "disliked Zardari, he distrusted Nawaz (Sharif) even more," the ambassador wrote.

The COAS thwarted Kerry Lugar Bill that would ensure civilian control over the military, according to confidential diplomatic dispatch of the US embassy in Paris to the State Department on January 22 this year, released by WikiLeaks.

Terrorism appeared one quarter where the politicians appeared two-faced. A week before the Mumbai attacks, the Shahbaz government tipped off Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), "resulting in almost empty bank accounts", Zardari told the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson. The cable in January 2009 said: "Information from the Ministry of the Interior does indicate that bank accounts contained surprisingly small amounts." Big brother Nawaz Sharif, on 31st January 2008, met Patterson and discussed the Pakistani judiciary, People’s Party and civil military relations. He candidly declared in the middle "we are Pro-American."

Gillani’s political astuteness is noticeable in an August 2008 cable about drone strikes. He told the American officials that he did not care about the attacks. "We will protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."

"Pakistan’s civilian government remains weak, ineffectual and corrupt," Ms. Patterson wrote on February 22, 2010, on the eve of a visit by FBI Director Robert Mueller. "Domestic politics is dominated by uncertainty about the fate of President Zardari."

-- By Ammara Ahmad

President Asif Ali Zardari

He wanted powers concentrated within his family. And so, he asks his son Bilawal, chairperson of the party, to make his sister Faryal Talpur Pakistan’s president in case he is assassinated. He wants UAE rulers to take care of his children.

King Abdullah calls him the "rotten head that was infecting the whole body" and terms him the biggest impediment in the way of Pakistan’s progress. The Saudi rulers prefer to see Pakistan in its pitiful state of chaos in Asif’s presence rather than assisting it in its economic progress.

Asif is disliked by the Pakistan army, as is revealed from a communication that says General Kayani wanted to appoint Asfandyar Wali Pakistan’s president.

Despite promises to punish Musharraf, he gave him a safe exit. The US ambassador writes, "Zardari is walking tall these days, hopefully not too tall to forget his promise to Kayani and to us on an immunity deal."

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani

Gilani is portrayed as a great actor who has the confidence to satisfy the nation regarding the government’s stance on drone attacks -- he agreed to allow US carry out drone attacks but continued to rage against them on the floor of the house. "I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people", he reportedly says.

JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman

US diplomatic cables relating to Rehman reinforce the beliefs about his desperation to benefit from any opportunity coming his way. How he appears pleading for US support for his case for the premiership of Pakistan. This hints at the role of US in making and breaking governments in Pakistan.

Former US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson had a four-hour dinner with him and after that commented: Maulana sought US support and made it clear that still a "significant number of votes are up for sale".

Maulana’s JUI-F is cited as one of the key groups that supported the mujahideen in the 1980s. His name was mistaken for Faisal-ur-Rehman, of Jamaat-e-Islami, who was involved in a suicide bombing. The notice carrying Maulana’s name was taken back immediately and a clarification issued in this regard.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif

Sharif emerges, like PM, as a leader following a double-edged policy. He is reported to have approved of the military operations in Swat and Waziristan but in public echoed the same policy that the Taliban had about the US. He was also accused of leaking information about the freezing of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) accounts following a UN decision.

COAS General Ashfaq Kayani

Cables about Kayani dispel the impression the army has withdrawn from politics and enforce the belief that its involvement is there in making and breaking of governments. His choice of ANP’s Asfandyar Wali Khan as president in case Asif Zardari is removed talks of his plans drafted well in advance.

The revelation that he could remove Asif Zardari during the Long March establishes that the army’s will prevails in matters of political crises.

A US diplomatic communication paints him as a supreme commander who is for preventing change in Pakistan’s policy on FATA and to stir up controversy regarding the Kerry-Lugar bill.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia wants him to be more active -- "Staying out of Pakistani politics in deference to US wishes, rather than doing what it should."

Some leaks also raise a question about the extent to which US intervention has been allowed inside Pakistan. The approval in this regard has to come from the top. There is mention of US personnel operating inside Pakistan and the plan (scrapped later) to allow US team to remove some enriched uranium from the country.

There is a glimpse of Gen Kayani’s personality as well. He is told to be "direct, frank, and thoughtful" and a person who "smokes heavily and can be difficult to understand as he tends to mumble."

PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif is painted as a hot-headed politician disliked by the Pakistan army more than Asif Ali Zardari. In words of UAE’s crown prince: "Nawaz is not dirty but dangerous," and cannot be trusted. The WikiLeaks expose he was not keen on the reinstatement of Chief Justice of Pakistan, Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed, though his politics revolved mainly around this issue.

The leaks say, Nawaz Sharif had a "notoriously difficult personality" and that he and his family had "relied primarily on the army and intelligence agencies for political elevation."

Revelations about him also point out that contrary to the general perception, the Saudi government did not back him all the time. It wanted him to honour the commitment of not participating in active politics for 10 years. He had made this commitment when he moved to Saudi Arabia after entering a deal with Musharraf government.

A Saudi ambassador has been quoted as saying that the Saudi government had worked with Pervez Musharraf for the arrest and immediate deportation of Sharif when he returned without the latter’s approval.

Former President Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf told the US that Osama Bin Laden and his deputy could be in the Bajaur agency. Thus, he created US troops’ interest in the region. He was also the choice of Israel as the country wanted him to remain in power.

Only six months after February 2008 General Elections, he thought about replacing the elected government with that of technocrats. When this plan could not be materialized and he resigned, US Ambassador Patterson pressed Zardari to grant him immunity from prosecution. Patterson says: "We believed, as we had often said, that Musharraf should have a dignified retirement and not be hounded out of the country." Musharraf had hopes for PML-Q which were defeated in the elections. A communication reveals in view of deterioration in relations between Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, he was certain the two would part ways and PML-Q could come forward as Zadari’s new ally.

analysis

Will WikiLeaks have any effect on the ways of the government of Pakistan and its leaders? The way some people are using diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to target the country’s political leaders suggests that they do consider some changes morally warranted. They are likely to be disappointed, for a cynical dismissal of censure on grounds of making false, mean or foolish statements is an integral part of our elite’s mindset.

Still, the affair of WikiLeaks needs to be examined from several angles as it throws useful light on certain basic flaws in Pakistan’s political culture.

First, an important question is: Why are WikiLeaks disclosures receiving much more attention than similar exposures in the past?

Many years ago, an Indian writer, Venkataraman, used declassified US documents to produce a book on the role of CIA in Pakistan. Many people were annoyed with the Pakistan government’s shameless begging for American money, particularly the Finance Minister’s aggressive soliciting. Mr Naseer Sheikh, who had the reputation of an honest man among thieves, thought wider dissemination of the sleazy tales would persuade the persons concerned to reform themselves. He therefore had an Urdu translation of the book published. His expectations were not realised.

There were many reasons the Pakistanis, people as well as leaders, took the publication in their stride and found excuses to ignore it. Many people doubted the authenticity of the declassified papers. The contents of these papers were after all views of the US diplomats and they could be wrong. Since the compiler was an Indian he must have been motivated more by malice towards Pakistan than any desire for truthful research. The media was neither free nor developed enough to serve its audience sizzling stories. Above all, politicians had not fallen from grace, despite all the vulgar fulminations against them by Messrs Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan. The book was left to gather dust on shelves.

Pakistan’s rulers were again exposed in Roedad Khan’s compilation of British documents. They stood roundly condemned for creating a crisis in East Bengal, for blundering through an unwinnable war, for failing to anticipate the endgame foreign diplomats had foreseen as early as February 1971, and for destroying the records of the period.

Again these sordid disclosures had no effect on the people or their leaders. The reasons could be a lack of sympathy for the Bengali Pakistanis, or the fact that Gen. Yahya and his cohorts were operating under a military umbrella and were as such too sacred to be criticized (except for failing the middle class prudes’ morality test). The view that those responsible for Pakistan’s debacle had already been punished (though not for their atrocities upon the Bengali people) also perhaps prevented the people from getting angry with all those who had betrayed them.

Almost each book written on the war in Afghanistan has contained unpalatable stories about Pakistani leaders – stories of shady deals, unlawful use of discretionary powers, and hunger for spoils. ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’, for instance, disclosed Gen. Zia playing the host at Charlie’s amorous sorties, importing weapons from Israel, issuing illegal permits for hunting protected animals and finally making the Texas Congressman a Pakistani field marshal. These disclosures caused no wave of anger or revulsion probably because the military was too holy to be touched, Gen. Zia was a Jihadi and had a licence to tell lies, to blink at corruption and reward the corrupt.

The situation now is entirely different. The politicians, especially those in power, are like the proverbial poor men’s wives who deserve to be abused day in and day out. The media has become big and it seems to have acquired a franchise for demonising politicians. Thus the captive audiences are being bombarded with stories from the US diplomats’ cables. The moral of the story is that it always pays to go for politicians, especially if they are on the wrong side of the custodians of the national ‘ideology’.

The second feature of the affair is the queer responses of the persons named in the dispatches. A fall-back on the conspiracy theory is the tactic of the first resort. The motive behind the leaks is to sour Pakistan-Saudi relations, the US diplomats wrongly attributed statements to politicians they disliked and spared their favourite(s). Apologists of principal politicians are quick to pick up any sentence that is complimentary to them and gloss over or deny anything that casts aspersions on them.

Everybody knows that all talk of conspiracy against Pakistan is rubbish. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of the cables but it is possible to argue that the authors of the cables could have made mistakes in recording what they had heard or in their assessments and analyses.

Most of the analysts and commentators agree that very little of the material contained in the cables was not already known to the people of Pakistan. Excessive dependence on the United States in both economic and political fields, the growing Saudi role in Pakistan’s affairs, the army’s dominant role including its capacity to give marching orders to the President, the circumstances of Benazir Bhutto’s return home in 2007, the US reservations about Pakistan’s commitment to the war against the Taliban, Washington’s lack of trust in Karzai and its difficulties in establishing coalition forces’ control over the Afghan countryside – all this is known. A great deal has been disclosed by US journalists in their newspaper reports, columns and books. The cables have filled in details here and there and they have the flavour of first hand impressions of foreign diplomats of men and matters.

However, the WikiLeaks cables are not without some important lessons for Pakistan’s politicians, administrators and student of public affairs:

-- Writing situation reports, analysing trends and assessing the role of political actors in the country of their assignment is the job of all diplomats. Their countries’ policies and their own careers depend on these dispatches. Therefore nobody has a right to question this activity.

·-- It is for the Foreign Office to determine the quality of Pakistan’s diplomats’ dispatches and determine whether they receive due attention from the policy-makers.

-- The authors of the diplomatic notes had a duty to hold their own country’s interest above all other considerations regardless of any offence caused to the host country.

-- That instead of fretting and fuming over foreign observers’ lack of concern for Pakistan’s interests or for treating Pakistani politicians as characters out of a low-grade farce, we should address the causes of our predicament.

-- A priority task for Pakistan’s opinion-makers is a thorough appraisal of the factors that have turned their "modern, democratic state" into a rajwara where one clique of politicians or another decides matters arbitrarily and where those advising transparency and anti-corruption campaigns are threatened and persecuted.

-- That our politicians treat foreign diplomats, particularly Americans among them, as better friends and more worthy of sharing secrets then brother politicians.

-- That seeking US patronage and doing anything that pleases her is the cornerstone of Pakistan’s strategy and there is no shame in soliciting their blessings and active goodwill. This must change.

-- That Pakistan’s rulers and their rivals both have a habit of talking too much and often without thinking. They must learn to be circumspect and acquire the art of speaking little and saying much.

If anybody is serious about mending or refurbishing Pakistan’s image and raising the stature of the members of the elite, a few steps can be suggested:

·-- Pakistan’s leaders, politicians in power and their rivals, should talk to foreign diplomats only on the basis of properly prepared briefs and should avoid making commitments or promises that they know can’t be honoured in the long run.

-- They should share their concerns, wishes and apprehensions with their people instead of persisting in doublespeak.

-- There must be more corruption in Pakistan than it can be seen by foreign diplomats. No defence of corruption is possible.

The News on Sunday : Your take on the view that WikiLeaks may prove to be the end of investigative journalism.

Aamer Ahmed Khan: Far from it. I think WikiLeaks has given a new direction to investigative journalism, wresting it from the manipulative influence of "sources" and freeing it of the crutches of speculative analysis.

The material provided by WikiLeaks is exactly the kind of stuff that investigative journalists need. Armed with credible information, which directly feeds policy making in western capitals, journalists are in a much better position to understand why things happen the way they do and what needs to be different if anything is to change.

TNS: In one of your recent articles, you have called it a fascinating battle that will change the way we look at our world. Can we hope to see a better world as a consequence, a world without "immoral wars" or "preemptive strikes"?

AAK: As is obvious from the quote you have used, I said it can change "the way we look" at the world and not the world itself. We are living in a "might is right" sort of an age in which is unlikely to change just because some bloke has gotten hold of classified US documents. However, it has still had a huge impact on the way the world looks at America and especially its dealings with Muslim dictatorships.

How much WikiLeaks will eventually change the world depends entirely on what the world community does with the new insights that Julian Assange has provided us with on how American policy makers think and what drives their thinking.

It will be presumptuous of us to think that we are headed for a better world. But we can safely say that we are headed towards a very different world – the current spate of cyber attacks on Mastercard, Visa, Paypal etc being one example of how it is already changing the face of political protests. Whether the world ends up being a better or a worse place depends entirely on what our leaders learn from WikiLeaks.

TNS: A heated debate seems to have started between the defenders of free speech and freedom of information and those who argue against absolute transparency and all information for all. Which side are you on?

AAK: Oh, definitely on the side of all information for all. Rampaging terrorism in Pakistan is one example of how desperately things go wrong if kept under a cloak of secrecy for too long. The A.Q Khan disaster is another example. Before the lid blew of the extent of the damage General Zia and people like A.Q Khan had done to Pakistan, and indeed, the world, weren’t their shenanigans top secret activities that no journalist could even dream of reporting? Would it not have been different if we had more transparent governments?

Those who advocate secrecy in the name of national interest are more often than not up to no good, as is evident from what we are learning from WikiLeaks about Muslim monarchs and puppet regimes.

TNS: It is said that diplomacy works best in secret and you can’t negotiate treaties in full public view? Will the WikiLeaks change the function of diplomacy?

AAK. To the extent that global diplomacy is now urgently seeking fresh ways to keep itself hidden from public scrutiny. Yes, it will change the way diplomats work. But I have never agreed with the proposition that states must do their business behind closed doors. Hopefully, WikiLeaks disclosures will force the states to be more transparent in their working although I don’t see that happening in the short run.

TNS: There has been criticism on the way the ‘authorised’ newspapers are selectively making the news (or the stolen goods) public, thus accepting control of a supposedly opaque organisation? How do you view the role of the New York Times, the Guardian etc. in all this?

AAK: They were extremely courageous in agreeing to partner with WikiLeaks. They knew what they were getting into, yet they agreed, which speaks eloquently of their courage and commitment to journalism.

Like any news organisation in the world, they are perfectly within their rights to release the cables as, when and how they deem fit. The only thing that is important is that they should not hold back anything. And from what they have come out with so far, it doesn’t seem likely that they will suddenly get cold feet. They have been brilliant so far in their analysis of the content of these cables and I hope they continue doing that till every last cable is in the public domain.

TNS: There is a view that there’s nothing drastic about the doings of Pakistani politicians but Pakistan’s establishment has been cast in a bad light. Assuming that the post-WikiLeaks world will be a different world, do you foresee a rethinking in our establishment?

AAK: These cables have shown the Pakistani establishment for being what it truly is. We know that politics is not a world where its inhabitants can be easily shamed. I believe they are what they are and it is unlikely that their behaviour will change because of WikiLeaks.

However, as far as the public is concerned, I feel the best thing that WikiLeaks has done is that it has demonstrated that in essence, there is no difference in the country’s civil and military leadership. Both know exactly which side of their bread is buttered and both will go to any length to ensure that they get a good lick.

TNS: What do the Pakistan-specific leaks mean? Are they only what we already knew or is there some value in them?

AAK: I think what is quite revealing is the extent to which Pakistan’s so-called "brother Muslim countries" hold it in contempt. Regardless of what our ruling elite tells us, the cables show that our leadership is held in contempt. What is even more revealing is that the world leaders who are contemptuous of Pakistan are themselves no angels. Imagine a UAE prince describing Nawaz Sharif as "dangerous" while urging America to move against Iran. He calls Asif Zardari corrupt while suggesting to Americans that they tag everyone released from Guantanamo Bay just as they tag their falcons and horses!

I think it is evidence of the fact that no country can hope for good treatment from another simply because they both subscribe to the same faith. This can be a very useful lesson for Pakistan.

Within days of the release of the American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, mere coincidence has brought me to Washington, the capital of the world’s sole super power. The deluge of diplomatic correspondence hardly seems to have affected the pace and course of life here. Neither does the subject figure in the national television and radio debate. Most Americans take it as given: no emotional debate; no knee-jerk reaction; they treat the matter as yet another incident in the life of the Empire, unlike Pakistan and some other countries shaken by the revelations.

Inside the government circles -- the State Department in particular -- officials now sound and act a little more carefully than they did in the past. "Please don’t add it to the official minutes," Richard Holbrook, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, reportedly told his personal assistant during his meeting with an ambassador of one of the countries affected by the diplomatic cables. Caution and care. This is, meanwhile, the advice to all State Department and FBI officials.

For the government in Washington, WikiLeaks amounted to a huge embarrassment, triggering a series of damage-control exercise by Holbrook and others. On the face of it, officials pretend to have moved on, but the leaks have severely impacted the American operations. Not only are now all diplomats visiting the State Department careful than ever before, the American officials themselves seem to be on guard.

Prior to the disclosures made by the WikiLeaks, most diplomats enjoyed candid discussions with American counterparts both in Washington and their respective capitals. But now, observed an official here, the "space for frank discussions has considerably shrunk."

Essentially, the diplomatic cables comprise observations and analysis of one diplomat by another. In this particular case, it is the American diplomats praising or foul-mouthing Saudi Arabian, Pakistani, Iranian or Russian officials. Just like journalists, diplomats, too, basically collect reports and top them up with analysis before dispatching them to their capitals. This has been and will remain the practice but, as a diplomat pointed out, such dispatches will remain devoid of punch and originality because of caution.

Not only will the majority of diplomats representing even the American allies (such as those within NATO) conduct their jobs and personal interactions with greater restrain but envoys and officials from countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan will also be more guarded in their conversations with their American interlocutors.

I remember a number of frustrated western diplomats based in Islamabad cribbing about the "reclusive nature of their American counterparts" in recent years. They would often complain about the Americans’ reluctance in sharing important information (about anti-militant operations) with them. This gap is likely to increase further. The WikiLeaks episode is not likely to bear any effect on the day-to-day diplomacy but it certainly will impact mutual trust.

Also, the WikiLeaks seems to have made jobs of several diplomats more arduous than ever before and adversely undermined the US role in "conspiracy-prone" countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The tone and tenor as well as the content of some of the dispatches by Anne W. Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan, for example, lent greater credence to the conspiracy theories on the nuclear issue. The US administration simply lacks trust and confidence in Pakistan and therefore the demand for returning the enriched uranium gifted in the 1960s.

"A bigger fallout from the WikiLeaks is that it "may have permanently killed small US non-proliferation and counter-terror programmes (in Pakistan) by unveiling US efforts to reclaim enriched uranium from an aging Pakistani research reactor and by offering details on how US Special Forces have been embedded in Pakistan’s own military operations," says Daniel Markey, the Pakistan expert of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Officials in Washington appear worried about the long-term consequences of the WikiLeaks release but, as far as Americans in general are concerned, they don’t wail over past mistakes or don’t descend in mourning even if things go wrong or national interest is hurt. Life must move on, so seems the guiding principle for all and sundry in America.

American media with an international focus, however, continues to occasionally discuss the fallout. The New York Times, for instance, conceded in a recent editorial that the "release of thousands of US diplomatic cables (NYT) by WikiLeaks.org has further shaken Washington’s already strained relations with Pakistan".

In an analysis on the events, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) quotes American media and international news agencies as saying that "some stories have further fueled anti-US sentiment (Reuters), with Pakistan’s right-wing Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami staging a rally on Dec. 5 to protest Pakistan’s alliance (AFP) with the United States."

But as the cables highlight, the US-Pakistan relations is fraught with lack of trust and shared goals. "That should raise fresh doubts (Newsweek) about the prospects for US efforts in Afghanistan, given that Pakistan provides sanctuary for the Taliban and other groups hostile to our purposes," CFR President Richard N. Haass wrote in an analysis, adding: "Little in these cables suggest this support (for certain militant groups) will end any time soon."

The CFR agrees also that the cable leaks have also made information gathering by US officials and diplomats on the ground more difficult. US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, in an op-ed in the The News, attempted to assuage concerns by saying Washington was taking steps to prevent any future breach of diplomatic communications.

At the same time, the leaks have revealed the dichotomy within Pakistan’s ruling elite; the documents expose the Pakistani duality (action against TTP but none against Lashkar-e-Taiba or Afghan Taliban), prompting James Traub to write in ForeignPolicy.com that the "diplomatic cables reveal the United States has no good options when it comes to its policy on Pakistan."

Analysts and diplomats here are wary about what they call "Pakistan’s two-faced US policy, saying unless Pakistan makes a clean break from all militant groups and stops using the war against terrorism to extract aid from the United States, it will be difficult for both countries to move out of the shadows of the official cables leaked by the Wikieleaks."

It will therefore take Pakistani diplomats and officials as well as the Americans to get over the leaking scandal. This also has placed limitations on frank diplomatic exchanges -- unless officials decide to abandon the current archiving systems in favour of a more water-tight, fool-proof documentation mechanism. For the time being, all diplomats are cautious, though this may not necessarily bear a negative impact on diplomatic interactions.

Imtiaz Gul heads the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies and is the author of ‘The Most Dangerous Place; Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier’. He can be contacted at imtiaz@crss.pk.