Book review : ‘Honour Among Spies’ by Lieutenant General Asad Durrani

Lieutenant General Asad Durrani asserts himself as a ‘soldier scholar’. By now, former ISI chief Lieutenant General Durrani has become a familiar name in Indian households because of the popularity of his book, ‘The Spy Chronicles: RAW ISI and the Illusion of Peace’ co-authored with Former RAW chief Amarjit Singh Dulat. While the book was a unique venture in the history of the sub-continent, it caused great trouble personally for Durrani. Apart from ‘Chronicles’, he had written another book ‘Pakistan Adrift : Navigating Troubled Waters’.

For many reasons his old institution, the Pakistan Army, was not happy with his writings. A court of inquiry was set up against him and he was summoned to the General Headquarters (GHQ) for interrogation. In his subsequent work ‘Honour Among Spies’ Lieutenant General Durrani, in the form of a fictitious narrative gives the reader the details of this interrogation and the stories of the background events. A recurring theme often comes haunting across the length and breadth of the book, it being the tussle between his love for writing on security issues and the military establishment’s determination to curb his freedom of expression.

The book is a thinly disguised narrative of what Durrani had to go through in Pakistan. About A S Dulat and his relationship, he writes that the Sikhs and the Pathan had been fighting with each other in past. So, both military races (here Dulat and Durrani representing both the races) have developed a mutual respect. Durrani acknowledges that Dulat’s book ‘Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years’ was not only a good read but also explained a few questions that had been agitating his mind, ever since the Valley went up in flames in the early 1990s. He tells that it is not the book, but the revelation of the incidents of the raid on Osama’s residence at Abbottabad, that put him into a tight squeeze.

It seems Durrani somehow offended all the stakeholders in the politics of Pakistan- the present regime, opposition, Pakistan Army and media. One can easily conclude: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajva is Jabbar Jatt, former spy-master Hamid Gul is Gul Mohammad, Ashfaq Kayani is Raja Ratalu, a rare thinking general, Nawaz Sharif is Naveen Sheikh, Parvej Musharraf is Gulrez Shahrukh, Imran Khan is showman-turned politician Khurshid Kadri, Asad Durrani himself is Osama Barakzai and A S Dulat is Randhir Singh.

Durrani begins his book with the famous lines of the great poet Ghalib:
‘Ya rabb, wo na samjhein hain, na samjheingey mairi baat.
Na dey dil unko, toe dey mujhko zuban aur.’
(I was misunderstood and will always be.
Oh God, give them another heart or me another voice.)
The grilling in the GHQ seems to have made his satires sharper. When he arrives at the GHQ he is ‘reminded of a bride’s welcome after marriage and fate that awaits her’. Interestingly, he mentions a statement from Nawaz Sharif, (who had been disqualified by the Supreme Court only a year ago from continuing as the prime minister) ‘Aur wo jo kitabain likhte hain?’ (And what about those who write books?). I found it rather amusing. For someone who had never read a book in his life, writing one was indeed a grave matter’.

When another interrogator asks him, he speaks alone more than the two Indian writers combined, in the book! Durrani reminds him ‘second Indian was only a moderator, not an author’. Similarly, when an officer asks him, was it necessary to say that you were born an Indian? He says; “Yes, because I was, and before one forgets, even Iqbal, our national poet, has written how he loved the country of his birth, Hindustan,”. Barakzai’s response reminds officer Iqbal’s iconic song ‘Sare Jahan se Achchha Hindostan Hamara (Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan).

Osama Barakzai got an offer from an American agency. He exchanged a few posts with Randhir Singh about the offer. Randhir recalled he too had been approached by a foreign agency. ‘But he had told the yanks to buzz off. Barakzai should have done the same. But he was always known to be a gambler playing for high stakes’.

Asad Durrani is globally considered an authority on Afghanistan and Kashmir and among the most sought-after experts on the issue. He had been at the helm of affairs as DG MI, DG ISI and after retirement, he was Pakistan’s ambassador to Germany and Saudi Arabia. In his own words ‘in the closing decade of his active service, he had closely watched Pakistan move from one-man rule to what was intended to be a democratic disorder’. The book is alluring especially for those who are interested in politics, media and the army of Pakistan. After all, Pakistan Army is the institution that matters the most in Pakistan.

(Deepankar Shivmurti is a research fellow at the University of Allahabad)