Husain Haqqani

Husain Haqqani (born 1 July 1956, alternately spelled Hussain Haqqani) is a Pakistani journalist, academic, political activist, and former ambassador of Pakistan to Sri Lanka and the United States.

Haqqani has written four books on Pakistan, and his analyses have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.

Haqqani is currently a Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and co-editor of Hudson's journal Current Trends in Islamist Ideology.

He also is a Senior Research Fellow and Diplomat-in-Residence at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, which serves as a training institute for diplomats of the United Arab Emirates.

In 1973 he joined Karachi University.

He frequently visited the library at the US consulate, reading volumes of American history.

Later, when students wanted to attack the consulate as part of a protest against the United States, Haqqani refused.

Haqqani received a B.A. degree with distinction in 1977 and a MA degree in International Relations in 1980 from the University of Karachi.

Haqqani worked as a journalist from 1980 to 1988, and then as political adviser for Nawaz Sharif and later as a spokesperson for Benazir Bhutto.

Haqqani worked as a full-time journalist from 1980 to 1988.

He covered the war in Afghanistan for Voice of America radio; served as the Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review; and worked in Hong Kong as the East Asian correspondent for the London-based Arabia: the Islamic World Review as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami newspaper Jasarat.

He worked for the state broadcaster Pakistan Television during the general elections of 1985.

Haqqani started his political career at the University of Karachi, where he joined Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami and became president of the student union.

Haqqani explained his association with Islamists as a student in an article in the Asian Wall Street Journal.

"Over the last three decades, I have alternated between being attracted to and repulsed by political Islam."

In recent years, he has emerged as a staunch critic of radical Islamist groups.

He started his national political career as a supporter of Zia-ul-Haq.

In 1988, he worked in the political campaign for an alliance led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who was subsequently appointed Prime Minister.

In 1990 he became Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's special assistant and until 1992 functioned as his spokesman.

From 1992 to 1993 he was ambassador to Sri Lanka.

In 1992 Husain Haqqani became one of Pakistan's youngest ambassadors, serving in Sri Lanka until 1993.

From 1993 to 1995, he was spokesman to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Haqqani's appointment as media advisor to Bhutto was opposed by her brother and mother because of his political past.

Haqqani allegedly "orchestrated a campaign of dirty tricks against the Bhutto women, publishing leaflets which showed their faces superimposed on nude bodies," a claim refuted by Benazir Bhutto.

From 1995 to 1996, Haqqani was chairman of the House Building Finance Corporation.

In 1999, he was exiled following criticisms against the government of then-President Pervez Musharraf.

From 2004 to 2008 he taught international relations at Boston University.

He was appointed as Pakistan's ambassador in April 2008, but his tenure ended after the Memogate incident, when the claim was made that he had been insufficiently protective of Pakistan's interests.

A judicial commission was set up by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to probe the allegations against him.

He served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States from 2008 during the government of Asif Ali Zardari.

His tenure was not without controversy in Pakistan where he was called "Washington's ambassador to Pakistan," a play on his role of Pakistan's Ambassador in Washington, due to his pro-Western views.

As a "pro-American ambassador in Washington," Haqqani provided visas for a large number of US operatives to enter Pakistan, under instructions from Islamabad, in the lead up to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

He resigned in 2011 due to the memogate controversy.

Roughly a week after the raid on Bin Laden, Haqqani reportedly asked a Pakistani American businessman Mansoor Ijaz to pass a message to the Americans, at the request of President Zardari, that the Pakistani military was planning to intervene.

Ijaz revealed this in an opinion column in the Financial Times in October 2011, and mentioned that the message was communicated in an undated and unsigned memo sent to Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military.

Later released to the press, the memo also spoke of a "unique window of opportunity" for the civilian government to gain the upper hand due to the military's complicity in the Bin Laden affair.

According to Ijaz, the military intended to stage a coup to wash off the embarrassment issuing from the raid on Bin Laden, and he drafted the memo in consultation with Haqqani.

According to commission's report which was issued in June 2012, Haqqani was declared guilty of authoring a memo which called for direct US intervention into Pakistan, though Pakistan's Supreme Court noted that the commission was only expressing an opinion.

In February 2019, Pakistan's Chief Justice suggested the entire Memogate affair was a waste of time, saying that "Pakistan was not so fragile a country that it could be rattled by the writing of a memo."

Haqqani began his interest in journalism in high school.