Husain Haqqani

Husain Haqqani (حُسَین حقّانی; 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.[citation needed] 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.

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. From 1992 to 1993 he was ambassador to Sri Lanka. 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. Husain Haqqani 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. 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.”