Dr Fai's case

Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, Director of the Kashmiri-American Council (KAC), arrested in the US five months ago for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, has pleaded guilty. He and another Pakistani American living in Pakistan, Zaheer Ahmad, are charged with conspiring in a scheme under which they took foreign money and the latter together with a 'straw donor' middlemen provided bogus donations to KAC, urging the donors to report the funding as tax deductible "charitable" contributions. Dr Fai admitted before a federal court that he had obstructed and impeded the administration of the Internal Revenue Service laws "by arranging for the transfer of at least $3.5 million to the KAC from employees of the Government of Pakistan and the ISI." KAC is accused of using these secret funds for lobbying elected officials, funding high-profile conferences, and promoting the Kashmir cause to decision-makers in Washington. Notably, the US law allows lobbyists to work for foreign governments, corporates and individuals. Pakistani leaders, including Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf, are known to have hired the services of lobbyists in Washington. But it is illegal for agents of foreign governments to seek to influence US policy or law without fully disclosing their identity and any underlying information. That the KAC director violated the law of the land he calls home, to say the least, is unfortunate. However, his urge to help the cause of his native land, Kashmir, is understandable too. After all, until the settlement of the Ireland dispute with Britain, Americans of Irish origin always used their influence in America and also made monetary contributions to the cause of their fellow Irish in Ireland that they, in most cases, left several generations ago. And the Irish struggle for political rights was quite violent, too. What is obviously wrong in the present case is that Dr Fai's KAC accepted money from a sympathetic foreign government, although that government is duty-bound to extend moral support to the Kashmiris fighting for freedom from Indian rule. Admittedly, Irish and Kashmiri Americans' situation is not so analogous; but the sentiment at the back of the two peoples' urge to help their own in the countries of their origin is the same. The Kashmiris living in America of course, are not as well-established as the Irish have been, and hence saw no harm in getting funds from a foreign source with which they shared common interest. The choice before Fai, presumably, was either to do nothing or to obtain money wrongly to do the right thing. The case highlights the difficulties the Kashmiri people face in having their voice heard where it matters. Desperate situations are known to force people to adopt desperate measures. Hence, Dr Fai's lawyers told the court he had taken funds from the Pakistan government but that he had tried to create awareness about the cause of his fellow Kashmiris. Hopefully, this vital factor will weigh heavily in his favour when the court announces its verdict on March 9. Copyright Business Recorder, 2011