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. Political career 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 1993 to 1995, he was spokesman to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; from 1995 to 1996, he was chairman of the House Building Finance Corporation. Pakistani Diplomat In 1992 Husain Haqqani became one of Pakistan's youngest ambassadors, serving in Sri Lanka until 1993. 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. Alleged secret memo and resignation 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