Daily Times

Notwithstanding the myriad problems facing the country, the discourse on civil-military relations continues to overshadow all internal and external crises in Pakistan. Apart from the seminal episodes of military coup d’etats since Ayub Khan’s original sin, the military has continued to interfere in civilian government affairs indirectly, especially in the 1990s and since 2008. There have been several low-intensity disputes between the civilian government and the military since the resumption of democratic rule in 2008, both during the PML-N and PPP regimes, including those over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, the ISI’s role, ‘Memogate’, former president Pervez Musharraf’s trial and most recently, the Hamid Mir and Geo cases. As many perceptive observers have noted, the Pakistani military is a powerful player in the country’s politics, with its own rules and financial resources to support its self-conceived agenda. Given the extent of its influence it continued to define the nature of governance within the polity until 2007. However, its influence began to wane after the judiciary became assertive, parliament more autonomous, and the media more vocal in exposing its weaknesses and in questioning its power to intervene in civilian affairs. Although the PPP government did not present a serious challenge to the army’s power in national affairs, the army remained wary of possible covert attempts to reduce its overarching influence in decision-making on sensitive political issues such as foreign assistance, relations with India, and the issuance of visas to foreigners — on which its perceptions differed markedly from those of the PPP. It jealously guarded its control over the ISI and squashed early attempts by the PPP government to bring it under civilian oversight.

The first sign of such friction emerged during negotiations on the Kerry-Lugar Bill in which the government had to backtrack after the army expressed its open disagreement with certain provisions of the Bill. The matter re-emerged in 2011 after the Abbottabad Osama bin Laden raid in the form of ‘Memogate’, a scandal involving the Pakistani Ambassador in Washington, Hussain Haqqani. The ambassador was accused of seeking US government help to pre-empt the possible overthrow of the civilian government by the Pakistan army. It also sought US assistance for reining in the ISI and to replacing it with a new national security team that would eliminate Section H of the ISI charged with maintaining relations with the Taliban and the Haqqani network. The memo, whose existence and authenticity were disputed by Haqqani, was later produced by the military and forced his resignation. It is significant that the matter was aired publicly by Nawaz Sharif who personally petitioned the Supreme Court to inquire into the matter and blamed the Zardari government for negligence in this grave matter of national security. Thus, the opposition political party (PML-N) failed to join — nor presumably was it consulted by — the government in curtailing the decisive strength of the military in domestic politics. It is not unlikely, therefore, that if and when the military again faces a similar threat from Nawaz Sharif — who has had serious confrontations with the military during his two previous Prime Ministerial tenures — other political parties, including the PPP, may well side with the army to upstage their rival. It seems therefore premature, if not naïve, to announce the demise of the military’s hegemony in Pakistan’s politics, as Akbar Zaidi, the renowned social scientist, claimed in a recent article in The Hindu (note that Zaidi earlier wrote similar obituaries for feudalism in Pakistan and for Hamza Alavi’s theory of an ‘overdeveloped’ post-colonial state). One needs to realise that it is much easier for the army to enter a country’s politics and get addicted to ruling the country than to make a planned exit and to stay away from politics, at least until and unless the process of transition to democracy bogs down in chaos.

There may be some truth in the assumption that the military in Pakistan is beginning to experience ‘governance fatigue’, and may be inclined to return to its primary duty of guarding the borders. If the transition to democracy that the country is currently undergoing is to retain its momentum, it will have to be taken more seriously and responsibly by the country’s politicians, the judiciary, the media and civil society. In the absence of such a combined and concerted effort, the army’s exit from overt and covert interference in politics is likely to become more infrequent, indirect and prolonged. As the outspoken human rights advocate Asma Jahangir has warned those eager for the imposition of martial law to get over the current mess, the duration of another military rule, if it comes, is likely to be much longer than its past average shelf life of a decade. The moment of truth for the next decisive phase in civil-military relations seems to be approaching fast as the second elected government since 2008 completes the first year of its rule. The drumbeat of mid-term elections, although a bit dimmed by the furore over Altaf Hussain’s arrest, is already being heard from far off London, orchestrated by those keen to derail the rocky transition to democracy.

After the tragic, near-fatal attempt on the life of journalist Hamid Mir, those suspected of organising the attack have turned the tables on Mir’s employers, the owners of the largest media house in Pakistan, and are seeking not only a ban on its broadcast and news transmission through legal actions but have also organised a clandestine operation against it and its employees, through mass demonstrations in favour of the military. They seem to have won the first round of the battle with the suspension of the network’s licence for 15 days and a token fine of Rs 10 million by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), the dysfunctional media watchdog body, although the battle is likely be a drawn-out affair. The final result is likely to be in favour of whoever displays more nerve, muscle and firepower. No prizes for guessing who that will be. The missing elephant in the room in the current civil-army confrontation episode is General Musharraf’s ongoing trial in which the military seems to be providing unnecessary and unwarranted protection to General Musharraf, saving him from facing the courts on dubious pretexts, including that of protecting its honour (in the same way that honour killings of women are justified by their perpetrators). Although the military’s public esteem is still high in view of its continuing sacrifices in the fight against terror and the Taliban, its image has been tarnished by its displays of incompetence, if not complicity, in dealing with high profile acts of terrorism on its own military establishments. Whether the army and the government will find it expedient to step back and adopt a less confrontational course, which allows them to concentrate on their respective spheres of primary responsibility, remains to be seen. It is clear, however, that Pakistan can ill-afford to bear the consequences of such a confrontation in the face of the impending geo-political changes in its neighbourhood occasioned by the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the results of the new elections in both India and Afghanistan whose new leaders have no love lost for Pakistan, especially the military.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at smnaseem@gmail.com