Professional armies very carefully consider and weigh all the pros and cons of an operation, major or minor, before launching it. It would be especially true of a war-like operation like a martial law.
The exercise includes a thorough examination of the chances of success and failure — more so of the latter to make sure that nothing goes awry. Whereas it is practically impossible to predict the course of something as fluid and fluctuating as war, the endgame would depend largely on hypothesising it well with all the professional wisdom at one’s command.
It could be said that the tame end of the 1965 war had been largely the result of our inability or unwillingness to consider the adverse or enemy hypotheses at all. We had taken victory for granted even before the battle was joined. The one rampant assumption then was to equate one Muslim solider to 10 Hindu soldiers — a bad joke in the case of two professional fighting forces. The assumption coloured our vision of war more as a test of faith and ideology than as a test of professionalism. “Muslim hai toh betaigh bhi larrta hai sipaahi” (a true Muslim wages war even unarmed).
In 1971 while in the face of certain disaster we were still talking of a war until victory. Just a couple of days before surrender, the force commander, Lieutenant-General Amir Abdullah Khan (Tiger) Niazi boasted of letting the enemy into Dhaka only over his dead body. That was as far as the real war went against an external enemy. As for the imposition of martial law, it is nothing short of a declaration of war against an internal (own) enemy.
A nasty business ever and always.
Hustled into martial law repeatedly in the past under the sheer pressure of circumstances, hardly of its own making, the Pakistan Army would shun it summarily with contempt.
There is an enemy within and an enemy without for the army to face. The enemy within, real and deadlier, involves poor governance, corruption, unprecedented energy crisis, recurring suicide bombings, the notorious Memogate representing the high point of acute and chronic state of civil-military relations. It is a state of virtual anarchy beyond the army’s training and doctrinal manual to control; hence the adverse hypothesis ruling out the martial law option.
It is not that the army views the rampant crisis as none of its business — it does and is ready to cope with this internal enemy by mobilising its resource in aid of the civil power. This the army is doing already all over the country, mainly in Sindh and Balochistan, under the umbrella of the civil government much better than it would be able to do under an outright martial law. Martial law, besides incurring international criticism, would deprive the army of the cover even the weakest civilian government alone is capable of providing. Martial law would condemn the army to isolation externally and expose it, warts and all, internally. In the case of war, the importance of civilian cover to ensure the legitimacy and moral standing of the army can be hardly exaggerated.
The army’s war on terror draws its rationale and legitimacy for being waged under a civilian dispensation. Its sole justification flows not from a professional challenge as from the political dynamic, the exclusive domain of civil authority.
In a country as besieged as Pakistan by internal and external threats, the army neither has the time for pre-planning a coup nor really the expertise or the kind of mass hurrahs martial laws would invariably elicit from the populace.
Still the most trusted and best organised single national institution, the army, is no longer the darling of the people much in the same way as it had been before the Dhaka debacle. Subsequently, Zia’s dubiously-motivated martial law, Musharraf’s unplanned Kargil adventure and personality-oriented military takeover, unravelled the already fragile fabric of the constitution and the rule of law, doing serious damage to the military’s image itself.
As for the pre-Dhaka martial laws of Generals Ayub and Yahya — while the first one was meticulously planned to stay as the law of the land forever, Yahya’s was conceived as an interim intervention with a noble intent drifted into a frightfully monstrous mess beyond the power of the dedicated Dynesian to control.
Unlike his hoary predecessors, General Kayani is neither a paterfamilias like Ayub nor his protégées Yahya, a missionary like Zia or Musharraf viewing the world as his oyster. He is a simple soldier caught in a whirlpool of crisis still managing to keep his head above the swirling water.
As every army chief caught in the midst of a political and military crossfire, Kayani must be thinking of all available options to get him and the army out of the crossfire without jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Marital law narrows down his choice between the fire and the frying pan, each carrying a certain risk of burning his fingers into the bargain. It is a standing and definite adverse hypothesis against martial law. And one could dismiss it as the last throw of dice no commander-in-chief would risk.
In any case, what is there to take over?
A country torn by internal chaos, indifferent leadership banking more on self-supporting press statements than on real and positive action, is reduced virtually to a tin of worms.
(Tailpiece: let Mian Nawaz Sharif dispel all fear (or hope) concerning the coming of yet another martial law. The army entertains no such idea or plan. However, if the army has to act at all it will not be just another martial law, but an outright military takeover to last until the cows come home.)
The writer is a retired brigadier and can be reached at [email protected]