Daily Times

On August 14, 1947, Mr Jinnah sent a clear and well-defined message to the armed forces of nascent Pakistan: “Do not forget that the armed forces are the servants of the people and you do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted.”

Contrast Mr Jinnah’s message with Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the first man on horseback and a self-appointed saviour, who gave an insight into the khaki mindset when he described politicians as “inefficient and rascally”. General Ayub justified his assumption of power in 1958 by citing the nation’s need for “stability” and the “necessity” for the army to play a central role.

The power grab by General Ayub marked the beginning of the era of one-man rule that was to last for several decades. The rationale for the coup centred on a general feeling of political malaise by a near consensus among the politically aware segments of the population that the politicians had somehow failed in their duty to provide the country with a workable political system. After Mr Jinnah, the military establishment had acquired and cultivated a reputation of honesty, integrity, and efficiency, precisely the three virtues that the politicians seemed to lack.

When challenges to his dictatorship crystallised in the late 1960s, General Ayub remained contemptuous of lawyer-politicians and handed over power to General Yahya Khan. General Yahya in his address to the nation on March 26, 1969 justified martial law by stating: “We, in the armed forces, had hoped that sanity would prevail and this extreme step would not be necessary; strikes and violence have become a daily routine and the country has been driven to the edge of an abyss; the armed forces could not remain idle spectators of this state of near anarchy. The armed forces have to do their duty and save the country from utter disaster.”

The Ayubian model with Generals seen as upholding stability lording over civilians tagged with encouraging insanity and anarchy leading to an abyss and disaster is in the armed forces’ lexicon to this day. While the swagger and bravado about military culture and brash patriotic talk, flag-waving and heavy-handed nationalism is not unique to Pakistani Generals, nowhere in the world except in a few “banana republics” do the armed forces enjoy as complete a dominance over and autonomy from civilian control as Pakistan.

In the first of a few personal encounters with the khaki mindset, I witnessed the National Assembly session in Dhaka in 1968 when amid loud chair-thumping by government MNAs, Vice Admiral A R Khan, General Ayub’s defence minister, used the tone of “utter contempt” reserved for politicians. Admiral Khan was ridiculing East Pakistan opposition MNA Maulvi Farid Ahmed for asking for “personal protection” from the armed forces while protesting the excesses committed by the same forces during the anti-government demonstrations towards the fag end of the Ayub regime. I do not know if the admiral’s assertion about Maulvi Farid was true but his loud bluster clearly succeeded in discomfiting the good Maulvi. In an unrelated historical footnote, Maulvi Farid Ahmed, who supported a united Pakistan, died a horrible death at the hands of Mukti Bahini. His body was denied a decent burial.

Just before the army crackdown in East Pakistan on March 25, 1971, I heard an army brigadier, later DG of the ISI and governor, say over dinner that the “Bengali problem” would be “sorted out” shortly once and for all. Much later, in the early 1990s, a sermonic temper tantrum from a former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) over tea at our house along the lines of “you civilians invite us to take power when you have lost all hope in democracy” in response to a rather innocuous remark from a fellow guest on the frequency of martial laws.

We know that Pakistan’s armed forces have always seen themselves as the most important sector of society: the only ones capable of guaranteeing “national survival” that is threatened by our “unfriendly” neighbour India and more recently by terrorists. As long as this view prevails, it is more than justified to accumulate and retain economic and political power in the hands of the military establishment. Furthermore, any decision the armed forces take in any realm of national life is not to be questioned, because this means threatening national security.

While the professional reputation and pride of the armed forces has been dented by the bin Laden killing and PNS Mehran incidents, one should not expect that the military establishment will fold its tent and accept civilian supremacy. For that to happen, democracy has to be consolidated and civil society heard. The military has to be disarmed by demands that can no longer be written off as “anti-Pakistan” and which, come from a broad coalition of practically all civilian political, economic and social forces. Perhaps civilian leaders with a reputation for honesty and integrity like Mr Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan have to take over the mantle to offer a credible alternative to the Generals. Tall order indeed but until then we should fully expect the khaki mindset to prevail.

The writer is a banker interested in history and international affairs