Daily Times

Pakistan’s interminable bouts of military rule have given birth to a cottage industry of scholars seeking to explain the phenomenon. The coup makers, of course, have provided their own rationale, often invoking necessity and national survival as the rationale. The courts have accepted this doctrine while they are in office and rejected it once they leave office, often calling them usurpers.

Ejaz Hussain’s book, “Military Agency, Politics, and the State in Pakistan,” puts the rationale for coup making to an empirical test. He relies on the principal-agent model, which originated in microeconomic theory and was adapted to political science by Peter Feaver of Duke University.

In Hussain’s framework, the political leaders are the “principal” and the military one of the many “agents” whose job is to carry out the “work” assigned to them. That is the theory. However, agents may decide to “shirk” their assignment and pursue their own self-interest, since moral hazard is always there.

UCLA historian and biographer Stanley Wolpert characterized the Pakistani army as a “wolfhound” which occasionally turned on its master.

Feaver noted that the same challenge exists in every country, including the US: “The military will choose to always work when its payoffs from working exceed the expected payoffs of shirking. [General Douglas] MacArthur usurped authority that was not in his order to pursue a policy directly contrary to what his civilian superior had ordered. In short, he shirked. Who will guard the guardians? Political scientists since Plato have sought to answer this, the central question of the civil-military relations subfield.”

Hussain finds that the same four-fold rationale has been provided by all the coup makers: a deteriorating law and order situation, a failing economy, a sham democracy and compromised national security. He then proceeds to see if the rationale holds up to real data by comparing the four metrics before and after the coup. That may be his main contribution to the literature.

Zia’s Operation Fairplay was supposed to last 90 days. It had entered its 12th year when Zia died in a plane crash. The economy performed well but largely due to the massive inflow of foreign aid. His participation in the Afghan war resulted in the defeat of the Soviets but left a terrible legacy of ‘jihadism’ in Pakistani culture. Needless to say, he did not restore true democracy

President Iskander Mirza, who imposed the first martial law, was deposed just three weeks later by his army chief whom he had appointed as the chief martial law administrator in a clear case of shirking. General (later Field Marshal) Ayub stated: “Let me announce in unequivocal terms that our ultimate aim is to restore democracy but of the type that people can understand and work. When the time comes your opinion will be freely asked. But when that will be, events alone can tell. Meanwhile, we have to put this mess right and put the country on an even keel.”

Hussain finds that the law and order variable, as measured by the number of murders and riots per million, did not improve after Ayub’s coup. After an initial improvement, things began to relapse to pre-coup levels. And after the 1965 war, things began to worsen. Large-scale riots broke out in 1968, culminating in Ayub’s ignominious fall from grace in March 1969.

Economic growth was largely driven by US foreign aid and slowed down as the aid slowed down. Distributive justice was lost sight of in the rush for growth, as acknowledged later by Ayub’s economic advisor, Mahbub-ul-Haq. East Pakistan was totally neglected despite its major contribution to the country’s exports.

Ayub dumbed down politics to Basic Democracy, which amounted to de-democratization and not re-democratization. In his private dairies, which were published posthumously, he wrote that parliamentary democracy as envisioned by Jinnah (and as implemented by Nehru in India) was not suited to the “genius” of Pakistanis and it would be two generations
before they would be ready for it.

Ayub compromised national security by going to war with India over Kashmir in 1965. Not only was Kashmir not acquired, Pakistan came close to losing Lahore. All four reasons given by Ayub for his coup were nullified.

In his eight years, Musharraf failed to institutionalise democracy. Economic growth was driven by foreign aid. And terrorism reached new heights. To cap it off, he fired the chief justice and declared an emergency. Hussain calls this Pakistan’s fifth coup

General Yahya delivered on his promise to hold fair elections. But he did not honour the results of the elections and failed to deliver parliamentary democracy. A civil war broke out in the east and national security was shattered by the loss of East Pakistan.

General Zia overthrew the civilian government saying, “when the political leaders fail to steer the country out of crisis, it is an inexcusable sin for the Armed Forces to sit as silent spectators… the elections were rigged… the government has ceased to exist… martial law has been imposed… the survival of this country lies in democracy and democracy alone… my sole aim is to organize free and fair elections.” Zia’s Operation Fairplay was supposed to last 90 days. It had entered its 12th year when Zia died in a plane crash. The economy performed well but largely due to the massive inflow of foreign aid. His participation in the Afghan war resulted in the defeat of the Soviets but left a terrible legacy of jihadism in Pakistani culture. Needless to say, he did not restore true democracy.

General Musharraf, who had waged war at Kargil to thwart the peace process that Nawaz Sharif had begun with India, deposed the elected prime minister by saying that he was delivering “sham democracy,” and made the bold claim that the armed forces had never let the people down. In his eight years, Musharraf failed to institutionalize democracy. Economic growth was driven by foreign aid. And terrorism reached new heights. To cap it off, he fired the chief justice and declared an emergency. Hussain calls this Pakistan’s fifth coup.

He is right when he says that Pakistan is “beset with grave challenges to its very existence,” such as religious extremism and terrorism. Thus, judicial activism, as manifested in the sacking of two prime ministers in the past five years, undermines parliamentary democracy and poses a threat to national security.

Hussain errs when he calls the military a rational actor. He says it only stages a coup when it believes that the benefits of the coup (better control of defense and foreign policy) exceed its costs (domestic and international disparagement). But should not the act of carrying out a coup be regarded as a self-defeating, myopic and irrational act?

Civil-military relations in every country are bedeviled by Feaver’s paradox: “The very institution created to protect the polity is given sufficient power to become a threat to the polity. This derives from the agency inherent in civilization. If a society relentlessly pursues protection from external enemies, it can bankrupt itself. If society minimizes the strength of the military so as to guard against a military seizure of political power, it can leave itself vulnerable to predations from external enemies.”

Hussain successfully deconstructs the rationale provided by the military in Pakistan for mounting coups and shows it to be morally, logically and empirically false. But he leaves unanswered the question why most countries, including India, are able to resolve Feaver’s paradox in favor of the civilian government while Pakistan has been unable to do so. He does not use his model to predict what might precipitate the next coup or when it might occur. What good is a model if it does not yield testable predictions? Despite these omissions, the book is worth reading.

The writer is the author of “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.” He can be reached at Ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, December 13^th 2017.