The civil-military relations have been on a roller coaster for many years. It is said that democracy, whatever of it has survived, has been earned hard. The saying has an element of truth in it. Three military takeovers of 30 years combined make the case of democracy having been in peril. The politicians shunned out of the business of politics are believed to have lost the salt to do any real work. It is another story that most politicians have never wanted to measure to any real worth. The real job hence found its place in people considered more organised.
Pakistan’s foreign policy has been mostly controlled by the armed forces. The character of the state was shaped in the same context through which the country had decided to interact with international players. The ‘jihadi doctrine’ that earned us kudos for its ‘divinity’ to reduce one of the superpowers of the world, the Soviet Union, into rubble, could not have been crafted without first letting the lesson in jihad simmer in the domestic milieu. It was not only a handful of warriors taught in the Quranic injunction of jihad raised in some remote areas of Pakistan. It was a nation built to confront the west, the Satan wherever it could be, and the immoral that fail to fit our definition of morality. Parallel, we had the desire to hold on to Afghanistan, with a sole ambition to keep India away from Pakistan, and not allowed to use Afghan soil against us.
We had two doctrines: jihad against the evil, and India being the worst enemy of Pakistan. Apparently, the principles looked fine. A Muslim must shun evil and remain mindful of his enemies. However, when Afghanistan became empty of the powerful, one quashed and the other gone back to his home, the realisation of combating kufr (denial of the faith) with iman (faith) took a toll. There born Osama bin Laden, with a team of perpetrators to elevate Islam and bring doom to the forces that had brought miseries to the lives of the Palestinians and the Kashmiris. With it came the desire to lessen the role of the West in the Middle East. The desire grew stronger after the Gulf War when the US forces were stationed in most of the Middle Eastern countries. It further grew when Israel was allowed to bomb Gaza without any let-up until an entire generation of Palestinians had been wiped out in different strikes. It overwhelmed the jihad-coded warriors when after 9/11 Afghanistan was invaded by the US.
Suddenly, the world was full of non-state actors. The US with its allies was now fighting against unknown and largely disintegrated forces. The supply kept growing. The combat became difficult day after day. The supply line seemed ever-furnished with new recruits. Fingers were raised at Pakistan for providing safe havens to terrorists in its unmanned tribal areas. For infiltrations in Kashmir, the reports had it that Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir was being used to provide training and safe havens to infiltrators.
After 9/11, as pressure grew on Pakistan, many organisations believed to promote extremism were banned. Since no legal framework was developed to keep the lid tight on the banned groups, they resurfaced with new names. The US believes that it has been unable to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan because Pakistan never allowed the supply line of production of terrorists run dry. The two men, Hafiz Saeed and Azhar Mahmood, captured headlines for their capacity to keep India in awe of Pakistan’s ability to dwarf its hegemonic ambitions in the region. Pakistan, in spite of all, could not be weakened, so to say, because of these proxies defending the country.
Boggled, the international community with India and the US in the lead threatened to isolate Pakistan. Buying out homegrown militancy that erupted unhindered in the wake of weak governance fuelled this ambition.
The specter of isolation is on us again. And because the military sits at the helm of foreign policy the matter is connected to it. The government thinks that its diplomatic efforts are running into losses due to the perception that Pakistan supports ‘good’ terrorists. It was spelled out loud. Louder than expected hence the civil-military fissure. The story told, has a beaten plot, however, the timings made it look an act of treachery.
It will not be a bad idea if Pakistan’s image is rehabilitated but without pitting the government and the military against the other on the back of a media trial.
The writer is a journalist. She can be reached at [email protected]