Which forces within Pakistan worked so that there was a sharp drop in terrorist attacks on its soil, and have brought much-needed relief from relentless destructive attacks of a decade-long militancy that kept the country in alarming unease and fear? Some give all the credit to the person of Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, thereby elevating the heroic individual who daringly accomplished what others could or would not.
Hundreds of US troops are deployed in Afghanistan to bolster the local military against a resurgent Taliban, and both US and UK forces have struggled in battle for over a decade to drive out the Taliban. The unfinished US military operation of the Afghan war has presented seismic shocks to the region; for Pakistan it both reduced the chance for peace and increased the incentives to take a risk for peace. Such a position became particularly challenging and politically salutary after the outgoing US commander General John Campbell testified to Congress in January 2016. He said that while current rules of engagement prevented US troops who are not engaged in counterterrorism raids from initiating fights with the Taliban, the increased troop level represented an enhancement of the existing force protection mission. This immediately transformed General Sharif from the point person on the peace process to its martyr.
Others identify systemic forces observing that the mighty shifts in international and regional environment created conditions for such a major foreign policy change. Still others identify domestic forces within Pakistan highlighting a changing of the guard from the moderate to the more hawkish army generals, and the role of religious political party leaders who did not desire to end the Taliban conflict in order to capture the fruits of third-party beneficiaries. No understanding of the major foreign policy change can proceed without giving General Sharif his due, acknowledging the changing correlation of forces that stirred to upset the counterterrorism strategies, and forcefully emphasising to politicians and religious leaders that political matters are the least important when thinking about the sovereignty and integrity of the country.
The issue of national power potential is particularly relevant to Pakistan’s future security prospects, both in traditional and non-traditional contexts. Pakistan’s security problems and challenges include national identity and its relation with state security. The current as well as future security predicaments of Pakistan are woven in the context of the intricate relationship between security and national identity as well as elements of national power. The focus of the current military regime has rightly been primarily on state security seen through a comprehensive prism, linking issues of Pakistani state identity, governance, civil-military relations and policy making as its key components.
A great threat from the individual to the state, recently, has emanated on a domestic level. The seriousness of the threat has changed the Pakistan army’s doctrinal thinking, which has identified internal turmoil as the biggest challenge to Pakistan’s security. The unfolding of the National Action Plan in the aftermath of the tragic school massacre in Peshawar, and the emergence of violence in politics emphasis the need to re-evaluate national security strategy, and also discuss as to what direction needs to be undertaken collectively as a nation. A nation can ignore the existence of such threats only at its own peril. Kashmir and Afghanistan are on the boil, and internal political, economic and social unrest, and ethnic and sectarian strife being stoked by enemy agencies are continuous threats to Pakistan’s security.
But sometimes, these mechanistic and deterministic explanations fail to capture what arguably was the defining feature of General Sharif’s practices and policies to create, however temporarily — a military space in Pakistan politics in which banning the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain from Pakistan’s politics became desirable and legitimate. That is a reconstruction of national identity in Pakistani politics that was earlier tied to a manipulative peace process that involved a political compromise with the MQM.
This was probably the meaning imposed by General Sharif on war against terrorism. In Pakistan’s politics that event represented not simply a pledge to make amends with a long-time commitment, it also signalled a reality check moment for other political parties what it was, and what it was to become.
War on terrorism has never been simply a Taliban issue, whether or not Pakistan might withdraw from ‘good’ Taliban without undue harm to its security; it is also always has been about Pakistan’s national identity. War on terrorism thus directly represents a contribution, welcome by some and highly unwelcome by some, to a debate over national identity. What has been clear is that General Sharif and other partisans of the process of war on terrorism are attempting to draw a line and a framework that separate security and national identity amidst safety of the civil-military relationship.
But there is also an important institutional side to this story. These ideational developments have encouraged the collapse of the fear factor in Karachi politics, and the emergence of nationalism among politicians who barely mask their otherwise antagonistic and compromising loyalties that ominously suggest a direct clash with the integrity and sovereignty of the country. Is General Sharif’s opaque posture towards violence in politics simply a mirror image of war on terrorism, or perhaps breaking the political impasse and mobilisation of politicians along a common political space?
It seems that a political approach that is constructed by leaders who can imaginatively and strategically frame issues in ways that are connected to widely accepted narratives have a safe space. Others may struggle in the current chapter of the civil-military relationship. Although this particular Nawaz Sharif government is disposed towards a stubborn narrative that makes a political compromise more unlikely, there is no reason to presume that the corruption scandal crisis in Pakistani politics could not be arrested and redirected in a way that creates conditions for a peaceful political negotiation. General Sharif’s years reminds us of the important theoretical lesson: political foundations that make violence possible are not fixed but are malleable within certain limits.
(To be concluded)
The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at [email protected]