The Pakistani Army is trying
to convince the world it’s on the verge of a great transformation
Newly-labelled doctrines and well-worded
off-the-record statements are unlikely to persuade sceptics that it is on the
verge of a fundamental transformation.
Every few years, the Pakistani media
initiates a discussion about how the nation’s military is becoming more committed
to moving away from Jihadi terrorism, building democracy at home, and achieving
peace with the neighbours.
Some sections of the international press
pick up the theme while western diplomats and American generals voice hope that
Pakistan’s current military chief will pave the way for incremental progress,
even if his predecessors failed to do the same.
It is necessary, therefore, to compare what
is being described in the Pakistani media these days as the ‘Bajwa Doctrine’ —
a description of the army’s ‘altered’ worldview based on an ostensibly
off-the-record briefing of select journalists by Pakistan’s Chief of Army
Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa — with similar descriptions of the country’s
change of direction under different military leaders.
Most of the discussion at General Bajwa’s
briefing was on political matters, which explains why it was formally labelled
‘off-the-record’. But because its purpose was to let the Pakistan army’s views
be known to the world, including to the country’s politicians, it has been
reported widely.
In fact, there was not even a proforma
protest by General Bajwa’s team over the fact that an off-the-record
conversation should not be reported with full attribution.
In any other country, the army commander
would not publicly voice his institution’s displeasure with the Constitution or
on the elected government’s handling of the economy. In 2010, US General
Stanley McChrystal had to step down because his staff had made critical remarks
about President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy.
But then, this is Pakistan. Here, army
commanders are not fired or asked to resign by elected civilian leaders.
Instead, Pakistan’s army commanders have a tradition of sending prime ministers
packing.
In 1999, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
tried to exercise his constitutional authority to appoint a new Chief of Army
Staff, he found himself out of job and in prison. The general he tried to fire,
Pervez Musharraf, ended up ruling the country for the next nine years.
To be fair to General Bajwa, his distaste
for a military coup might be the reason he chose to convey the army’s
displeasure about political developments through a press briefing.
If the media, the Supreme Court judges, and
the politicians know what the army wants, they might just make it all happen
without General Bajwa, the honourable soldier, having to soil his hands with
direct involvement in politics.
And there might be the additional benefit
of persuading a senior American military figure, in this case CENTCOM commander
General Joseph Votel, to bear with the Pakistani commander while he tries to
steady the ship of state and do the right things, especially in Afghanistan.
After all, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
(army chief 2007-2013), managed to sell the ‘change around the corner’ concept
to Admiral Michael Mullen for a few years until, after 26 in-person meetings,
Mullen concluded that he had been wasting his time.
General Bajwa cannot avoid politics even if
he wishes to, because he presides over an officers’ corps that spends more time
thinking about politics than about purely professional matters.
Dr Aqil Shah proves that methodically in
his empirical study ‘The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in
Pakistan’ (2014, Harvard University Press.)
Notwithstanding his personal distaste for
getting directly embroiled in politics, every Pakistani commander must give
voice to his institution’s views and beliefs, most of which have remained
static and unaltered since the ascendance in 1951 of General (later Field
Marshal) Ayub Khan as the first indigenous Muslim commander of the army left
for Pakistan by the British.
The training and education of Pakistan’s
military officers tends to cast their minds in a similar mould, with very
little variation, and their worldview remains mostly unaltered by changing
realities around them.
Georgetown University professor Christine
Fair makes that point in her analysis of Pakistan army officers’ writings,
which was published as the book ‘Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s
Way of War’ (2014, Oxford University Press.)
Thus, General Bajwa’s recently expressed
views are somewhat rehashed versions of views expressed by Ayub Khan and almost
all others who have commanded the Pakistan army in between. There are
variations of language and of emphasis, but the essential content on domestic
politics, regional affairs, and the army’s institutional primacy is similar.
Some Pakistani generals, like Zia-ul-Haq,
used more Islamic idiom; others such as Ayub and Musharraf chose more
Western-oriented themes. But some things remain unchanged. Pakistan’s generals
do not like Pakistan’s politicians, they do not like regional autonomy and
prefer a highly centralised state, and their basic opinion on foreign policy
generally coincides.
Thus, Bajwa criticised the Eighteenth
Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution, passed by two-thirds majority in both
houses of parliament in 2010, because it “has changed Pakistan from a
federation to confederation”. The army remains opposed to provincial or ethnic
autonomy, as it has consistently done before and after it went to war against
Bengalis seeking self-rule in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Gen. Bajwa reportedly described the
Eighteenth Amendment and its redistribution of power between Pakistan’s central
and provincial governments as “more dangerous” than the six-point programme of
Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
On Afghanistan, General Bajwa spoke of
‘peaceful coexistence with neighbouring countries’ and not having expansionist
designs in Afghanistan, just like the ‘Kayani Doctrine’ circa 2009-2010. The
doctrine’s only priority, we are told, is Pakistan and it “believes in totally
wiping out terrorism from Pakistan. It is making sure that no safe havens
[will] be spared for the terrorists”.
“General Bajwa and his team have a clear
vision of peaceful and prosperous Pakistan and they want to make Pakistan
totally violence free,” said one gushing account of the army chief’s press
conference-that-was-not-a-press conference. “They want the militant groups to
be de-weaponised and brought to the mainstream like Ireland and other
strife-stricken countries where warring groups were dealt in an ideal way.”
But no one should expect a complete end to
support for Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani Network or the elimination of
India-oriented Jihadis like Jaish-e-Muhammad or Lashkar-e-Taiba, because
Pakistan’s army under General Bajwa is unlikely to eliminate something it
continues to refuse to acknowledge.
Within a few days of General Bajwa’s laying
out his ‘doctrine’, the head of the military’s public relations wing declared
that all Jihadi groups had already lost their safe havens in Pakistan — a
‘mission accomplished’ statement that renders having to do anything further
unnecessary.
The only area where General Bajwa broke
some new ground was on the question of relations with India, invoking the
analogy of US-Canada relations and recognising China’s advice that Pakistan
should seek means other than war to resolve the Kashmir issue.
But his assertion that there can be no war
between two neighbouring nuclear countries came with the caveat that Pakistan
must wait through the ‘stubbornness’ of the ‘extremist Modi regime’.
From Ayub to Musharraf to Kayani and now
Bajwa, the most consistent theme in the thinking of Pakistan’s generals remains
the belief that contending ideas about Pakistan’s direction remain a threat to
Pakistan’s survival and stability, and that the army is better suited than
civilian institutions to define Pakistan’s national interest.
Unless that rejection of pluralism and the
entrenched notion of institutional supremacy is abandoned, the burden of
history will continue to suggest continuity rather than change in the thinking
of Pakistan’s military.
Newly-labelled doctrines and well-worded
statements, nominally off-the-record to create the illusion of candour, are
unlikely to persuade sceptics that the Pakistan army, and because of it the
country, is on the verge of a fundamental transformation.
Husain Haqqani, director for South and
Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., was Pakistan’s
ambassador to the United States from 2008-11. His forthcoming book is
‘Reimagining Pakistan.’
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