RAWALPINDI, Pakistan- Ever since Pakistan was carved out of British India in August of 1947, the country’s military has appeared as if it was giving orders to the nation’s presidents and prime ministers instead of the other way around. The generals in Rawalpindi, the garrison city where the military’s headquarters is located, have had no compunction ousting elected politicians in coups and dictating security policies to the country’s often corrupt and inept civilian governments. The Armed Forces have ruled Pakistan during three different stretches, which together equate to nearly half of the country’s 66 years of existence.
Two years after deposing Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in a July 1977 coup, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq oversaw the execution of Bhutto, the father of another prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in a 2007 attack in which some Pakistani’s believe the military had a hand. Needless to say, the idea of civilian control of the Armed Forces is a concept that is as foreign to Pakistan’s military as the Urdu language is to most Americans.
The relationship between the country’s civilian government, currently led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, and its military was on the front burner this week, as General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani stepped down as Chief of Army Staff, the most powerful position in Pakistan’s Armed Forces, and handed control of the 617,000-strong force to Lieutenant General Raheel Sharif.
With reins of power of the worlds’ seventh-largest military now firmly in the hands of Sharif, who is of no relation to Prime Minister Sharif, many analysts are wondering if General Sharif will allow the Prime Minister of same name to make decisions without generals looking over his shoulder.
During most of General Kayani’s six-year long tenure as Chief of Army Staff, the general stayed out of politics and gave the civilian government room to operate. This was despite the fact that government at the time was lead by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the political party founded by Zulfiqar and which has long had a tumultuous relationship with Pakistan’s hands-on armed forces.
Aside from ousting the Zulfiqar in a coup and allowing him to be hung two years later, the military and its powerful Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also reportedly rigged the 1990 election to prevent Benazir, the incumbent prime minister at the time, from being re-elected.
In a 2012 Supreme Court hearing, Asad Durrani, a former ISI chief, testified he doled out millions of dollars at the behest of then-Chief of Army Staff Mirza Aslam Beg in a bid to influence the 1990 election and prevent Bhutto’s PPP from winning the ballot.
While General Kayani largely stayed out of domestic politics, he was unwilling to relinquish the military’s control of Pakistan’s most important security policies, particularly those pertaining to Afghanistan, India and Jammu and Kashmir, the divided Himalayan region claimed by both Delhi and Islamabad.
Kayani’s aversion to giving a civilian government more control over security issues was illustrated in 2008, when the PPP-led government issued a notification placing the military-controlled ISI under the jurisdiction of the civilian Interior Ministry.
Less than 24 hours later and under pressure from the Armed Forces, the government was forced into a humiliating retreat, issuing another notification that asserted that the earlier notification placing the ISI under the authority of the Interior Ministry had been “misunderstood.” One can only imagine the reaction of the American people if President Obama ordered reorganization of the CIA, and the military promptly ordered him to rescind the order.
General Sharif is expected to continue General Kayani’s laissez-faire approach to domestic politics while maintaining the military’s tight control of security policies, including support for such militant groups as the Haqqani network, which Pakistan views as a strategic asset to blunt Indian influence in Afghanistan, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the ISI’s proxy force in Jammu and Kashmir. While the generals may no longer dictate who wins elections, they still decide which Jihadi groups receive Islamabad’s support.
– Eric Erdahl
Sources: Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Dawn
Photo: Tod Pakistan