ANALYSIS: Civil-military relations in Pakistan —Farhat Taj
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
The Difa-i-Pakistan rally was a combination of both: the Taliban with
and without beards. The common denominator is that they both support
the establishment’s use of religious bigotry in foreign as well as
domestic policies of Pakistan
Militant outfits known for
close ties with the military establishment of Pakistan held the
Difa-i-Pakistan Conference (Defence of Pakistan Conference) on December
18, 2011. They declared jihad as an obligation for Muslims and
threatened the US, NATO forces and India with violent jihad. One of the
participants, a former General of the Pakistan Army, Hamid Gul, said
that Islamic revolution rather than democracy is the solution for
Pakistan’s problems.
The Difa-i-Pakistan rally, in which
thousands participated, is a political tactic by the military
establishment to put pressure on the already besieged civilian
government. The right-wing forces are being mobilised and holding
rallies all over Pakistan. If the political parties, such as the Awami
National Party (ANP) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) hold public
rallies, they might come under terror attacks by some among those who
participated in the Defence of Pakistan Conference. This is also part of
the larger agenda of the establishment to take away political space
from the political parties such as the PPP and ANP in order to entrench
the right-wing political forces in the politics of Pakistan. It is not
that the establishment has allied itself with the religious forces only
for foreign policy objectives. The military-militant alliance has a
strong internal dimension too. The alliance is aimed to neutralise the
centrifugal ethnic secular political parties such as the ANP and
sideline the mainstream secular political parties of Pakistan, such as
the PPP. Religious forces accord religious legitimacy to direct and
indirect military rule in Pakistan and the military provides space to
the religious forces, which stand little chance in making inroads in
Pakistani politics through the normal democratic process on the
political landscape of Pakistan. Over time the tactics of the
establishment to use the right-wing forces against the democratic forces
in Pakistan have improved. Now the establishment has right-wingers with
and without beards — Imran Khan as a case in point of a beardless Talib
(singular of Taliban). The Difa-i-Pakistan rally was a combination of
both: the Taliban with and without beards. The common denominator is
that they both support the establishment’s use of religious bigotry in
the foreign as well as domestic policies of Pakistan.
Through the
media and right-wing political forces, a façade of public anger against
the US, NATO and the political government of Pakistan is being created
for the former’s presence in Afghanistan and the latter’s poor
governance. There are no informed debates on Pakistani proxies’
interventions in Afghanistan that has brought Islamists from around the
world to the country followed by the NATO and US forces. True that the
PPP-led government is marred by poor governance, but the military cannot
absolve itself from it. How can the civilian government ensure good
governance when it has no control over the country’s foreign policy and
large sections of domestic policy? Important attempts by the government
to reduce the sufferings of the people of Pakistan have been thwarted by
the military. A case in point is the government’s granting of most
favoured nation (MFN) trading status to India. This move by the civilian
government has the potential to contribute to the economic revival of
Pakistan by normalising trade relations with India. But this has been
rejected by the military through its proxy, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Hafiz
Saeed, chief of the JuD, whose activists dominated the Difa-i-Pakistan
Conference, declared that his group will never allow the government of
Pakistan to grant India MFN status; he called for revenge against India
for the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan and vowed to continue
violent jihad in Kashmir.
As I write these lines the news is
coming that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has spoken for the
supremacy of parliament over the military and directly questioned the
Generals for years-long stay of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The PPP-led
government should have taken such a firm position vis-à-vis the
military right after taking power in 2008 when FATA and Balochistan were
soaked in the blood of its people under state terrorism — both continue
to be so to date. The government should have asserted its authority and
openly told the people of Pakistan that the military establishment is
not allowing it to govern Pakistan in line with constitutional
requirements. It is quite late now; but better late than never. The
government must now assert its authority and show that there is a
civilian leadership in this country.
Back in the 1990s, Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto confronted the then ISI chief, Javed Ashraf
Qazi, with the reports that Pakistani, Afghans and Arabs were involved
in the insurgency in Indian-Held Kashmir (IHK), which the prime minster
said contradicted Pakistan’s position that the insurgency in Kashmir is
indigenous. The ISI chief told her that originally the Kashmir
insurgency was indigenous but now has to be carried on by the foreigners
because the Indians have killed all adult Kashmiri men. This
information was given by Benazir Bhutto to Husain Haqqani, former
Pakistani ambassador in the US, which he reports in his book, Pakistan:
Between Mosque and Military (p 237). The point here is that with the
civilian government seemingly asserting its authority, the military
establishment may go to any extent to misguide and humiliate the
government. Any non-issue can be converted into a matter of vital
national interests — the Memogate issue is a case in point. Pakistan has
no precedent of holding its Generals accountable for the crimes they
committed against the people of Pakistan and in the neighbouring states.
In the end, the PPP-led government may be toppled. But it may be good
for the future of democracy in Pakistan that the government now appears
on the high moral ground. This will give an alternative to the people of
Pakistan who might be led towards a rigged next election in favour of
pro-establishment political parties, such as the Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and another Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) type of
religious alliance. The struggle against the military domination of
Pakistan’s polity must go on.
The writer is the author of Taliban and Anti-Taliban
In : Farhat Taj
Notes