The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  Mutual distrust between the military and the government persisted throughout the PPP tenure. Both Zardari and his interior minister Rehman Malik, according to WikiLeaks revelations, feared a military coup. Zardari also feared he would be assassinated.

  At one point he said he had instructed his son Bilawal to name Zardari’s sister Faryal as president. 1 According to a February 2009 US embassy memo, Zardari told Bilawal that if Zardari was assassinated, Bilawal should name the president’s sister, Faryal Talpur, as president. COAS Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani told US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson that Faryal would be a better president than Bilawal. The memo notes that ‘embassy officers have been very impressed with Talpur’. UAE’s Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed told US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke in January 2010 that Zardari had asked Zayed to convey a request to the UAE president that Zardari’s family be allowed to live in the UAE in the event of his death. 2

  Rumours flew at the slightest whiff of an impending coup. One such incident involved the quick dash by President Zardari to Dubai after, as rumour had it, having been presented evidence by the DG-ISI Gen. Pasha on what was later called Memogate. 3 This was followed by another public spat between Prime Minister Gilani and the army, when he summarily fired his defence secretary, a retired three-star general, Naeem Khalid Lodhi, in January 2012, replacing him with Nargis Sethi, a civilian. Both the ministries of defence and defence production had gradually become military fiefdoms, with the army chief effectively nominating or, in the case of President and Army Chief Musharraf, seconding military officers to both ministries. This removed the civilian hierarchy from decision making related to military masters.

  Mr Lodhi, who retired from the army last March and became defense secretary in November, became embroiled in a controversy last month after he submitted a statement in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Defense Ministry, saying that the civilian government had no operational control over the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s powerful spy agency. Saying that Mr Lodhi had overstepped his authority, Mr Gilani objected to the blunt statement, a public acknowledgment that while the intelligence services are technically answerable to the prime minister, they are widely perceived to act independently of civilian control. 4

  The civilian Sethi was eventually replaced by former Peshawar corps commander, Lt. Gen. (retd) Asif Yasin Malik in July 2012. He continued his tenure even after the new administration of Prime Minister Sharif came into power and retired in July 2014. Malik, an independent-minded professional, maintained his autonomy during his tenure, especially when his ministry was assigned to a part-time minister, Khawaja Asif, during the Sharif term, who rarely came to the defence ministry and who concurrently ran the power ministry, according to a senior ministry official. (Asif, a product of the cadet college at Hasan Abdal, a leading feeder school to the PMA, had also publicly castigated the military in his speeches in the National Assembly when he sat in the Opposition benches. This the army never forgot and it limited its direct interaction with him.) Malik notably also rebutted a claim by his former military boss, Musharraf, when Musharraf claimed that he had the support of the Pakistan Army and also when he wished to leave Pakistan for medical treatment abroad. This was done, after Musharraf had returned to wage political battle in Pakistan, against the advice of the military, and become embroiled in court cases galore.

  In a strong rebuff to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, Defence Secretary Lt General (retd) Asif Yasin Malik said on Tuesday that the army had no stake in the treason indictment of the former president . . .

  ‘Pakistan Army has no connection with the trial of former army chief Pervez Musharraf in the special court,’ Malik told the media soon after attending the meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production.

  The military, according to him, has no interest in the trial. He also pointed out that there are no servicemen present on the judicial panel that heads the special court constituted to try the former president.

  The defence secretary said he was unaware that Musharraf had sought army’s help to get himself out of the legal mess. Last month, during an interview, Musharraf claimed that he had the backing of the country’s powerful army in the case. The military, however, remained silent on the comment made by its former chief. 5

  All this despite the popular perception that it would side with its former chief, Musharraf, if the civilians used his trial to envelope the military into court critiques of the workings or role of the military. Musharraf used this latent military sentiment to try to bring the military on to his side whenever he could. He did this by issuing statements that claimed his continuing and deep-seated support within the military.

  From the outset, the PPP government, following the example of earlier civilian governments, including those of Prime Minister Sharif, routinely outsourced various governance functions to the military, showing such deference to the army chief in particular that the general public began accepting a bipolar system of rule in the country, even when democracy ostensibly was being practised. To maintain a semblance of civilian oversight, civilian defence ministers were appointed from time to time, most of whom had little knowledge or interest in defence matters. No cadre in the civil service was created to specialize in managing defence operations or budgets or to work with their military counterparts to jointly craft policies and systems that would benefit the military and the country as a whole. The defence minister under the PPP government was a businessman, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, who remained a virtual ghost during his tenure, while the retired military officers ran the ministry. 6 He was dismissed along with the prime minister when the Supreme Court disqualified Gilani’s government in 2012. He came into the limelight once when he reportedly confessed to an Indian TV channel that senior military and civilian leaders knew of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, though it seems more likely he did not fully comprehend the question and his answer related to their efforts to find the Al-Qaeda leader. 7

  The military’s hands were full anyway, as it faced not only a growing Indian presence on its eastern border but also a rise in militant attacks on it and on the softer civilian targets inside Pakistan. Pakistan ranked third in the Global Terrorism Index behind Iraq and Afghanistan. There were some 2,345 fatalities resulting from terrorism in 2013, a 13 per cent increase over the previous year.

  Over 60 per cent of fatalities were from bombings and explosions and around 26 per cent from firearms. A quarter of targets and deaths were against private citizens, with police accounting for 20 per cent of targets and deaths. The deadliest attacks were against religious figures and institutions which, on average, killed over five people and injured over 11 per attack. 8

  Despite these killings, many religious leaders were challenging the war against militants, and the head of the JI even wondered if soldiers killed in the fight were shaheed (martyrs). The powerful military issued a strong statement against that view. The JI removed its errant leader Munawar Hussain.

  Politically, the PPP government suffered a setback when the Supreme Court disqualified Prime Minister Gilani on 19 June 2012, effectively removing him from office on 26 April when the Court had convicted him of contempt for refusing to open a case of corruption against Zardari. He was succeeded by Raja Pervez Ashraf, who too was ordered on 12 July to reopen the Swiss graft case against Zardari. The government refused and managed to pass a new law to protect the prime minister, but the Supreme Court struck down that law. On 18 September, Prime Minister Ashraf said he would not stand in the way of the revival of the old graft case against Zardari.

  The terrorist threat at home was highlighted by a brazen attack in Swat on 9 October on a bus carrying schoolchildren, when an activist for girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai, fourteen, was shot in the face and left for dead by the TTP. The US steadily increased its drone attacks inside Pakistani territory. It ushered in the new year with a flurry of seven strikes in the first 10 days of 2013.

&
nbsp; Zardari’s increasingly feeble government came under fresh pressure from civil society when a fiery cleric from Canada, Tahir-ul-Qadri, led his followers in shutting down the capital Islamabad in January. Soon after that, the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the new prime minister, Ashraf, on corruption charges. The head of the national anti-corruption body refused to follow the Supreme Court’s instructions. The PPP government hobbled across the finish line of its five-year term in March 2013 and preparations began for fresh elections on 11 May.

  Before it handed over power, it had the opportunity to craft a new trade relationship with its neighbours, India and Afghanistan. The American influence led to a partial transit trade deal with Afghanistan, but that trade stopped at the Indian border and therefore did not yield great results. The military had given tacit approval for trade talks, but, as Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar explained, they were held back by the army from declaring India a Most Favoured Nation (MFN). 9 Kayani’s explanation was that India had to be engaged on a wide range of issues. 10 I challenged that approach by arguing with him that his ‘all or nothing at all’ approach effectively stopped the trade talks from gaining traction and bearing fruit. Ishrat Husain disputes the Khar explanation, citing the signed approval by the defence secretary of the note prepared by the trade minister, Khurram Dastgir, to give India MFN status and to phase out by 2012 even the negative list for imports from India. 11 Under pressure from the Punjabi agriculture lobby in the waning days of his term, President Zardari and the PPP dithered on the MFN decision and thus Pakistan lost a golden opportunity to reset its relations with India and Afghanistan as a regional trade hub. During this period, the US was improving its trade and investment relations with India, while Pakistan faded in comparison.

  Civil–Military Disconnect

  The PPP government’s relationship with the military was burdened by historical memories. The military tended to accumulate its grievances, real as well as imagined, regarding the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter, Benazir Bhutto. The elder Bhutto had wished to cut the military down to size, demoting the commanders-in-chief of the services to chiefs-of-staff. But, he failed to understand that their power stemmed from their disciplined and organized institutions, while the political party that he headed, not unlike other political parties, tended to be fractured and weak, especially on governance. Moreover, the much-vaunted quest for democracy continued to be undermined by the behaviour of political leaders. Family rule was the order of the day. Civilian leaders failed to empower the people who elected them time and again, and they failed to deliver on the promise of economic development.

  Under President Zardari, the PPP tried to maintain a smooth relationship with the military. Appeasement was the principal tool. Avoidance of confrontation with the military was in fashion, while fearing the military’s potential to create political waves. Meanwhile, the general perception was that the PPP leadership was intent on cutting down the opposition while accumulating wealth through surrogates. The military watched all this with a keen eye.

  According to Hina Rabbani Khar, there was a ‘perennial trust deficit, not unlike earlier governments’. The relationship ‘detonated’ with ‘Memogate’, when the military’s worst fears about the use of the civilian government’s American relationships were fed by the possibility that the Pakistani ambassador in Washington was conniving with Americans to undercut the security establishment inside Pakistan. Khar believed that ‘the military role [on the domestic political scene] was very large. Any whisper from them created ripples.’ 12

  Her own government contributed to its difficulties when crises erupted. For example, when the Raymond Davis case exploded, the central government was content to let the ISI and the Punjab government (under the Opposition PML-N) do the heavy-lifting. Similarly, on the perennial issue of drone strikes that provoked much anger among the general population of Pakistan, the PPP’s public stance was one of outrage, but it conveyed a different, more accepting message to the Americans in the US embassy in Islamabad and in Washington. Conceded, it attempted to reduce or end the use of drones by the US in Pakistani territory. It also attempted to take control of targeting and management of drone strikes. As did the military. But it appeared that they never tried to coordinate their efforts to that end. A key divisive issue remained the US position that the ISI continued to support extremist Islamists inside Pakistan and maintained ties to the Afghan Taliban, even while professing to be a US ally.

  Khar did not recall any discussion with the president or the prime minister on drones. In fact, much to the surprise of the civilian government, the air chief gave a public statement about the ability of the Pakistan Air Force to shoot down drones if the government gave it the order to do so. (This matter was also discussed in the Abbottabad Commission Report and fuelled the debate about civil and military cooperation, or lack thereof.) This statement was made soon after a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet where he had not raised this issue at all. The Foreign Office stated after the Salala incident that its persons would sit in on meetings of foreign representatives with the COAS and other military leaders. The military resisted, according to Khar. At no time was the Foreign Office apprised by the military that they were ‘colluding with the Americans on drones’. 13

  She recalled that when the UN Special Rapporteur wanted to come to study collateral damage caused by drone strikes, the military informed the government that ‘we will be exposed on the issue of collateral damage by both the military and drones’. Ambassador Zamir Akram took a strong position in favour of the UN study. But it came to naught. The military refused to cooperate or participate in the inquiry. Interestingly, in the negotiations with the Americans, a senior US official told me that Khar was often seen as reflecting the military’s talking points. Domestically, it suited the military to control the public discourse on US drone attacks.

  Zardari’s party and government ran out of steam as the nation went to the polls in 2013. Nawaz Sharif, the self-styled ‘Lion of the Punjab’, managed to roar back into office for the third time. Despite fears on the part of many analysts that there would be another weak coalition government, the PML of Nawaz Sharif got 188 seats out of a total of 340 in the National Assembly, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan, and 216 out of 300 in the Punjab, establishing itself as a majority party with no need to form a coalition. This was a substantial jump from the ninety-two seats it had won in 2008. Its nearest rival was the PPP Parliamentarians (the official successor of the PPP of old) with only forty-six National Assembly seats, a huge drop from the 125 seats it had garnered in 2008. The PPP had a large majority in Sindh, with seventy-one out of 129 seats. Imran Khan’s PTI won thirty-three National Assembly seats and a majority of thirty-seven of 102 seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where it could form a coalition government, while the PML-N sat in Opposition. The PTI had boycotted the 2008 elections because it suspected fraud. The oldest and most established Islamic party, the JI, won only four seats, while the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam won thirteen seats in the National Assembly.

  Some 84 million Pakistanis went to the polls in 2013, accounting for 55 per cent of the registered voters. This was an increase of some 4 million voters. Overall, the PML-N gained 1,48,74,104 votes, followed by the PTI with 76,79,954 votes, and the PPP with 69,11,218 votes. Independents got 58,80,658 votes, while the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz, a largely Karachi and Sindh-based party, got 24,56,153 votes.

  Balochistan, as usual, had a very mixed bag of results. The PML got nineteen out of the seventy-two seats, with the Pakhtun Milli Awami Party getting fourteen; the National Party, a social democratic party of the Centre-Left variety, got ten seats; and independents got nine. Dr Abdul Malik Baloch became the first provincial chief minister who was not from a traditional tribal chief background. He formed a coalition government with support from the Sharif government at the Centre. The PPP formed the Sindh government. The PTI, for the first time ever, formed a government in KP. In many ways, this was a historic elec
tion, with no national party emerging, nor a broad base for the PML-N victory at the Centre.

  With this substantial victory under his belt, Sharif was able to form a Central government without being dependent on squabbling or blackmailing coalition partners. Also as the major party in the Punjab, with its nearly 50 million voters, it had a strong grip on the political scene, except the senate that was still in the hands of its political foes, including the PML-Q that formerly backed Musharraf, and the PPP. But he had a fractious political system to deal with, and pressures from abroad and at home continued to mount.

  Changed Spots?

  Immediately, speculation arose about the change expected in Sharif ’s behaviour. Some opined that he had learned from his previous stints in government and would alter his method of rule, especially given his lack of political breadth in the provinces. Others averred that he would be much more careful, in dealing with the military, drawing them into decision making in a way that kept them from alienation, and would avoid creating internal power-sharing crises. The more forward-leaning commentators looked for Sharif 3.0 as a newer and updated version of the self-destructing premier of the past. He did not meet their expectations.

  Politics as family business did not change with the change in government. Like the PPP, the PML-N government was formed on the bases of personal ties and loyalties, with the party being treated as a fiefdom for the ruling family. Sharif ’s brother, Shehbaz Sharif, continued to be the chief minister in the Punjab. His older teammates became the Inner Cabinet, including the Chaar Pyaarey or Favourite Four who were seen to be closest to him. Among them, his brother Shehbaz, the activist chief minister of the Punjab, spent an inordinate amount of his time in Islamabad. Others were Ishaq Dar, his finance minister and also relative by marriage of their children; Khwaja Asif, who was given the powerful energy portfolio and later the defence ministry too; and Chaudhary Nisar as interior minister and purportedly unofficial liaison with the military. Nisar’s late brother Iftikhar had been a friend of Musharraf and was key in recommending Musharraf for the post of army chief when Sharif parted ways with Gen. Jehangir Karamat in 1998.