The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  A second tier of faithfuls included the Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal and Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid. The cabinet met infrequently. However, most decisions were made by the Inner Cabinet, but not as a group. The prime minister preferred private bilaterals. And the Inner Cabinet members did not get along with each other. The decisions would then be conveyed by an all-powerful civil servant, as in the past, from within the burgeoning bureaucracy of the prime minister’s office. Sharif also brought into decision making his daughter, Maryam Safdar, who was married to his former aide de camp, who had left the army as a captain. She was also given responsibility, till a court forbade it, for the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme. One of the most experienced old hands, Sartaj Aziz, was given the title of Adviser for Foreign Affairs and rank of minister, but not the autonomous title of Minister of Foreign Affairs, an inexplicable snub for one of the most faithful and competent members of the party. A minister of state for the same ministry was appointed. He was Tariq Fatemi, a former diplomat and another loyal Sharif adviser during the days of exile. And when the opportunity came to elect a president, the titular head of state, Sharif ignored Aziz, who would have been a popular and very competent choice, and brought in a nationally unknown individual from Sindh: Mamnoon Hussain, 14 thus ensuring that there would be no likelihood of any dissent from that quarter. Even the faithful Fatemi was sacrificed eventually to salvage a freefalling relationship with the military.

  The NSC was handed over to Aziz, but rarely met and did not function effectively, nor was it given the resources and staffing to operate effectively. The Defence Committee of the Cabinet met rarely. Late in the day, an NSA, Lt. Gen. (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua, was appointed, but he was not given a clear mandate nor resources to tackle the growing issues related to internal and external security. He focused initial attention on relations with India largely through his back-channel sessions with his Indian counterpart, and, when that went into cold storage, he was asked by the prime minister to review the National Action Plan (NAP) against militancy and terrorism. There was no real secretariat to provide materials for discussions. As a result, on national security issues, the military and the ISI had the upper hand in terms of preparation of ideas and getting their agenda approved. Kayani continued to operate directly with the PM on a one-on-one basis, bypassing the chairman of the JCS as being redundant to the process. Every now and then, the chairman of the JCS committee stepped in to clear misunderstandings between the prime minister and the army chief. The meetings rarely produced debate. Contentious issues would be left unresolved and misunderstandings grew over time as participants took back their own interpretations of what had been agreed. In many ways, there was little substantive change in the system of decision making from the PPP government, with the military given free rein to craft its plans and pursue them, with little civilian input or oversight.

  Dawn Leaks

  One public spat between the civil and the military emerged after an incident in October 2016 known as the Dawn Leaks.

  It all started when the Dawn journalist Cyril Almeida ‘broke confidential minutes’ of a meeting among the government and military officials on the ‘national action plan’ in which the civilians reportedly apprised the military of mounting international pressure for more action against armed groups.

  The civilian government’s representatives at the meeting gave warning that Pakistan could face international isolation if the security establishment did not take the recommended course of action and what followed suit was the hornet’s [sic.] nest in the military ranks.

  Almeida’s exclusive story came against a backdrop of mounting border tensions between India and Pakistan following a claim by the Indian government of a cross-border ‘surgical strike’ by their [forces] on September 18. 15

  The military took great umbrage at the public airing of these differences and pushed the government to take action against the culprits.

  On Oct 10, the then chief of Army staff General Raheel Sharif called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to discuss matters pertaining to national and regional security. During the meeting, they termed the ‘fabricated news story’ against the national security. 16

  Almeida was pressured to divulge his sources but properly held his ground. The matter would not die down. The government sacrificed a pawn with the resignation of the information minister, Pervaiz Rasheed. An inquiry commission was set up, but its report was leaked too, leading the military spokesman to publicly reject the ‘notification’ under which the prime minister approved the commission’s findings. Following further pressure from the military, the Minister of State of Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi was also let go. Sharif had saved himself, for the time being.

  In fact, a senior government official who was at the meeting said there were two meetings. One on Monday, 3 October 2016, that did not have any military members present. And the other on Tuesday that was the NSC as a whole, including military officials. This official characterized the tone of the meeting as cordial, resulting in agreement to send the DG-ISI and the NSA to each provincial capital to convey instructions to proceed against all militant groups. This is disputed by others who maintain that in fact the DG-ISI was at the Monday meeting and that is where there was a sharp exchange between the chief minister of the Punjab and the DG-ISI about some militant groups that were being protected by the military. (Civil servants, even after retirement, are loath to take a position counter to the military, fearing retribution, especially as it relates to post-retirement appointments to head research institutes or ambassadorial appointments. Not without good reason.)

  According to the non-official account of the meeting reported by Dawn, the issue of Kashmir had arisen after the death of Burhan Wani, commander of the militant Kashmiri separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen, at the hands of Indian forces. The government had sent emissaries around the world to make Pakistan’s case on Kashmir and on behalf of the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people. The feedback from these visits reportedly was not as positive as expected. Even the Turks and Chinese had expressed reservations on Pakistan’s stance. This issue snowballed in the discussion. Another issue behind the scenes was the possibility of a further extension for the army chief. Nawaz Sharif was reported to be against that. Also under debate were the cases against persons suspected of militant or terrorist activities. The courts argued that cases were being presented without sufficient preparation and forensic evidence, making it difficult for courts to base judgments on the law of the land. Moreover, overcrowding of court cases made swift justice a rare commodity. In this impasse, whoever had greater potential coercive power triumphed.

  Sharif also had to contend with an endless political campaign to unseat him, more often than not led by the PTI’s populist leader Imran Khan. Khan’s resort to sit-ins or dharnas added a new wrinkle to Pakistani politics. Reports that the ISI head Lt. Gen. Zahir-ul-Islam was abetting the plans for putting pressure on the prime minister to keep him on the back foot added to the confusion of ‘who was doing what to whom’ but, ‘with what effect?’ The rumour mills also spoke of a former DG ISI assisting Khan in planning his protests in the heart of Islamabad. Sharif continued to run the country, focusing on his agenda for infrastructure and energy and large deals with China, Qatar and Turkey, among others. Security was left largely to the military, except when the military’s operational interests overlapped with Sharif ’s ideological base, especially in central and southern Punjab. As usual, he showed quiet patience and waited out his military opponents.

  Choosing a New Chief

  Kayani’s term was ending in 2013 and his corps commanders were getting more agitated by the lack of active support for their COIN efforts and for legal and other issues from both the government at the Centre and in the provinces. Sharif waited till near the end of the Kayani term to announce his successor rather than doing it in advance and preparing the way for a smooth transition in which the new chief would be involved in promotion and posting decisions that were pending
before the handover occurred.

  A number of strong contenders were available to Sharif to select the next chief. But his reluctance to reside his trust in ex-commandos and ex-ISI persons for the powerful post of COAS may have led him to prevaricate and then select Raheel Sharif, whom Kayani had virtually sidelined by removing him from an operational corps, the mainstay of Pakistan’s conventional defence against India’s land forces in the Ravi–Chenab corridor of the Punjab, and assigning him to the post of IG Training and Evaluation (IGT&E) at GHQ. Raheel Sharif had earlier been commandant at the PMA, before becoming commander of the Gujranwala Corps that Kayani had strengthened with the addition of the armoured division based in Kharian. Kayani had confided in me during one of our GHQ conversations that this was his conventional check against any Indian ‘cold start’ move into Pakistan, referring to the much-talked-about Indian plan to rapidly ingress Pakistani territory to capture key locations and make Pakistan sue for peace.

  Curiously, during that period, when Raheel Sharif was heading the Gujranwala Corps, Kayani did not appoint him to lead one of the forces in the army’s major war game where Foxland (read: India) invades Blueland (read: Pakistan) along the lines of Cold Start. He chose commander I Corps, Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan from Mangla, to lead Foxland, and Lt. Gen. Zubair Mahmood Hayat, a relatively new and hence junior corps commander and former Kayani aide, as commander of Blueland. As a brigadier, Hayat had served as Kayani’s private secretary. Blueland had the full complement of the current corps commanders, except I Corps that had a division commander substituting for its corps commander, Tariq Khan, who was commanding Foxland forces. The war game was to last five days. But it ended after two days, highlighting performance issues in executing the defence plans rather than a weakness of the doctrine. That provided much food for thought for the subsequent field exercises under the rubric of Azm-e-Nau when the new military doctrine was tested, apparently successfully, and thus validated.

  Gen. Sharif took over as IGT&E at a time when the Pakistan Army Doctrine was released via his new outfit. However, this doctrine had been prepared under Kayani and marked a subtle shift from a sole focus on India to looking at internal threats also. Sharif was not the author of this doctrine. But, earlier at the PMA in Kakul, he had transformed the curriculum to introduce anti-insurgency training as a key part of the new system. He showed me with great pride an indoor electronic firing range that he had imported from Germany, where he had attended a junior officers’ course and then served an attachment before returning to PMA as adjutant in October 1986. 17 Most of his cadets were proceeding to FATA for action immediately after being commissioned. He created a new physical course to prepare them for irregular warfare and also changed military exercises to use religious zealots as enemies in Tactical Exercises without Troops (TEWTs). 18

  Though he had not fought in FATA, unlike a number of his senior colleagues, Raheel Sharif was well prepared to act when it was needed. It helped also that he had name recognition. His late brother Maj. Shabbir Sharif had been awarded a posthumous Nishan-e-Haidar, the nation’s highest military honour, in the 1971 conflict with India, and his uncle, Maj. Raja Abdul-Aziz Bhatti, had also won the same award in the 1965 war with India. His father had served as a major in the Pakistan Army. 19 It helped that he was a Punjabi. Ethnic backgrounds mattered, especially to this prime minister. Nawaz Sharif had a built-in wariness of Pakhtuns. A Pakhtun president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, had fired him once. Another Pakhtun, Gen. Abdul Waheed, had forced him into resigning once. The only Pakhtun in the mix for the COAS slot was Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan, who had made a name for himself in FATA and was very popular with the troops. But he also spoke his mind. And no one in the prime minister’s Punjabi inner circle spoke out for him. Moreover, he was being portrayed as the ‘American candidate’ since he had served with CENTCOM and had good relations with his US counterparts at both CENTCOM and SOCOM. This was a horrible and unfair mischaracterization of a professional general who was a strong-minded nationalist. Prime Minister Sharif put his trust in his namesake general.

  Same Page, Different Books?

  But it seemed that history was to repeat itself. The prime minister and his coterie assumed they had the new army chief on their side in the crafting of a timetable for tackling the militancy inside the country. They miscalculated the reactions of the new chief. Unlike Kayani, who weighed things over a period of time before acting, the new chief acted with alacrity soon after taking over and responded with full force when militants in North Waziristan killed a number of soldiers in an ambush. This rejuvenated the spirits of the more than 40,000-strong force that had been posted in that agency of FATA in a wait-and-see mode. I had observed earlier during my own visit to the area that,

  In North Waziristan, the land of the Ahmedzai Wazir and the Daur tribes, and home also to the Haqqani group of the Afghan Taliban, the army adopted what a senior military officer derisively called a policy of sitzkrieg—meaning, sitting in camps without any aggressive actions. The army described its passive stance as ‘dominating space’. 20

  Junior officers that I spoke to, especially those commanding troops who had been killed by TTP insurgents, including those being given shelter by the Haqqani group, were resentful of the inaction against all Taliban (‘good’ or ‘bad’) in their territory.

  Nawaz Sharif had tried a peace dialogue with the militants before Kayani’s retirement in 2013. That effort fizzled out. Attacks on the military in FATA prompted the new chief to seek action with civilian support. Discussions began between the military and the government on a comprehensive move against the militants in FATA, starting with North Waziristan, which had been spared action under Kayani. Apparent agreement on such an operation had been reached when the prime minister suddenly announced in parliament in the new year a fresh effort to broker peace with the militants:

  Addressing a session of the National Assembly after a span of six months, Sharif said the government wanted to give peace another chance.

  The premier announced the constitution of a four-member team—comprising his Adviser on National Affairs Irfan Siddique, veteran journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, former ambassador and expert on Afghanistan affairs Rustam Shah Mohmand and former ISI official Maj. (Retd) Amir Shah—to holds talks with the militants.

  He said that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan would assist the committee.

  Sharif also called on the militants to observe a ceasefire in the televised speech. He said that he would personally supervise the performance of the committee, adding that he was sincerely trying to restore peace in the country and expressed his hope that the other side would reciprocate in a similar manner. 21

  A chill descended on civil–military relations after this surprise move.

  The so-called peace talks between Prime Minister Sharif ’s representatives and surrogates for the TTP broke down roughly a month later when the Taliban executed twenty-six Pakistani soldiers who had been taken captive in 2010 in retaliation for army killings in FATA. 22 The army immediately launched action against the militants, bringing in the air force to hit selected targets. The new army chief was not willing to talk things out nor did he fear the after effects of a counter-strike against the militants.

  In retaliation the TTP carried out an attack on Karachi airport’s Jinnah Terminal in June that year. The TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid called the so-called peace talks a ‘tool of war’ for the government. ‘“We carried out this attack on the Karachi airport and it is a message to the Pakistan government that we are still alive to react over the killings of innocent people in bomb attacks on their villages,” the TTP spokesman said.’ 23

  The tempo of the battle picked up after the Karachi attack, and a full-scale clearing operation Zarb-e-Azb (or ‘sharp and cutting strike’ and named after the Prophet Muhammad’s sword in two famous battles of early Islamic history) was launched on 15 June 2014.

  The two Sharifs were clearly not on the same page, or even if they were, they were obviously consulting diffe
rent books. But now the army was in the driving seat and, as many of its leaders were to say later about their efforts, they were determined to take the operations to ‘their logical conclusion’. The conclusion was often left undefined, though there were powerful hints that they would follow the evidence to the political sponsors of militancy and terror inside Pakistan, in all provinces. This proved to be mere rhetoric, as later events indicated till late in the Sharif tenure. The only logical exclusion appeared to be the removal of the Sharif family from Pakistani politics. Nothing was done to disarm the Punjabi militant groups, including those that operated against India. Zarb-e-Azb did manage to dislodge all militants from their bases and training grounds inside FATA, especially in the final TTP redoubt of North Waziristan. But it did not end the insurgency, as promised by the army chief. Nor could it, without ancillary civilian actions in Pakistan proper. And rumours persisted, fuelled by US allegations, that the Haqqani group and its leadership had been spirited out of North Waziristan first to Tank, in the settled areas bordering the FATA, and later to safe houses in or around Islamabad, while their operations moved to bases in Kurram Agency, closer to Kabul.

  Then occurred another of those seminal events in Pakistani history that sparked a national outrage and movement. The Taliban attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar on 16 December 2014—invading a soft target in the heart of the military cantonment and slaughtering children and their teachers in a brutal manner. They left 141 dead. Pakistan as a whole was shocked by the temerity and the wantonness of this attack. 24 Not only had the Taliban penetrated the military’s territory, they had targeted yet again and with horrible effect the children of the military officers and men that were waging war against them in the borderlands. 25