Can Pakistan and the present strategic thinking of the military establishment co-exist? A fearful thought it is, to be sure. And it now has come to the surface of the national consciousness, though an open discussion on this issue is yet to begin in earnest. There is little evidence that the military leaders are willing or even able to reflect on the price that this unfortunate country has paid for their policies and their performance.
An unprecedented criticism of the military and its intelligence agencies has obviously been prompted by the events of May. First, there was the Abbottabad operation that revealed that Osama bin Laden was hiding for five years in a garrison town. Then, the terrorist attack on the navy’s Mehran base in Karachi provided a sharper edge to questions that the unchecked American attack on Osama’s hideout had raised.
Finally, the death of investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad, after he was kidnapped from Islamabad and severely tortured, has put the all-powerful and dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the dock, in spite of an unusual refutation of the charge on behalf of the agency. In fact, the Saleem Shahzad affair has enlarged the area of concern to include the whole gamut of law and order and security in the country.
It is against this background that the nation has been assailed by the soul-destroying evidence of how an unarmed young man was cold-bloodedly murdered by a team of Rangers in a public place in Karachi. Indeed, it is this killing, in the wake of all the other injuries we have suffered that has pushed the people to the edge of a nervous breakdown. I see it as a component of the overall drift that relates to our security paradigm and to the role of the military in Pakistan’s national affairs.
One can understand why there were references to the loss of East Pakistan, the situation in Balochistan, the waywardness of the military and paramilitary forces in the outrage that was expressed over the Karachi killing in the National Assembly and in television talk shows. It was heartbreaking to see Javed Hashmi in tears on live television.
We know that the Rangers would never have conceded the truth of how it happened if the television footage were not available. The videographer who bravely shot the scene deserves high honour, though he is said to have gone underground after receiving death threats. It seemed that the paramilitary personnel were playing a part they had already rehearsed.
Of course, it was first reported and confirmed by a Rangers spokesman that the young man was a dacoit and was shot when he fired on the Rangers. They held on to their version for some hours, until the clip began to be shown on almost all the news channels. Some glimpse of the dehumanising show of barbarity were mercifully blurred but occasionally, you saw it all and it will stay in your mind as a reminder of what men in uniform are capable of doing when they assume absolute power and act with impunity.
Incidentally, the young man was ‘executed’ by the Rangers in Karachi’s Clifton area, not far from the fortified Bilawal House, late in the afternoon of Wednesday. It was on Thursday that General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani presided over a Corps Commanders Conference held in the GHQ in Rawalpindi. They must have talked about the Karachi killing because it was all over the media. But did they discuss the significance of that killing in the context of what is happening to Pakistan, the country they have to defend?
This brings me back to what I have posed at the outset. Do our military leaders – and the army is forever in the forefront – understand the consequences of their national security perceptions and their Zia-inspired patronage of religious militancy? Can they also see how their own institution has evolved in this process? I often wonder if our corps commanders read history and deliberate on current affairs.
Be that as it may, a lengthy press release issued by the ISPR has sought to respond to the recent surge in criticism of the military and has expectedly said that efforts to create divisions between institutions were not in the national interest. They do want to be the arbiters of what is national interest. This press release has touched upon many different issues, such as relations with the United States, disbursement of the US aid, fight against terrorism, and a resolve to support the democratic system. But I will refer only to the resentment that is expressed over criticism of the military in the public sphere.
We are told that the commanders were given a comprehensive briefing on internal security, terrorism, role of the media, society and military-level relationship with the US. Yes, they talked about the role of the media and society. The commanders noted that “some quarters, because of their perceptual biases, were trying to run down the armed forces and army in particular”.
Ah, perceptual biases? Who has actually held on to such biases in defiance of a reality that is manifesting itself with disaster consequences on the ground? Where and who, for instance, is the enemy? It was Oscar Wilde who had observed that a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. It would be the same for a nation. Unfortunately, our ruling ideas, shaped largely in the military’s mind, have led us astray in our choice of enemies. What we have reaped is this toxic nexus between jihadists and the rogue elements in the armed forces.
Apparently, our armed forces do not simply possess the required intellectual and educational resources to be able to contemplate the crisis of Pakistan and to identify what they need to do in this critical situation. The ISPR statement contains a veiled warning against “those quarters ….. with perceptual biases” that are criticising the army. But this criticism is no longer restricted to some liberal commentators. Leading the attack, so to say, are the leaders of PML-Nawaz, a major political party with its roots in the Punjab. So, is a paradigm shift possible?
To conclude, here are two sentences from Anatol Lieven’s book: “Pakistan: A Hard Country”, a very recent publication that portrays an appreciation of our resilience as a country. Read this: “The Pakistani military is in some ways an admirable institution, but it suffers from one tragic feature which has been with it from the beginning, which has defined its whole character and world view, which has done terrible damage to Pakistan and which could in some circumstances destroy Pakistan and its armed forces altogether. This is the military’s obsession with India in general and Kashmir in particular”.
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