*Long Post*
There have been reports for the last few days that Rangers are being replaced by the Regulars at many places. So, this news report must be true.
Nothing surprising either. It has always been the PA that was driving Pakistan's India policy, more so after Nawaz conceded space to Gen. Raheel.
The first was the 2014 Long March of Imran Khan which the Nawaz Govt asked Gen. Raheel to stop. Then, in the wake of the Army Public School carnage, the Army acquired judicial powers in terrorism cases without any oversight from even the Supreme Court. The Army then took over Karachi. In the meanwhile, Ufa agreement between Modi & Nawaz in July 2015 was twisted by the PA to create not only a bad name for Nawaz but also take over completely the India-centric foreign policy engagement of Pakistan. Nawaz feared that appointing a Foreign Minister would be more harmful as the PA could steamroll him/her as we have seen earlier with all of them (recent memories of Birkin Babe Hina Rabbani Khar or Shah mehmood Qureshi before her etc. The only exception was Z.A.Bhutto when he was the FM in Ayub Khan's ministry) and kept the portfolio to himself with Sartaj Aziz as just an advisor. But, that strategy didn't help him. Look at the operative part of Ufa statement below (from the full text of the Joint Statement) and see how the PA twisted it to rouse anger in Pakistan:
‘They agreed that India and Pakistan have a collective responsibility to ensure peace and promote development. To do so, they are prepared to discuss all outstanding issues.
Both leaders condemned terrorism in all its forms and agreed to cooperate with each other to eliminate this menace from South Asia.
They also agreed on the following steps to be taken by the two sides:
A meeting in New Delhi between the two NSAs to discuss all issues connected to terrorism.’
The PA instigated Diffa-e-Pakistan Council and there were massive demonstrations. This PA intervention led to Pakistan toughening its stand. The blistering press meet by Ms. Sushma Swaraj and her insistence on Sartaj Aziz not meeting the Huriiyat were cited by Pakistan to extricate itself from having to meet the Indian NSA Ajit Doval and face the music on terrorism. The Nawaz government also satisfied the PA in the process. This fiasco led to the veteran wily fox Sartaj Aziz who also functioned as NSA being removed from that post and Lt. Gen Janjua appointed by the PA in his place. Even in a Pakistan where the PA rules, this was unique because all NSAs were choices of the PM (even though they happened to be military men), but here Janjua was appointed by the PA forcefully. His office was in the PM's Secretariat unlike those of the other NSAs before located in the Pakistani Foreign Office.
Then, in early 2016, the PanamaGate scandal broke and Gen. Sharif who had dismissed some Frontier Corps Generals & other officers for corruption demanded Nawaz Sharif to act similarly, implying that he himself must resign as well. There is also the handing over of the CPEC project to the PA, a demand supported by China as well amid strong opposition from Nawaz. In between all these, the ISPR launched a massive pro-Raheel campaign. Banners & billboards sprouted everywhere in Pakistan asking Gen. Raheel to takeover the country. He is called a "soldier's soldier" and his proud family lineage (his dead brother got the highest military award) are recounted frequently. He is today a 'larger than life' persona in Pakistan. As he nears retirement, there are ISI-sponsored banners asking him to start a political party!
Janjua & Doval had a few secret meetings as the PA for the very first time was directly involved in engaging with GoI, after Musharraf's Presidency. A surprise visit by Modi to Lahore was also made possible as a result. But, PA could not keep away from its penchant to keep doing something against India all the time. Soon, it was the terror attack on the strategic Pathankot Air Force Base in early January, 2016. The drama of joint investigation by Pakistan to visit PAFB was followed by Pakistan going back in allowing a reciprocal Indian investigation team visit to Pakistan. Things really started to go bad after this duplicity. Soon, PA began instigating Kashmiri youth for months of terror, arson and violence to be followed by the Uri attack in mid-September.
In the meanwhile, the relationship between Nawaz & Raheel were going from bad to worse. The PA and its paramilitary Rangers had successfully used NAP since May 2015 to cleanse Karachi of largely MQM and some PPP elements along with AQIS, LeJ & TTP. In March 2016, they announced that they would do so to Lahore too after the Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park attack on Easter-celebrating Christians, a statement that was clearly disliked by the Shariff brothers as the Army wanted to take over their pocket-borough. Now, we can probably understand why PML-N revealed the minutes of the meeting, after the Indian surgical strike, where Shahbaz Sharif blasted the ISI for interfering in the handling of the terrorists by the ISI.
The surgical strikes by the IA after the Uri attack altered the ground situation because that action by GoI came as a thunderbolt from the blue and caught the PA and its terrorist allies unawares. They cannot accept that such a strike has happened for H&D reasons, yet they have to respond because 'no response' will also be an H&D issue. Gen. Raheel's high-flying career is about end with a blot and he would do everything to redeem it. The PA action has to be open in order to catch the imagination of the Pakistani people. It cannot be simply a Pakistani BAT doing some mischief.
As for ceasefire agreement violations, many mistakenly believe that they started just recently. We forget that the violations of the 2003 CFA began soon after the Modi government assumed power in 2014. There is a historical reason for that. Since January 2014, the relation between Gen. Raheel Sharif (whom Nawaz Sharif 'carefully' chose as the replacement for Kayani, superseding two others. All his 'carefully' chosen appointees deserted him as Gen Waheed Kakkar did in the 90s and later Gen. Musharraf in 1999. Both Kakkar & Musharraf also superseded a few seniors to be handpicked by Nawaz) and Nawaz Sharif had begun to deteriorate even more. The distrust between a Pakistani COAS and his PM always shows up as incidents on our borders. The harmonious relationship between the two would also have the same effect!
There were three particular incidents. One was the 'peace negotiations' that Nawaz Sharif started with the state-attacking TTP in early (January timeframe) of 2014. To be fair to Nawaaz, his election manifesto for the 2013 elections had said that the PML-N was for 'peace talks' with the TTP and so it was not surprising. This was in spite of a majority of elected PML-N parliamentarians voting for a military action. This sudden U-turn might have angered the PA. My guess is that the PA was against this as the ISI was trying to split the TTP movement after Fazlullah had taken over following Hakeemullah Mehsud's death as it saw an opportunity there, having failed militarily in defeating them since 2007. We must remember that Nawz's brother and Punjab CM, Shahbaz, had earlier asked the Punjabi Taliban not to attack Punjab because his government was in agreement with their objective after all! Even as early as c. 2010, Shahbaz had tried to negotiate with Al Qaeda & TTP as the letters found in OBL's Abbottabad compound proved. As a result, the TTP's attack in the Punjab was limited to attacking Christians, Shi'as and Ahmedis, but *NOT* the State. In the peace talks, TTP was asking for stoppage of drone attacks, release of all its jailed terrorists, the withdrawal of PA from FATA and handing over FATA to TTP for self-rule, all unacceptable to the PA though some might have been agreeable to Nawaz. Eventually, after six months, the talks failed and Zerb-e-Azb was launched. Anyway, TTP had already begun to split by the May, 2014 timeframe. An angered TTP mounted the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar killing students & teachers forcing the PA to intensify its actions against it. The Nawaz government initiated politically the National Action Plan (NAP) for taking strong action against the 'bad Taliban', a bill that conceded even more space to the PA including judicial powers in all terrorism-related matters. Tellingly, the terrorist and terrorist-supporting groups such as Imran Khan's PTI, Jamaat-e-Islami, JUI-F abstained from voting for the NAP bill in the National Assembly as they were opposed to several provisions.
The second incident to anger the PA was the Hamid Mir assassination attempt in April 2014 when it was openly suggested that 'the Angels' were behind the attack. His brother, another noted journalist, Amir Mir directly blamed the ISI for this assassination attempt even as Hamid Mir lay critically wounded in a Karachi hospital, and this telecast on GEO TV so angered the ISI so much that it asked PEMRA to shut down the GEO TV channels. The PEMRA promptly shut down the channel for 15 days along with a fine of USD 100,000 even as GEO sued the ISI in a court of law. Hamid Mir had earlier claimed that his expose of the missing Balochistanis (abducted and killed by the ISI) had angered the ISI Chief. The ISI had another reason to be angry with him too, though Hamid Mir did not reveal that. It is largely claimed that it was his accusation of the two ISI agents Sq. Ldr Khalid Khwaja and Col. Imam of being American agents that led to their killing by the Taliban in c. 2010. In any case, Nawaz Sharif kept away from this issue and the ISI saw this as tacit encouragement for the GEO group and Hamid Mir.
Then there was the minor issue of sorting out a former COAS's predicament. Gen. Raheel hit out at Nawaz Sharif's handling of Gen. Musharraf saying that "the Army preserves its own dignity and institutional pride at all costs" while addressing SSG at Tarbela. Gen. Raheel forced Nawaz to let Musharraf go.
The third was the decision of Nawaz Sharif to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Modi in May 2014. The PA clearly disliked his attendance. The distrust among the PA generals is that Nawaz may concede space especially in trade and terrorism. It took him a while to confirm his attendance at the swearing-in ceremony, but he came. The ISI displayed its anger by attacking the Herat consulate through its LTTE & Haqqani proxies.
So, the CFA violations which started after Modi's taking over power in May 2014, assumed larger proportions by the last quarter of 2014. Here is where the duplicity of the PA came out clearly. On the one hand, it attacked India and on the other requested a message to be conveyed to GoI through US & China that since it was engaged in rooting out terrorists in the north, it wanted to have a peaceful border in the east. It wanted to paint India as an aggressor, it wanted to use the excuse of Z-e-A to harass India and send in terrorists as it was sure that the international community (whatever that means) would believe its words of India utilizing the Zerb-e-Azb situation to attack from the east especially when it had launched a major operation that the Western nations have been demanding for a long time. The CFA violations began to occur in the more peaceful IB sector. Unfortunately for PA, this Indian government had allowed a free hand for the BSF & IA to retaliate as they saw it fit and disproportionately too. Now, it has become another H&D issue for the PA. Fortunately for it, the Z-e-A has practically wound down and it can commit more soldiers here. That is what is happening.
