Show and Tell Time!
The author is enunciating the Pakistani Leaderships’ Perfidious Behaviour which has been known to all and sundry here on the BR-F for maybe Three Decades - if not more. As such Posting in Full :
Nagging distractions
With a comfortable majority, Nawaz Sharif still faces a daunting task to keep the military and civilian bureaucracy at bay
The relations between the Army and Nawaz Sharif’s earlier administration were at its lowest around September 1999. Then COAS Gen. Pervez Musharraf flatly denied “any differences with the government”, following the US warning against any “unconstitutional move” to remove the elected government in Pakistan. Then Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, based on intelligence reports, accused the Taliban government in Afghanistan of facilitating the trained and armed sectarian groups in Pakistan. The Pakistan Foreign Office, speaking for the Taliban, flatly denied the assertions. Interestingly, then Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz had no prior knowledge of the Foreign Office spokesperson’s denial (Dawn September 23 to October 9, various dates).
While the COAS was denying any possibility of Kargil investigation, the prime minister called his Indian counterpart to improve relations. In Washington DC, when asked how long in her view the Nawaz Sharif government would continue, “Before December they will go” was Benazir Bhutto’s response. She welcomed the coup on October 12, 1999 within hours of its success.
The 2013 election results have brought Nawaz Sharif back to the PM’s House. Many analysts have been counseling and cautioning Nawaz Sharif to avoid déjà vu all over again. A cursory reading of the conditions in 1999 makes many to believe that the differences in 1999 were over the foreign or the defense policy.
This hypothesis gained coinage as the Kargil incidence happened right when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was making an all-out effort to improve relations with India. While the Indian prime minister was enthusiastically welcomed in Lahore, the COAS refrained from showing up. The Kargil incidence, soon after the Indian prime minister’s visit, destroyed any goodwill generated during and after his visit. Nawaz Sharif was visibly annoyed when he had to rush to Washington DC to salvage a rapidly worsening military and foreign policy disaster on the mountains in Kashmir.
The Kargil incidence, just like the prior armed or political conflicts with India, reflected the internal political dilemmas in Pakistan. The stark reality is that whenever Pakistan is in deep internal economic or political crisis, either the relations with India take a turn for the worst, or Pakistan finds itself in a war or war-like state.
In 1965, after the coerced election victory, President Ayub found himself in a perilous political crisis and the whiff of coup grew against him. The escalation of the conflict in Kashmir was a part of the strategy to regain the lost political ground. However, that did not save him for long. Similarly, the war in 1971 was essential to cover up a momentous political disaster in East Pakistan.
The army coups in Pakistan tend to develop around some contrived calamity. Gen. Ayub took over in 1958 after Khan Qayoom started a march to destroy the scheduled elections. The 1977 coup of Gen. Zia followed a deliberately designed political crisis after the elections. The Kargil incidence was part of the series of false dilemmas that crop up in Pakistan at various points to create the environs for a change at the central government.
The annoyance of the prime minister over Kargil was enough to develop a consensus for the coup within the GHQ. That conflict, not in any way, shape, or form, confers the problems were over the foreign or defense policies. The sharp differences were already there as was evident from the forced resignation of Gen. Karamat a year before the Kargil incident.
The Kargil incidence was the public face of developing consensus for the coup within the officers and had nothing to do with differences over foreign or defense policies. Historically, all Pakistani political parties and the GHQ agree over the vital foreign and defense policy goals. Often even the priorities are identical too.
Kargil strengthened the view that relations with India are a separating line. However, looking at the history, all the army ruled governments worked to improve relations with India. It is an erroneous assumption that the usually sour relations between the civilian governments and the GHQ are over these two policies. The abstract fear of India did influence the army before the 80s. Presently, the manipulation of the public opinion has ensured that the Army will maintain its pivotal position in the Pakistani politics, even after extensive relations with India are established.
Disconnect between the civilian governments and the Army brass is primarily on the style of governance. The army, over the last several decades, has developed a sense of entitlements and the Generals find it difficult to stay away from the daily operations of civilian administration by the civilian representative. The elected governments often reach the PM’s House after several years of bitter political struggle. They have to appease their followers, assembly members, and make deals with the other power brokers. While the leaders attempt to maintain their political base, the nagging criticism of the state functioning over trivial issues from both the military and the civilian bureaucracy linger.
The hammering and the constant nagging of the outgoing People’s Party government over the internal issues from the military bureaucracy turned it into an ineffective government. President Zardari and his prime ministers had given up all pretenses of control of the foreign and defense policy very early on in their administration. The attempt to recover some ground through the Kerry-Lugar Bill designed with the help of former ambassador to the US, Hussein Haqqani, also backfired on the PPP government.
The new administration of Nawaz Sharif will again face the similar issues. Mr Sharif, though with a comfortable majority, still faces a daunting task to keep the military and civilian bureaucracy at bay. The irritable army-civilian relations will continue. The international support that he already enjoys is wider than the PPP administration ever had a chance to develop. That gives him an edge and many eyes would be on Sharif’s admin on how it copes with the meddling and the micro management of Islamabad from the offices in Rawalpindi.
Cheers
Most drone strikes happen in the tribal areas; if it’s business as usual there until U.S. troops are out of Afghanistan, why even announce the new policy now? Save it for the big Afghan withdrawal declaration next year, assuming that ever happens.
Time it seems for the descendants of central Asian horsemen to start galloping on horses across those wide open grasslands while drinking orange juice made from oranges bought in baskets of a hundred in order to keep cool (
You must be a kaffir yindoo baniya who only lends money at positive rates of interest.