Upping the Ante
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

Eight years ago, when he deposed a democratically elected government in order to bring the “essence of true democracy” to the country, General Pervez Musharraf assured the distraught citizens of Pakistan that they could trust the armed forces to do the right thing since “they had never let the country down.”
Last month, the general suspended the supreme law of the land, took away the civil rights of Pakistanis, and arrested all the judges who opposed his re-election in order to bring the “essence of true democracy.”  History was once again repeating itself.  
Both times the general quoted Abraham Lincoln and said that there were times when one had to amputate a limb in order to save a life.  What was lost on him was the possibility that if one kept on amputating limbs, at some point there would be no life left to save.  
What came next was beyond parallel in Pakistani history.  On more than one occasion the general had said that the uniform was his second skin.  The last thing one expected him to do was to shed that during the dire state of an emergency. 
But a message had come from up high that the uniform had to go.  A few years back, at the United Nations, he had been asked by those irresponsible journalists that track him wherever he goes whether he had any plans to shed his uniform.  When this question was asked, Musharraf had just come from a meeting with President Bush and so the question evoked a Pavlovian response.  The general replied that Bush had not discussed the issue of the uniform with him.    
But times had changed.  The curse of March 9th hung over him.  It would only be removed by complying with the new Bush directive.  And so it was that the world witnessed the general abruptly shedding his uniform, three years after he had made his first commitment.  But this would be no ordinary retirement.
The general made sure that his retirement would be observed with unprecedented pageantry. The pomp and splendor during the ceremony was thick in sentiment, its emotional tenor on a par with that engendered by the abdication of a beloved monarch. 
Even the general fell under his own spell.  During his farewell speech, his voice choked and tears welled up.  The theatrics were stage-managed.  The outgoing general was choreographing several messages to the army, to the nation and to the world at large.
To the troops and to the generals, he was saying that he was indeed “fortunate to have commanded the best army in the world.”  To the troops gathered to witness the retirement of General Musharraf, this was a necessary palliative.  Their ego is tender and has to be attended to with half-truths or it may go into a nose dive.
But to any serious student of history, Musharraf’s statement was an affront.  The Pakistani army’s war-fighting abilities have been anything but impressive.  In its 60-year history, it has failed to win a single war.  Of course, it had always found excuses for its less than stellar performance. 
 Perhaps the worst excuse is the one General Yahya Khan proffered to the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, that the army’s defeat in the 1971 war due to “the treachery of the Indians.”  That would be akin to Napoleon blaming his defeat at Waterloo on the treachery of the Germans (who arrived at the last minute to help out the British under the command of the Duke of Wellington).
Musharraf waxed eloquent on how much he loved the army.  He said that the army was his passion and would remain so, even though he would soon be out of uniform.  Translation: his heart was in the army and would always stay in uniform.  There was one simple reason for resorting to such gushy emotions.  He was calling on the soldiers to reciprocate his sentiments and stay loyal to him. 
Then came the clincher: “This army is an integrating force, the savior of Pakistan.  Without it, the entity of Pakistan cannot exist.  People who raise fingers at the army are lost people.”  This upped the ante. 
Musharraf’s blunt talk was by far the clearest statement of the army’s misguided doctrine of national security.  This was first articulated by Field Marshal Ayub and enhanced by Generals Yahya and Zia.  In the doctrine, Pakistan faces an existential threat that can only be dealt with by the army. 
Until the events of 9/11, that threat was viewed as largely from India.  To offset these threats, wars were fought and lost over Kashmir.  Secondarily, the threat was viewed as coming from Afghanistan.  Initially, this was attributed to a desire of the Afghans to create a state of Pakhtoonistan that straddled the Durand Line. 
Later, the threat was transformed into a Soviet desire to seek warm water ports on the Arabian Sea.  The army trained the mujahideen to defeat the Soviets and claims to have defeated them.  But it was nothing but a Pyrrhic victory.  
After the Soviets departed, the mujahideen squabbled until the Taliban seized Kabul.  The army befriended them, hoping to prevent any resurgence of the Pakhtoonistan problem and hoping to unleash them against Indian forces in Kashmir.  The plan backfired when the heavily-armed and trained fighters decided to take the law into their own hands and turn on their master.        
As Kashmir quietened down in the wake of 9/11, the threat from India receded and the internal threat rose to the forefront.  The army’s threat matrix was now expanded to include that posed by these fighters who had metastasized into a huge monster on steroids.      
The problem with the army’s doctrine is that it reduces national security to a single dimension when it is inherently a multi-dimensional problem requiring social, political, economic and diplomatic solutions, not just a military one.
It is no surprise that the approach has failed over and over again.  Under Musharraf, the army has lost control of the Frontier and Balochistan to extremist ethnic and religious groups.  These groups continue to recruit converts and face off thousands of army troops.  Hundreds of army troops have been killed and, more alarmingly, several hundred have surrendered without a fight.      
If the army doctrine is allowed to continue, it guarantees that Pakistan’s national security will be doomed.  General Musharraf had eight years in which to establish civilian supremacy over the military.  It is a tragedy that even as he retired from the military, he called instead for the reverse.  As a civilian, he may regret having made such a call. 

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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