Civilian Supremacy over Military: A Process, Not a Transaction
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
Florida
Wherever and whenever nation-states make the transition towards a democratic form of government, the question about civilian supremacy over the military is bound to come up. In stable Western democracies, such as the US and Japan, both convention and the constitution provide well-established safeguards against the military’s encroachment on the civilian power to oversee and control it. But in budding democracies, and especially countries like Pakistan that go through praetorian autocracy and democracy in a cyclical fashion, the issue of civil-military balance of power remains highly complex, unresolved and pernicious.
It was this struggle for power that Samuel Adams — one of the US’s founding fathers — had warned against, in a letter to James Warren: “A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands...Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye.”
Standing armies have nonetheless become a norm and the citizens’ militias, looked upon favorably by Adams and the legendary Baloch leader Sher Muhammad Marri, as a bulwark against martial law, have survived just in theory. Since the Portuguese Carnation revolution of 1974, ironically led by the military, a series of new democratic dispensations — the so-called third wave democracies — have continued to grapple with the issue of consolidating civilian control over the military, as part of the overall cementing of democratic change. The quest for fledgling democracies has been not only to oust the military from power but also to prevent it from staging another outright coup d’état as well as an indirect intervention in or competition with civilian power.
In the political scenario evolving in Pakistan after the US took out Osama bin Laden, the security establishment has found its chokehold on power to be in mortal danger. The façade of the military’s organization and invincibility, nay infallibility, has been lifted, tilting the balance of power against it internationally, but more importantly, domestically. It is this exposed domestic flank that is really worrisome for the establishment, as a potential civilian compact could emerge and dislodge it from the direct and indirect role of control over the state that it is accustomed to exercising. The Latin American and Southeast Asian models of the juntas defanged and sent packing by the united political elite are not completely lost on the Pakistani deep state.
It is in this context that a chorus of voices is now being heard about civilian supremacy. A careful reading of the ISPR statements and speeches made by General Ashfaq Kayani right up to May 2, 2011 gives no impression at all that they were in any mood to take the civilians onboard on national security and foreign policy matters. So is it out of sheer altruism that the junta purportedly is conceding to civilian authority or is there more to it than meets the eye? Again, a careful look at the post-Abbottabad events and close scrutiny of the security establishment’s statements indicates that while, prima facie, the right noises are being made about accepting civilian supremacy, the gimmick is really designed to gain a reprieve only to regroup and reassert.
The voices coming directly from the military itself, like the recent ISI and ISPR communiqués, were reflective of anger, denial and an attempt to drive a wedge between not just civilian political leaders but the populace at large. Pointing fingers at the media critics of the military’s hegemony and Mian Nawaz Sharif is not an indication of an institution ready and willing to change. And the not-so-veiled threats to the media about consequences and legal repercussions, especially through the ‘unknown soldier’s’ press release after Syed Saleem Shahzad’s murder, were downright pathetic. Equally pitiful are the media musings by retired military officers in defense of their former institution.
In a recent op-ed piece for an English-language contemporary, General (retd) Jehangir Karamat, who interestingly introduces himself as “a former Pakistan Army Chief who resigned during the second Nawaz Sharif government”, asserts that the army has indeed accepted civilian supremacy. He makes a lengthy case for a paradigm shift ostensibly taking place within the army. The general, however, continues to share his institution’s denial about their disastrous policies and the blowback that is ravaging Pakistan and Afghanistan. In an NPR interview with Steve Inskeep, aired a couple of days before his article was published, the general was responding to a question whether a number of retired officers have gone on to careers as militants. He said, “I am saying retired members, once they are retired, go back to their villages and they are living there. Anybody can approach them. You have a lot of people. This is an army, which has been in existence for 60 years. You have got highly trained people who eventually retire and go back on civilian streets, and then they are free to do whatever they like.”
That simple, eh? If decades of service have had no effect on these soldiers then something is fundamentally wrong with whatever training the military imparted to them. But the reality remains that it is years of on-the-job indoctrination against the Indo-Zionist (the US being a recent addition to the list) enemy, and not a few weeks back in the village, that produces zealots. This lack of insight is not unique to General Karamat. Two weeks ago, Brigadier (retd) Shaukat Qadir wrote a newspaper article in praise and defense of the Haqqani terrorist network and subsequently went on to declare the US as the “world’s greatest terrorist” on a television show.
In post-bin Laden Pakistan, a unique prospect exists for the civilian leadership to neutralize the establishment and literally reverse the power equation. The socio-political changes that weaken the grip of military regimes have already been set in motion and the international milieu is also conducive to a realignment of the power structures in Pakistan. Such a constellation of events does not happen often and the agents of the status quo are hard at work to quickly close this small window of opportunity.
For the civilian leaders to act as agents of change, they have to look beyond the term of the present assemblies and the next elections. The PPP and ANP are six weeks too late in joining hands with Nawaz Sharif and Asma Jahangir. The security establishment has yielded a transactional and utilitarian subservience to civilian control; it is imperative that the civilian leadership turns this into a process and takes the brass up on its offer.
( The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com)
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