A Change in the Establishment’s Attitude?
By Misbah U. Azam, PhD
Fremont, CA
It was a heartening piece of news that the military leadership had decided to brief the parliament. It was also no less gratifying that General Pasha offered his resignation -- although it would have been more befitting and a more powerful message if he had announced his resignation instead of volunteering to offer it.
It may be just too early to conclude that the military has decided to place itself under civilian control and pull back from the policies which it had been following for decades. Please make no mistake that the exercise in the parliament was not initiated by the parliament but by the establishment itself and it would perhaps be right to infer that it could well be a public relations exercise.
Also, Pakistani experienced after the 1971 debacle and Kargil defeat, a similar -- if not precise -- submission by the establishment to political forces. Only time would tell to what degree the establishment would relinquish its authority. The people of Pakistan would like to know if our security establishment has decided to:
1) Stop engineering the political system.
2) Allow the parliament to debate its budget in the parliament.
3) Cease their intervention in the foreign policy domain, including Pakistan’s relations with the US, Afghanistan and India.
4) Pull itself away from the “strategic depth” doctrine and abandon the dream of indirectly ruling Afghanistan.
5) Withdrawing its support to strategic allies, the “Good Taliban”.
General Pasha complained that after 9/11 and 26/11, neither the US nor the Indian media began criticizing their military. However, what he forgot to mention was the irrefutable fact that neither in the US nor in India, the military took over power from civilian setups and ruled the country for almost half of its history. Their agencies were never found engineering the political systems and creating parties like Convention League, Jonejo League, IJI and PML (Q). Their budget is discussed in their parliament without undue pressure from the establishment. Their agencies are fully accountable to their judiciary.
The people of Pakistan, US and the international community need to know why and how Osama was hiding in the military cantonment without any guards and ammunition. Why did the agencies have no clue whatsoever about his presence?
People must be very cautiously optimistic about this exercise in the parliament because very soon things could change - not during the tenure of the current leadership but when the next leadership takes charge.
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