OF A VACILLATING PAKISTANI GENERAL AND OPERATION ZARB-E-AZAB – ANALYSIS

By Mahendra Ved

Posterity may record this as the best and the worst of times for the Pakistan Army. Not wielding absolute power like it has done several times before, the army has under orders from the civilian leadership launched one its fiercest operations – not against a neighbour – but its own people in the restive North Waziristan Agency (NWA).

This is also the time when one of its chiefs and a former president of the country, Pervez Musharraf, is imprisoned and being tried for serious charges, including treason. This is unprecedented.

The army’s widely perceived efforts to get Musharraf out of jail and out of the country on some pretext have failed so far.

And this is also the time when another former chief, Ashfaque Pervez Kayani, is being attacked by a fellow senior retired military man for failing to launch a drive in these areas, for allowing the situation to go out of hand and causing serious security damage to the country. This too is unprecedented.

Taking Musharraf first; He has been in and out of jail since he returned home from a four-year self-imposed exile in March last year to participate in the general election, hoping to ‘save’ Pakistan. He was disqualified from contesting, his farmhouse declared a sub-jail (placed under house arrest) and he has been made to appear in trial courts despite explosions taking place more than once on the route between his home/jail and the court.

Deals brokered to get Musharraf out, purportedly by the Saudi royal family – that had earlier done the same to get Nawaz Sharif out of Pakistan after Musharraf had deposed him – have not worked. Some reports say that he has refused to leave to be with his ill mother in Dubai, while others have at different times said that the Sharif government has refused to take him off the “Exit List” that prevents select people from leaving the country.

The military has not liked this one bit. Questions have been asked why his hand-picked successor Kayani did not exert pressure either on then president Asif Ali Zardari’s regime or the Nawaz Sharif government to save Musharraf from the prospect of prolonged imprisonment, trial and a possible death sentence. There is no conclusive word on this.

The military, speaking vocally through ex-servicemen’s bodies, has been so outraged at the thought of an ex-chief being tried for treason by the civilians that it has acted to thwart the proceedings every step of the way, especially since the Special Court summoned Musharraf to face indictment.

There is a view that the issue has been complicated by Musharraf’s aggressive defence by his lawyers who have sought to bring in a large number of officers, both military and civilian, as ‘abettors’ of the acts like dismissal and jailing of judges and declaration of Emergency that have been termed as violation of the constitution and hence treason.

A swift indictment could have paved the way for bail and freedom. But the drama at the trial court, combined with concocted medical and security reports and Musharraf’s hospitalization have rebounded on the military. Musharraf’s defence team has done its best to drum up media headlines in the likely hope that it would build further pressure on the government. That has not happened.

It is not clear if, and how, the Nawaz Sharif government wants to push ahead with Musharraf’s trial. This has affected the civil-military relationship that has never been clear and comfortable. The government-military-judiciary stalemate has not changed even with the military operations underway in NWA.

Kayani was a powerful army chief for six years. He was given a three year extension by the Zardari regime. The military under him did not attempt to take power, something speculated on numerous occasions. This was despite grave circumstances and political attacks on the military, like when Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was found to have been located and killed by the United States in the garrison town where he was sheltered.

Kayani did not take power even after the “Memo Gate” incident when Zardari was accused of approaching the Americans to save his seat in the event of the army chief staging a coup.

All through this period, the militants were getting stronger across Pakistan, especially in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) under the umbrella of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Foreign militants, among them Arabs of various nationalities and Uzbeks from Central Asia, had taken shelter (right from the Musharraf era). There were clear signs that under the US pressure and for its own domestic compulsions, the Pakistan military would launch an offensive. Everyone, including the militants, was expecting a military operation in North Waziristan in 2010-11. But that did not happen.

Now, retired Major General Athar Abbas, a former spokesperson for the Pakistan Army, says that as army chief Kayani baulked at launching a military operation in 2010 for fear of a backlash from the religious right. The indecision, he told BBC in a recent interview, has caused untold losses.

This assessment has turned out to be correct. Pakistan has suffered more than 50,000 civilian causalities owing to this. Although not everything happened in, and because of rising militancy, in North Waziristan, but it was the main source. Over 5,000 soldiers were killed and 10,000 more lost their limbs.

Abbas has opened up a new chapter, a new controversy that was simmering for long, but was overtaken by events. None of this is good news for the military that has finally, after the June 8 terror attack on Jinnah International Airport at Karachi, launched Zarb-e-Azb, the military offensive.

According to Abbas, Kayani did not act despite the formation commanders under him generally agreeing upon the necessity of urgent action in order to control the spread of militancy and terrorism. In interviews to BBC and then to Dawn, he has listed the reasons that led Kayani to stay his hand.

First, Kayani feared that such an operation would propel the militant groups and tribes allied to the military for long (ostensibly funded and armed) to turn against the army and join the militants. Second, he worried about how to target the foreign militant-assets belonging to the Haqqani network which the Pakistan Army has all along considered “strategic assets” to be used against India in Jammu and Kashmir and against Afghanistan.

As could be foreseen, and has happened, he feared a huge number of people being displaced from the battle zone. He had doubts about the reliability and efficacy of the civilian intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Coping with the expected terrorist backlash in the rest of the country was another factor that held him back.

There was a clear lack of a national consensus on a military response to militancy – which eludes Pakistan even today. Kayani was afraid about a militant reaction from the religious right wing.

Finally, according to Abbas, Kayani could not ignore the probability of being personally targeted by the militants, like Musharaf before him.

In his editorial in The Friday Times, Najam Sethi claims: “There is absolutely no doubt that General Abbas is speaking the truth.” Among the many indications, he points out that “Admiral Mike Mullen, the US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, who boasted of his friendship with Gen Kayani, confirmed that an operation was on the cards. Later, on the eve of his retirement, Admiral Mullen spoke bitterly of being misled by General Kayani and breaching his “trust” by going back on his word to launch the operation.”

“For six years General Kayani kept vacillating over the issue and in six months, this leader (General Raheel Sharif) decided this is the crux of the problem. It’s a matter of how decisive you are, how much you have the ability to sift essentials from non-essentials.”

He contends that “Gen Abbas has obtained “clearance” for his interview from the “top”, meaning General Raheel Sharif, the current Army Chief, who ostensibly wants to go public on the role of various stake holders as he storms the tribal areas.

“It is important to send a strong signal abroad to the international community that this time the army leadership is not playing a “double game” and can be trusted to keep its word,” says Sethi.

This explains why the army authorities have repeatedly announced that they are targeting everyone, “including the Haqqani network”, high on the US target and one that has relentlessly targeted Indian establishments and personnel in Afghanistan.

Like the US, India should take note of this positive turn of events whose outcome, of course, remains uncertain.