Late in April, Ashfaq Pervez Kayani stood before a solemn audience that had gathered to mark Martyrs Day.
“There is no greater honour than martyrdom”, Pakistan's army chief said, “nor any aspiration greater than it. When people are determined to achieve great objectives, they develop the faith needed to trust their lives to the care of Allah. We are well aware of the historical reality that nations must be willing to make great sacrifices for their freedom”. “I am proud”, he went on, “that the nation has never forgotten the sacrifices of its martyrs and holy warriors”.
If it hadn't been for General Kayani's impeccably-ironed military uniform, his audience might have been forgiven for believing that the speech was being made by the Islamist clerics who have exhorted insurgents to claim the lives of over 2,700 Pakistani troops in combat.
Pakistan's Prime Minister went on national television in July to give his country's army chief an unprecedented three year extension of service. The decision has won applause in some western capitals, as well as from some liberal and conservative commentators in Pakistan. In the midst of a bitter war against Islamists many believe poses the greatest existential threat Pakistan has ever faced, Kayani's supporters believe its army needs continuity of leadership.
Those propositions might be true — but casts little light on the strategic considerations which have given Kayani three more years in office. Pakistan's army hopes, in essence, that Kayani will be able to craft a way out of the crisis without compromising the power and influence of its generals.
Islamabad elites had long been discussing Kayani's plans to secure an extension; this newspaper carried an extensive discussion of the issue in March. Key politicians, though, were evidently clueless. On May 17, Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said the government “was neither granting extension to Chief of Army Staff; nor had the general sought it.” But just a week later, media reported that a conference of corps commanders had called for an extension.
Some accounts hold that President Asif Ali Zardari, who is distrusted by the army, had little choice but to accept this fait accompli. Other commentary suggests both President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani went along with decision, hoping to stave off any confrontation with the armed forces until 2013 — the year their terms in office end. Either way, as Pakistani lawyer and political commentator Asma Jehangir has noted, the extension suggests “that democracy has not taken root. The decision was taken on the basis of obvious pressure from the military”.
But just what was it that drove this pressure? Pakistan's army isn't, after all, short of competent commanders. “My advice to Kayani”, wrote the commentator Kamran Shafi days before the extension, “would be to issue his last Order of the Day on the appointed date of his retirement, receive his successor in General Head-Quarters, and after a cup of tea get into his private car and fade away.” There are good reasons, though, why that advice wasn't heeded.
The Pakistan army's agenda
Kayani is at the centre of three projects critical to the long-term power of the Pakistan army. The first is this: extricating the Pakistan army from a counter-insurgency campaign that appears unwinnable. During Kayani's visit to troops in Orakzai on June 1, the Pakistan army announced “the successful conclusion of operations in the Agency”. But, as analyst Tushar Rajan Mohanty recently pointed out, it has admitted to over a dozen engagements there since, involving the use of combat jets and helicopter gunships. Refugees displaced last year are yet to return.
Hoping to manoeuvre an exit, Kayani has escalated support to the jihadist networks of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani. Last week, Canadian diplomat Chris Alexander — who spent seven years serving his country and the United Nations in Afghanistan — charged Kayani with “sponsoring a large-scale, covert guerrilla war through Afghan proxies.” “Without Pakistani military support,” Alexander asserted “all signs are the Islamic Emirate's combat units would collapse”. Earlier, Harvard University's Matt Waldman quoted Islamic Emirate commanders admitting that the ISI's role was “as clear as the sun in the sky.”
Kayani, the Pakistan army hopes, will be able to secure it allies power in a future regime in Kabul — and then use their influence to scale back its conflict with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan at home. Pakistan has, notably, offered to broker a rapprochement between its jihadist allies and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's regime.
Linked to this objective, Kayani is working to heal President Musharraf's rupture with domestic jihadists — a constituency who were once drawn to state-backed organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, but have been increasingly supporting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Pakistan's India policy is being reinvented by Kayani to this end: the second project he needs time to see to fruition.
In a thoughtful 2002 paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, George Perkovich cast light on Musharraf's reappraisal of Pakistani military strategy on India. Lieutenant-General Moinuddin Haider, who served as interior minister under President Musharraf, told Perkovich he argued that the long-term costs of continuing to back jihadists would be higher than the potential losses from taking them on. President Musharraf feared that confrontation would provoke a civil war. “I was the sole voice initially”, Haider said, “saying, ‘Mr. President, your economic plan will not work, people will not invest, if you don't get rid of extremists.'”
Haider gathered allies — among them Pakistan's former intelligence chief, Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi. “We must not be afraid,” General Qazi said in the wake of the 2001-2002 India-Pakistan military crisis “of admitting that the Jaish was involved in the deaths of thousands of innocent Kashmiris, bombing the Indian Parliament, [the journalist] Daniel Pearl's murder and even attempts on President Musharraf's life.”
But Musharraf did little to develop an institutional consensus around these ideas — and, as his legitimacy eroded, proved unable to make a decisive break with the past. Many in the Pakistan army blamed him for precipitating the internal crisis which developed during his term in office. Like so often in the past, the Pakistan army moved to force out a commander-turned-liability.
Ever since Kayani replaced Musharraf, there has been mounting evidence that the Pakistan army is seeking to renew hostility with India. In 2008, the United States was reported to have confronted Pakistan's army with evidence that the ISI was involved in a murderous attack on the Indian diplomatic mission in Kabul. Later that year, it is now known from the testimony of Pakistani-American jihadist David Headley, the ISI facilitated the carnage in Mumbai. Pakistan has denied its intelligence services were linked to the Mumbai attacks, but has neither questioned the officials Headley named, nor sought to interrogate him on the issue.
In February, Kayani told journalists the Pakistan army was an ‘India-centric institution', adding that this “reality will not change in any significant way until the Kashmir issue and water disputes are resolved”.
Language like this fits well with the intellectual climate of Pakistan's armed forces. Lieutenant-General Javed Hassan — who played a key role commanding Pakistan forces during the Kargil war — was commissioned by the army's Faculty of Research and Doctrinal Studies to produce a guide to India for serving officers. In India: A Study in Profile, published by the military-owned Services Book Club in 1990, Hassan argues that is driven by “the incorrigible militarism of the Hindus.” “For those that are weak,” he goes on, “the Hindu is exploitative and domineering.”
Faced with a flailing war against jihadists at home, Kayani's anti-India platform offers the army the strategic equivalent of an escape button: precipitating a crisis with a historic adversary, secure in the knowledge that Pakistan's nuclear umbrella guarantees is protection from a large-scale war. Pakistan's military, many Indian foreign policy analysts believe, precipitated the bruising showdown between Foreign Ministers SM Krishna and Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad last month, undermining the fragile dialogue between the two countries.
India and Afghanistan are just parts, though, of the third, and most important project: guaranteeing the political primacy of the Pakistan army. In the wake of President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq's assassination in 1988, Pakistan developed what the scholar Hussain Haqqani — now his country's ambassador to the United States — described as “military rule by other means.” Hasan-Askari Rizvi noted that the army chief became the “pivot” for political system. The army chief, in turn, derived his authority from the corps commanders who addressed “not only security, professional and organisational matters, but also deliberate on domestic issues”.
In January 2008 General Kayani passed a directive which ordered military officers not to maintain contacts with politicians, and followed up with orders withdrawing serving personnel from civilian institutions. The move was interpreted as evidence of Kayani's commitment to genuine civilian-led democracy. But Kayani repulsed President Zardari's early efforts to bring the ISI under civilian control, and defeated his efforts to seek a grand rapprochement with India. Pakistan's army proved willing to cede influence over the administration of the state, but not over the structure and thrust of national strategy.
“The army is the nation,” General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani said in his Martyrs Day speech, “and the nation is with the army.” Ensuring that this pithy proposition survives the crisis Pakistan is faced with is the purpose of the silent coup that has given Kayani three more years in office.
Keywords: Pakistan army, General Kayani
Anything anti-India sells in Pakistan. Thankfully at least some Intellectuals have graduated from the myth of India being enemy. And frankly there is a constituency in Pakistan for friendly relationship with India. But incompetent government, and ever influential army would never let that happen.
Democracy is neither according to the taste of Indian nor Pakistani.
We Believe in Personalities rather than institutions.
Mark my words -- The military taking over democratic rule in Pakistan would be a signal that Pakistan is taking its last breath.
Refuse to play Pak game of virulent confrontation, Patience is essential.
Be vigilant and let Pak face the consequences of its policies. Intelligence and cooperation with international agencies should be strengthened.
Attack on Mumbai is horrible, but its cost is far less than a war. Civilian casualties will be there, inevitable in the nature of terrorism path chosen by Pak army.
Support the non pushtoon communities of Af, so they do not fall prey to Pak supported Af-militants, later. In that NATO interests will converge with our own. Hopefully NATO will leave enough forces behind for quite sometime to ensure core control over Af affairs or to prevent its collapse into chaos.
Kashmir can be managed.
Good read though,but route to Rawalpindi & Kabul is through Kashmir, Unless it is resolved,India will never get the Strategic depeth it wants in region and far ahead and Pakistan will never stop being India Centeric, as regards AK 47'S will not be traded with plough, the 4 point Musharraf formula is best,it is not absolute solution but manages the conflict to a win win situations for all 4 actors, India, Pak, kashmnirs and all other Non State actors.
When you take these things under consideration and you come out of the details and look at it from 5000 ft. the only solution to this problem seems a war. Either us or them and thats the only lasting solution this problem. Hitler would not have been stopped by talks. Talks make no sense and we have talked enough....
Dear Mr. Swami,
This is brilliant! The pakistan Army has so much to lose, if there is genuine peace with India, that every devious tactic will be deployed. Hitherto, India has had to grin and bear this but the World has moved into the Pakistan Army's space. The eyes and ears of the thousands of Nato troops do not buy this charade! India's goal must be to hold the West's feet to the fire and leave the region only after they have diminished the powers of the Pakistan Forces.
Marc, The Editorial highlights the opinion that Military is still powerful and calling the shots in Pakistan albeit the country being led by a democratically elected govt. It is therefore a silent coup wherein the power lies with the mind(Army) with mouth(Govt) speaking in tune with it. Remember President being supreme commander was in no position to refute the extension of the Chief of Army.
This is a very nicely written Editorial. I think its a well known fact that Both US and Pakistan were involved in galvanizing the Taliban in fighting the Soviets in 80's. This is what made them powerful.That is history and we saw their power in the last decade. After 9/11 there has been a radical shift in the US policy and that is present which we see now and Pakistan likes it or not is stuck in the game of cleansing its country out of the Taliban. This has found least support in its own country. Besides wasting a lot of money, men in alienating the ideological partners it causes discontent between Taliban and Pakistanis. The result can be seen in a day to day explosions and bomb blasts right from Peshawar to Karachi and from Quetta to Islamabad. The best recourse for the Army and the govt is to bring a sense of unity among the people and a good way is to create a rhetoric against India be it Kashmir or Water dispute. This is the plan that the Pakistani Army will choose and this is what will be honored by the ISI.
What if Kayani succeeds in Afghanistan? What does that mean for India? Will America and NATO allow a tin pot Pakistani general to out manouvre them? What a waste of their tax payers money! Beats the rationale for the entire war. My hunch is that even if the NATO forces stop the combat operations, their bases will remain like in Iraq. They may leave the day to day squabbling to others, but will cling to the sinews of the state. Also I feel that NATO will not abandon Pakistan because it is needed to balance India and is Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Phillipines all rolled into one except that its policies are not driven by rationale and are totally unpredictable. Add the China factor and the role of the Chinese in previous wars and Pakistan is the loosest and most dangerous cannon around.
@ Adil, First Indians do not hate Pakistani's. We all have our own issues with out politicians, media, economy issues with which we are contend with. Honestly we don't think of Pakistan in our day-to-day life.. Even when we are thinking, its not about whole Pakistan. Its just those elements who are plotting, helping in terror activities in our country killing innocent people.
Now in this atmosphere, emotions are running high in the hearts of people from both sides and our elected government has to take some steps. If they are surging the troops along the border its for self-defense purposes.
Do you suggest that Indian government or RAW should send suicide attackers to Pakistan and ask them to kill innocent people in the streets of Karachi?
They are just asking to take stern steps against those people who are responsible for Mumbai incident which will be a lesson for everyone and which will help in preventing such incidents in future. Even after acknowledging that it all started from Pakistan soil, what the Pakistan government has done?
Again, an excellent analytical piece by Praveen Swami
If army chief makes such provoking , rabble-rousing , hate speeches , then he is like Islamic zealot Mualana Haqqani in army uniform. As high echelon of army are infected with such asinine mindset then future of the the belligerent country could be in jeopardy.Mr. Kayani has personal interest to remain in power and wants to strengthen its position on credits of anti-India sentiments. These insane , in inveterate zealot don't have any worries about million of common Pakistani people's daily lives and issues like employment, high inflation , economy based on begging.
Such leadership shows atavistic tendencies of medieval thinking without a smidgen of progressive facade.how can the chief can not even imagine implications of war with India ? .India could suffer loss and destruction but his country may not be on global map from that war onwards.
As Bill Clinton once said in visit to Pakistan that the fire of jihad and terrorism which it was helping to spread would engulf itself and destroy itself to ashes , resulting in wiping out its own existence from world map. The coming time will prove this axiom.
Relationship of US and Pakistan is honky. US is empowering his own enemy through billions of dollars to Pakistan in aid and it has and will show compunction these deeds.
Giving Kayani three more years in office shows the influence of the army over the administration. This is against democracy. ISI is under Kayani's control and this will be a big threat to India, the world and the country itself. The documents released by Wikileaks also suggest that ISI is behind the Taliban insurgency in Afganisthan. So India and US together should propose a strategic dialogue with Pakistan on bringing ISI under the civilian control.
Serious mistrust exists between India and Pakistan. Mistrust begets mistrust. Let trust starts somewhere ate some time. Then trust will start to beget trust. We have a burning example of distruction due to mistrust between Sadat Hussain and Bush. originally both and India are brothers of the same mother earth,India. Why to be negative and distrust?!
It is yet to be seen ,which is more pro American-whether General Kayani's quiet coup or democratic Government of Pakistan.
Whoever this Marc is - maybe an acronym for an ISI operative - his song is stale and out of tune. As the Wikileaks, which have been acknowledged as genuine, make clear, the ISI, a Pak Army controlled outfit, has been behind a lot of the carnage in Afghanistan. It suits the Pak Army to use these instruments to convince the US there is no altenative but to fund and rely on the Pak establishment (read Army)if it wants to extricate itself from a problematic situation, while apparently giving plausable deniability- to the naive - by claiming that the reports leaked pertain to earlier times (when Kayani nevertheless was already Army Chief and earlier a significant member of the Pak Army), to save face and spare inconvenience to a tired US establishment perhaps, while allowing the Pak Army´s diabolical business as usual policy to move ahead. Swami´s piece, as almost always, is unnerring and should be taken seriously by thoose interested as much in the future of Pakistan as of the region.
Adil. Indians don't hate Pakistan/Pakistanis. In fact, most of us would like to see relations between the two countries take a peaceful turn.
Read paragraph 12 of the following article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7923727/Pakistans-burning-sense-of-injustice.html
"With a sigh of sadness, a senior American diplomat of Pakistani origin explained the contrasting standpoints of the two countries viewed through Washington's eyes: "Pakistan is consumed with its hatred of India, it thinks of little else but India. But India thinks little about Pakistan at all. It's busy globalising, its companies are launching international takeovers," he said."
For us, the most worrying aspects of life are 1) The Economy, 2) Inflation, 3) Corruption and 4) Growing rift between the wealthy and the poor in no particular order.
Please don't buy the propaganda churned out by media/politicians with vested interests.
No surpise over Kayani extension !!!
But Pakistani people should have some firm leadership to representation before international community.
As an Indian , I do not know if India wants to talk to Pakistan then to whom we shoulld talk? Civilian leaders or Army Medaled Generals.
Generally a state keeps an army for security but pakistan is an irony, where Army owns a state.
I am sure that a stong Pakistan will help India. But how i do not know
@Adil: When a nation that uses terrorism as the state policy threatens the very existence of our motherland, a surgical strike is the least that we can do to teach it a lesson. Certains sections of Pakistani establishment - and not the Pakistani people as a whole - is a cancer to the region, the world and also, to your nation itself. The sooner you realize it, the better for everyone.
Sending terrorists to rip apart our fabric of the society is not going to work out. Like what you see now, they will bite you back one day.
I consider any such news associated with Kayani as rubbish as it doesn't deserve a glance least of all a thought-over; 'Cause, this guy is not a professional to meet India "FACE to FACE" but cowardice back-stabber as he is begging around, soliciting Taliban. It's disgusting that Pakistan has forgotten to look INDIA as her Mother from where she was conceived and born new but still carrying the grudges bitter-enough for no reason whatsoever. First of all, Pakistan shall understand to bear fruit sweet-enough by casting-off the ill-wills with India and form a frank and positive tie-up towards fomenting trade and business opportunities in order to extricate herself from the present economic woes; So, shall a better and prosperous Pakistan begin to emerge with India as her good-friend forever ! So Pakistan should kick people like kayani out ! Hurry ! Time's up!
How is the author sure that Zia ul Haq was assassinated? It is still
an unresolved issue. Otherwise a very balanced article.
Cheers.
If India Threats Pakistan with Surgical Strikes then Pakistan Army has no other alternative but to remain India-centric till Indians Superiority Complex is over!! Indians Hate Pakistanis more than We, Pakistanis Hate Them!! But I think It's time to Reciprocate!!
As always, Mr. Praveen Swami's article is interesting and in depth. it is however not known whether india has any counter move in this great power game which has potential to change world history.
If it is left up to Kayani, he would like to take Afghanistan back to the days of Taliban regime, and Kashmir will become even more tense and God knows what will happen in Pakistan. I hope better sense will prevail, and for the good of all, some civilian government in Pakistan will have the courage to stand up to its armed forces. But I fear that the situation I dream of is a remote possibility.
Without hostility towards India, Pak's army will loose its sheen and purpose. Kashmir is only a pretext to justify terrorism,as Pakistan cannot win a conventional war with India.Even if the Kashmir problem is "solved" in favour of Pak, it is foolish to assume that the terrorists will trade their AK47s for farm ploughs !
Sadly the arguments put forth inform us that Indians do not understand Pakistan at all. Indian punditry is spinning the same circular, incomplete logic. Incredulously we are told that this Army(pak) cannot win its own war with local taliban, but it(Army) is the sole reason why the Afghan Taliban are able to challenge the Superpower US/NATO. Then the Afghan Taliban will help it win/befriend local Taliban !! What a fantastic web of crock? And that is how the current General is going to stage a coup and occupy islamabad. And quite ridiculously this army is willing to risk an unnecessary nuclear war with India in order to not fight the taliban? If we are to believe this guy, then Pak Army is the sole reason why Taliban are wining. Otherwise they would "collapse". The obvious next logical assumption in this brilliant reductive theory has to be then Soviet defeat can entirely be ascribed to pakistan Army. Then Obama is correct in befriending the most powerful agent of change in Central Asia- ie PAKISTAN ARMY!!!!
Per this article without pakistan's support no body wins in Central Asia. Right?
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