Analysts have been drawing scary scenarios ever since the Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif declared this week that “the army will resolutely defend its integrity”. But in the real world ‘the cause is as important to learn as the event’, and nobody knows for sure the cause of what is being presented as a new round in the tussle for supremacy between civilian and military establishments.

Most commentators trace the immediate cause to the caustic remarks made by Defence Minister Khawja Mohammad Asif and Railway Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique in the wake of a Special Court indicting former army chief and president, retired general Pervez Musharraf for high treason on March 31.

“It is a matter of great shame that people who blackened their faces with their act of supporting a military dictator are still part of the parliament sitting on both sides of the aisle,” Defence Minister Asif said the same day on the floor of the National Assembly.

And in a TV talk show the same evening, he declared that after dealing with former military president, the government would go after his accomplices, mostly retired army officers. Khawaja Asif wanted everybody who supported Musharraf in trampling the Constitution on October 12, 1999 and on November 3, 2007, in the dock.

Indeed, Musharraf had been asking the trial court for the same but the government leaders and others ridiculed his demand, saying he acted alone in imposing emergency on November 3, 2007 that attracted the charge of high treason. His original sin of overthrowing the elected government of Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999 is not even included in the charge.

In the triumphant mood that overtook the PML-N ranks following the indictment, Railway Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique chose to shame Musharraf to be the commando he ‘boasted’ to be and face his nemesis.

Gen Raheel chose the base of the Special Services Group of the army to which Musharraf belonged to make his remark about preserving the dignity of army and the integrity of state institutions. “Pakistan Army upholds the sanctity of all institutions and will resolutely preserve its own dignity and institutional pride,” he told SSG commandos on his first visit to their Ghazi Base on April 7.

According to a source in the army, Khawaja Asif had caused disquiet in the military establishment by his ‘intemperate attitude’ since taking over the reins of the defence ministry on November 28 last year. It was him who, either under pressure or on purpose, ruffled many feathers in the military by filing an FIR against a serving non-commissioned officer in March.

“We strongly feel that Mr Asif failed to defend the army in the courts in the missing persons’ case,” said the source.

Son of the late politician Khawaja Mohammad Safdar, who cooperated with the military dictator Gen Muhammad Ziaul Haq in his Islamic mission in the 1980s, Mr Asif has been winning the National Assembly elections from Sialkot since1993. He stood fast with the PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and his gutsy brother Shahbaz Sharif after Gen Musharraf sent them into exile a year after seizing power in 1999 and suffered imprisonment for that.

Khawaja Asif apologized on several occasions for his father serving as chairman of the Majlis-i-Shura (parliament) which Gen Zia had hand-picked to prolong his military rule and Islamic mission, and has remained steady in his opposition to the army’s involvement in politics since 2000.

Many observers predicted a new era of civil-military relations when the army saluted him as Defence Minister last November, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif superseded two senior officers on the list prepared by the departing army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and picked Gen Raheel Sharif as the new chief. The two generals ignored were said to be closer to Gen Kayani, a legacy of Gen Musharraf.

However, soon afterwards the PML-N government decided to negotiate peace with the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) speculation started that the military had reservations about it. Publicly, however, the civilian and military leaderships appeared concurring on the pursuit of peace. Indeed, Gen Sharif discussed the issue with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif several times before the government nominated a four-member committee on January 29 to hold talks about talks with the TTP nominees.

However, the bonhomie changed in third week of February when the TTP elements opposed to peace talks slaughtered 23 paramilitary forces they had been holding hostage for years. The government suspended the talks and authorised the military targeted operations against the malignant TTP elements in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA).

Over the past weeks the government has resumed and upgraded the talks, however. The whole modicum of civilian and military leaderships working in tandem, be it talks with the TTP, or Gen Musharraf’s trial or handling of the sensitive issue of missing persons, seems to have dimmed, if not evaporated. Now the relationship is perceived as hostile posturing by both two sides.

In background discussions, however, senior PML-N leaders insist the controversy wasn’t as serious as being projected in the media. First, they explain, the prime minister has the last word in the present day dispensation. “If tomorrow, the PM says something like the two Khawajas have said, then one can construe that fissures are there,” one leader said.