A new army chief does not automatically suggest a reset in institutional relations, but it is an opportunity for all sides to re-evaluate their approaches to a central and common challenge: civil-military relations.

In the days-old tenure of army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, so far there has been no indication of how his approach differs, if at all, from that of his predecessor, retired Gen Raheel Sharif. However, there are obvious areas in which improvement can and should be sought.

To begin with, a historical perspective, a problem far older than simply the former army chief’s tenure, in the military needs adjustment. The perspective is that the military has both the right and a need to steer national security and foreign policies — a belief rooted in historical anomalies and that is very much separated from the constitutionally mandated institutional scheme of things.

Unhappily, in recent years, the encroachment has gone beyond narrow, older confines and spilled over into a bewildering array of civilian priorities. Therefore, from the Karachi operation, conceived of and initiated by the federal government, to the contours of CPEC, and from essentially treating Balochistan as a national security issue to suggesting economic priorities, the military’s policy imperatives and fingerprints are unmistakeable.

It may not be a priority for Gen Bajwa to undertake a review of the vast encroachments in the civilian domain, but it should be — as several military leaders before him have discovered, the greater the incursions, the more likely the civilian leadership is to fixate on them at the cost of focusing on genuine democratic and governance deficits.

Perhaps a starting point could be for the military to discard the implicit destabilising option — that in times of crisis and civil-military tensions, a military takeover remains the ultimate option. A clear statement in this regard, like retired Gen Sharif’s public statement 10 months in advance that he would quit office on schedule, could go some way in setting the right tone in the latest era of inter-institutional ties.

Yet, the problem is clearly not of the military’s making alone. Military encroachment has been cheered, encouraged and even demanded by civilian leaders in recent years and over the decades. Be it the latter-day obsession with a so-called third umpire or previous-era exhortations to Article 58(2b)-empowered presidents and all-powerful army chiefs, civilian opposition parties of all stripes have at some point or the other been guilty of themselves undermining democratic precepts.

It remains the case that the surest path to strengthening the democratic process is when democrats put the system ahead of personal political ambitions.

Finally, democratic progress is not and should not be seen as a zero-sum game. Since the transition to democracy started anew in 2008, both the military and civilians have benefited from democratic continuity.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2016