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WITH images of a major-general handing over cash envelopes to facilitate the journey home of some protesters once their lockdown of the Islamabad highway had ended after an agreement ‘facilitated’ by another major-general, questions about the security establishment’s possible role in political engineering were inevitable.
Where the Islamabad drama ended late last month, earlier in November, the so-called facilitators’ hand was mentioned so many times in attempts to unify the MQM-P and PSP that the major-general heading the Sindh Rangers had to acknowledge the ‘military establishment’s’ role as part of efforts to secure peace in Karachi.
Of course, senior politicians such as Imran Khan expressed gratitude for the army intervention in Islamabad. In his opinion, it avoided countrywide bloodshed as the situation was primed to explode. However, he has still to comment on establishment-steered efforts to unite MQM-P and PSP allegedly taking place in a safe house, and according to some media reports, in the presence of a PTI leader.
Despite the Islamabad images, it would be jumping the gun to say, as some are indeed saying, that the dharna was staged at the behest of the establishment to undermine the PML-N government whose Nawaz Sharif-led hawks continue to eschew the advice of younger brother Shahbaz Sharif’s doves to be more accommodating in sharing power with the security establishment.
The civilians and the military need to learn to work with each other.
So, frustrated by Nawaz Sharif’s refusal to play ball as Shahbaz Sharif is avowedly willing to, is the establishment trying to engineer the scenario ahead of next year’s elections to ensure (in the words of a former army chief and military ruler) ‘positive results’ as without that the whole exercise will bring the country back to square one?
With two by-elections, one in Lahore and the other in Peshawar, making apparent that the appeal of the increasingly vociferous TLYRA is on the rise and it has made inroads into one of the PML-N’s traditional vote banks in Punjab, it can be surmised that something is happening. In fact, in Peshawar, which isn’t known as a Barelvi stronghold, the party’s vote share was shockingly large.
If the ‘referee’ wishes indeed to pave the way to the handing over of the electoral game to a motley crew of politicians then the TLYRA’s appearance with such a bang could well be for a reason. I say motley crew because any future set-up will only be more open to reason if it isn’t dominated by one or two major parties. Compliance is best secured via a weak coalition where all the coalescing elements can potentially be levers of pressure.
If all this falls in the realm of conspiracy theories, and admittedly it does, one need only look at recent history from the Lt-Gen Hameed Gul’s brainchild, the IJI, the continuing efforts of Brig Imtiaz Ahmad and Major Amir for ‘positive politics’. Also, those dark years where no government could complete more than half a term and whose details will emerge whenever the Supreme Court-ordered inquiry into the Asghar Khan case is completed and made public.
Lt-Gen Asad Durrani’s affidavit in the Asghar Khan case talks eloquently of what happened. Then, of course, there was the Maj-Gen Ihtasham Zamir’s interview to DawnNews where he openly boasted of his efforts to put together a contrived parliament and government before and after the 2002 polls to bolster Gen Musharraf.
The less said the better about what Maj-Gens Nadeem Ijaz Ahmad and Nusrat Naeem did in two key agencies during the latter half of the Musharraf era as it is too recent and does not bear repeating. Suffice it to say the former may actually have contributed to bringing Musharraf down.
In more recent times, the allegedly behind-the-scenes role of the intelligence agencies and the more public, open presence via friendly TV channel hosts of a stable of retired senior officers holding forth daily on the deficiencies and inadequacies of civilian rulers, is indicative of the trust deficit between the government and military.
The casualties that the army is taking in its war against terrorists particularly in the tribal areas is also creating pressure within the institution for a more proactive role to clean up the system and to stifle any public debate about the institution’s own shortcomings.
The irony, however, remains that both the civilians and the military need to learn to work with each other. In the 21st century, and given our history of disastrous direct military rule, nobody would want to contemplate direct intervention. And there is only that much engineering one can do ahead of an election where the most carefully orchestrated game plans are known to fall by the wayside.
Surely, we the people deserve better than to always be sitting with our seatbelts tightened, prepared for rocky rides.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2017
