After the shocking terrorist attack on the highly protected PNS Mehran naval base in Karachi on May 22 that destroyed two surveillance planes worth six billion rupees and killed 10 security officials, the military’s assurances on the country’s defence being impregnable sound more hollow than ever.
There is no dearth of analysts in Islamabad who see the lack of state’s control over the country’s territory and the inability of the security agencies to stem the ever-rising tide of terrorist attacks as a bigger security threat to Pakistan than the apprehensions of another American strike does. “These [terrorist attacks] are basically manifestations of the fact that your house is not in order,” says former foreign secretary Najamuddin Sheikh.
The dilemma Pakistan’s security planners face is easy to know. On the one hand, the military top brass and the intelligence agencies have to convince the domestic audience that they can still defend the country and on the other, they have to convince the US that they are reliable partners in the ‘war against terrorism’.
To resolve the dilemma, they are following a two-track policy. First track is to appease the public opinion at home, they are using a range of public relations tools. A rhetoric-filled parliamentary resolution, for example, has called for a review of the terms of engagement with the United States. The second track deals with the harsh realities of security situation in a realistic manner. This took the form of a joint statement issued after Kerry’s visit that commits Pakistan to taking steps to satisfy the concerns of its American partners.
Lieutenant-General (retd) Talat Masood, an Islamabad-based security analyst, believes that the twain does not seem to meet to produce a coherent security policy. He sees the unanimous resolution of the joint sitting of the parliament and the joint statement after Kerry’s visit as “two contradictory documents” and is not sure how the government and the military “are going to reconcile them”.
Many analysts believe this contradiction reflects the tussle between the civil and military organs of the state – perpetually going on behind the scenes. The difference in their respective approaches was quite discernible in their different postures immediately after the successful get-bin Laden operation. Zardari wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post mildly complaining as to why the Americans had not taken Pakistan into confidence over the raid. But he also harped on the theme of cooperation against terrorism and the need for joint operations to get rid of the high value terrorist targets. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was more unrestrained when he described the American operation as a “great victory” in his first response over the incident. The military, on the other hand, made it clear from the word go that it was angry over the violation of Pakistan’s airspace by the American commandos who conducted the operation and was hurt that the Americans did not share information with it about bin Laden before planning to capture and kill him. One of the first few things that became known about a secret media briefing by senior military leaders was that they wanted the government to curtail the number of Americans present in Pakistan, especially those working with the military on terrorism-related assignments.
Even before Abbottabad came in the picture, the military was propping up its populist image as the only national institution standing that would never compromise on national security no matter what. Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, while delivering a speech on April 30, 2011 to commemorate the army men who had lost their lives fighting against terrorism, said: “The Pakistani people were destined to move towards prosperity but the country’s honour and dignity would not be compromised to achieve this.” This came less than a week after he reportedly had a “crisp” meeting with the US military commander General David Petraeus over the reported differences between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The break between the two organs of the state again became visible when senior military officials briefed the joint sitting of the parliament on May 13. “The politicians wanted to start a debate on civil-military relations but the armed forces wanted to use the joint session to rally the nation behind themselves,” says Tanveer Ahmed Khan, former foreign secretary. “The army’s position was quite untenable but it managed to turn the tables on the government by using the theme of patriotism,” he adds. The patriotic jingoism certainly also helped the military officials in successfully putting the government on the defensive over American drone strikes. They told the parliament that they could shoot the drones down if the government ordered. “We can shoot down the drones but can you handle the aftermath? This is the implicit message to the government,” is how a senior foreign policy analyst put it.
Before the joint parliamentary session, the government adopted a hands off policy towards Abbottabad operation, allowing the military to deal with it, tacitly admitting that the fallout of the raid and bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was none of its business. Gilani left for France a day after the incident and Zardari, too, went abroad to Kuwait and Russia soon afterwards. Some stalwarts of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) argue that the two could have accomplished little by staying back in the country. “Foreign policy is still not in the hands of the government. The policy on India and Afghanistan and strategic dialogue with the United States are being handled by the army,” says Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, a senior PPP leader.
Security analysts concur with this view. “Operational management of security issues is effectively in the hands of the army and intelligence,” says Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military historian based in Lahore. But there is the rub. The military does this management differently for different audiences. “The military’s public posture is highly populist. It issues statements after taking into account the prevailing public opinion,” says Rizvi, adding that some of these pronouncements ring similar to what the Islamists say, particularly vis-à-vis India and America. “But when they sit together with the American policymakers they are very pragmatic in their calculations and follow a policy that they cannot defend in public,” he points out.
The disconnect between the two tracks has grown enormously recently, raising destabilising anti-American public sentiments but, ironically, at the same time taking Pakistan into the firmer American embrace through increased military aid and training. While the former has eroded the national consensus against terrorism, the latter creates a dangerous dependency over foreigners to ensure national security. The end result is that the national security is being squeezed from both ends: The terrorists are on the rampage with unprecedented ease and without any worries of public censure as most of the people in Pakistan believe that Washington, rather than Taliban and other militant groups, is behind everything that goes wrong in the country. The foreigners, mainly the Americans, have come to enjoy a veto over Pakistan’s military and security policies thanks to the fact that they supply much needed cash and equipment to keep the country’s military machine going.
Security planners seem to think the problem can be addressed by employing better media management and diplomatic skills — keeping up the populist anti-America rhetoric in the public and seeking status quo in Pak-US relations in private. The two planks meet rather neatly — at least in theory: Pentagon needs the General Headquarters as much as the General Headquarters needs Pentagon. “We need American political support in the international arena. We need their financial assistance and need their help to secure loans from international financial institution. We need military equipment from them,” says Durrani. “But the Americans also know that they cannot neatly extricate themselves from Afghanistan without Pakistan’s support,” he adds, suggesting that the United States cannot afford to antagonise Pakistan in spite of the increased anti-Americanism among its people.
As the Pakistan military is asking the government “to revisit and review its terms of engagement with the US with a view to ensuring that Pakistan’s national interests are fully respected,” there is little doubt that the military top brass is only upping the ante on cooperation with the Americans. They want to get a greater involvement in the Afghan endgame, increased bilateral military aid without too many strings attached and the freedom to decide when to do a military operation, in which area and against whom. “There will be no change in the policy. The strategic convergence with the United States in the war against terrorism will continue to be there,” says a senior Foreign Office official. In other words, the same old security policy that has exposed Pakistan internally to unrelenting terrorist attacks and externally to the foreigners with vested interests in the region will continue after minor adjustment.
Here lies another fundamental question: who will decide what these minor adjustments will be? There are not even slight chances that the civilian government and Parliament will play any role in this process. Ahsan Iqbal, a central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN), believes that this will be a recipe for further security-related disasters in the country. “We are running a myopic security policy,” he says. “Since there is no effective mechanism for ensuring political input into the process of security-policy making, new security imperatives are not taken into account,” he concludes.
The Herald is Pakistan’s premier current affairs magazine published by the Dawn Media Group every month from Karachi.