The Hindu Business Line : Thoughts on LoC firing

When the Kargil operation of the Pakistani military was implemented in 1999, Mr Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Nawaz Sharif , were well on the way to ushering in a new phase of bilateral relations. At the time, the Lahore “bus diplomacy” was on the point of bearing fruit.

Kargil impact

It was at that precise juncture that Kargil occurred with which Pakistani politicians had precious little to do. As everyone knows, Kargil was a Pakistani military operation, and it transpired later that the Pakistani Prime Minister himself was kept in the dark about it.

This may or may not be true, but the big impact of Kargil was to drive a long spoke into the wheel of “normalisation” of India-Pakistan relations. Of this there can be no uncertainty. So whoever engineered the military operation wanted — at that moment at least — to upset the Vajpayee-Nawaz Sharif applecart, which in fact did happen. The Indians could not have done it because both on paper and in reality the Indian military strictly abides by the stipulations of the Constitution; so it could not have struck out on its own with the object of creating problems for the policy of the nation’s Prime Minister.

The same cannot be said of the Pakistani military for reasons which are well-known the world over. Thus, it stands to good reason to suggest that the top Pakistani military leadership did not like what was happening between New Delhi and Islamabad on the diplomatic front, which led it to engineer Kargil. It is of course another matter that not long after Kargil, Mr Nawaz Sharif himself had to go, falling a victim to the cult of the gun, which placed once again in the seat of power in Islamabad a military strongman.

Power shift

Today, as far as public perception is concerned, that strongman is no longer in the hot seat as it were, the politicians having “taken over”. Within the military itself, there has been some change, with the top position going to someone else other than the person who removed the Prime Minister in his time and took on the job of governing the nation with the help of his colleagues in uniform.

But have things really changed in Pakistan today, as regards the politician-military divide? Seen differently, can one argue that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has effectively moved the Pakistani military establishment to the second position, giving civilian Pakistani society, led by its politicians, the power once again to call the shots?

As one sees it, the hotting up on the LoC in recent days suggests clearly indeed that nothing has changed in Pakistan as far as the power structure there is concerned. The military continues to wield absolute power but is currently donning the fig-leaf of the poll results which have, on the face of it, shifted the balance of power to the politicians.

Strongman’s clout

The LoC firing cannot help the process of normalisation of relations between the two countries, just as Kargil did not in its day. The inference is that the Pakistani military is once again at work, telling the politicians that they really amount to nothing in the power structure of Pakistani society, and that keeping the military pot boiling is Pakistan’s only way of impressing on New Delhi that Islamabad is a force to contend with.

To this writer at least, the more important point is the extent of the hold, if any, which the erstwhile strongman of Pakistan has on the armed forces, through his loyal lieutenants who still enjoy enormous clout in the military. The simple question is: Did he have any role to play in organising the LoC firing?

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

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