Pakistan simply cannot be trusted

The army and political establishment have, time and again, pulled the rug from under each other in Pakistan. While assessing the appointment of Pakistan’s new army chief, Raheel Sharif, this grim history should be kept in mind.

The most macabre betrayal was, of course, that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In 1976, Bhutto appointed General Zia-ul-Haq as Pakistan’s army chief, superseding six serving officers. Describing this appointment her husband’s greatest mistake, Begum Nusrat Bhutto told me in 1982 that her husband had been carried away by Zia’s declamations of eternal loyalty. There was even an occasion when, Quran in hand, Zia swore before Bhutto: “You are the saviour of Pakistan, and we owe it to you to be totally loyal to you.”

Barely a year later, on July 5, 1977, Zia ousted Bhutto in a military coup staged by the army’s infamous Rawalpindi-based 111 Brigade. And on April 4, 1979, Zia had the person he once described the “saviour of Pakistan” hanged, after a farcical trial.

Nawaz Sharif, the country’s current Prime Minister, is a product of Zia’s military rule. He enjoyed a meteoric rise under the patronage of Zia’s military Governor of Punjab, General Ghulam Jilani Khan. When Benazir Bhutto was voted to power in 1988, Sharif made common cause with the Zia-appointed President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Army chief General Aslam Beg and ISI chief Asad Durrani.

Soon, Benazir was ousted, and Sharif’s Muslim League stormed to power in 1991. Sharif appointed the soft-spoken Abdul Waheed Kakar as the new Army chief. Soon, Kakar sent Sharif packing from office. SHADY DEALS

But Sharif learnt nothing from this experience. After he was re-elected in 1997, Sharif unceremoniously forced the resignation of his Army chief General Jehangir Karamat, only to appoint a Muhajir, General Musharraf, as his Army chief. He believed Musharraf could be kept in check. . Believing that the nuclear tests of 1998 had given him unparalleled popularity and power, and disregarding the fact that he was ruling a bankrupt country, Sharif encouraged and participated in Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure. When it became a fiasco and he was forced to rush to the Clinton White House to bail him out, Sharif threw on Musharraf the entire blame for the international disgrace and the disrepute his country faced. Growing mutual distrust and animosity between Sharif and Musharraf led to the coup of October 12, 1999, with Sharif being incarcerated and later bailed out by the Saudis.

Sharif and the army establishment share much in common. Both have a proven track record of proximity to Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban. Both have close links with Hafiz Saeed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Sharif also has close links with extremist anti-Shia groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But Sharif is averse to ceding almost total powers to the Army and playing second fiddle on national security and foreign policy issues, like President Asif Ali Zardari was compelled to do by an assertive General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

These are the considerations that motivated Sharif in appointing Raheel Sharif as Kayani’s successor. Sharif bypassed Lt. General Haroon Aslam who was regarded by commentators within Pakistan as an “average officer” and kicked Kayani’s protégé Lt. General Rashid Mehmood upstairs, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (a body of senior military officers).

OBSCURE INTENTIONS As Director General of Military Training, Raheel Sharif is known to have stressed the importance of shifting attention for the present from an exclusively India-centric approach to focusing on internal challenges. He, however, lacks both the stature and the resolve necessary for ending support for the Afghan Taliban, or for anti-India Jihadi outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He also has a political boss who has an affinity towards Jihadi groups that can be used in India and Afghanistan.

While the Pakistan Army may remain prepared to take on the TTP, it will not do so under Nawaz Sharif’s leadership, unless the internal security situation deteriorates significantly and destabilises the Punjab Province.

Moreover, as the security situation deteriorates along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, there will be increasing allegations holding Afghanistan and India responsible for the activities of groups such as TTP.

DEMAND ACTION The onset of winter is likely to make infiltration across the mountains of Kashmir difficult. But New Delhi should plan on the assumption that when the snow melts in June 2014, there will a resumption of infiltration and violence.

The intervening months give India time to think out a strategy on how to effectively deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice.

We will hopefully avoid shedding tears for Pakistan being a “victim of terrorism” as we did at Havana, and not de-link dialogue from action on terrorism, as we did at Sharm el-Sheikh.

India’s South Block Mandarins are, however, not alone in being obsessed with “uninterrupted and uninterruptable” dialogue with Pakistan. The senior-most American military official, Admiral Mike Mullen had 26 meetings with Kayani in the mistaken belief that he could charm the General into ending support for terrorism. He retired a disillusioned man, bitter with Pakistani duplicity, calling the insurgent Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of the ISI!

(The author is former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)

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