Pakistan’s army chief General Asim Munir just appointed a new head of the country’s top spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence — Lieutenant-General Asim Malik. Former ISI chief Lt General Nadeem Anjum got gently pushed out, as there was no reason for the boss to keep him around any longer. From demonstrating an inability to manage the 2024 elections and suppress former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s rising popularity to initially mishandling the constitutional amendment for curbing powers of the judiciary — Anjum did nothing to Munir’s satisfaction.
Munir is preoccupied with making the economy work and reiningin the higher judiciary. However, he may not necessarily task the new Director-General ISI with this more important job. Sources from the army are of the view that Munir is shifting the emphasis from the ISI to the better-controlled Military Intelligence (MI). On the surface, the shift in importance makes sense because Malik’s tenure could be short. According to journalist Wajaht Saeed Khan, Malik retires before the army chief in November 2025. But others I spoke with say that depending on his performance, he may get an extension. He doesn’t pose a threat to the army chief since he will never be in the run for that position. Since Malik did not command a corps, he does not qualify for the list of officers that would be considered next year.
Apparently, Malik, as sources within the army I spoke with confirmed, refused to take the position of Corps Commander Lahore after 9 May as he wanted the job of Corps Commander Rawalpindi where his father, Lt General GM Malik, served. Instead, he continued to serve as Adjutant General (AG) at the General Headquarters (GHQ), playing an important role in carrying out purges in the service and helping Munir tame officers in the army.
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Where Malik will be useful
The ISI chief’s main focus will be disciplining the spy agency, which remains divided and turbulent on critical issues like Imran Khan, Afghanistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), among others. The fact that he is a blue-blooded army officer (a third-generation army officer and son of a three-star general) may not necessarily be an advantage. The army’s culture changed gradually after General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who brought in and gave preference to sons of non-commissioned and junior commissioned officers. There will be others in the GHQ who won’t be impressed by Malik’s pedigree status.
Nonetheless, Malik is likely to prove helpful in dealing with political parties and politicians, as this is something he has learnt at home. GM Malik was Corps Commander Rawalpindi when then-army chief Waheed Kakar decided to send President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif home. Those were the 1990s, famous for rule by the troika – the army chief, president, and the prime minister. The older Malik was responsible for giving the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader the boot.
As mentioned earlier, the new ISI chief stood by Munir after 9 May and not with the pro-Imran Khan faction in the army. That could be a lesson he learnt from his father — to stand by the boss and manipulate the service to his advantage. Malik’s father used the system to his son’s advantage.
People I spoke with, who have memory of Asim Malik’s days at the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), mentioned how training instructors would ensure that the young Malik, who was a cadet at the academy, while his father was the Commandant, would attain the goals. Not surprisingly, he got the sword of honor that gave him a head-start in his army career. His father’s support certainly helped him in his steady climb up the institutional ropes and go for training at the Royal College of Defence Studies, United Kingdom, and Fort Leavenworth, United States. Later, Lt General Malik also did a doctorate from the National Defence University, writing a thesis on Pakistan-US relations.
Malik’s links with the Western militaries and focus on the US do not necessarily make him exceptionally socially progressive or a key figure to improve relations with the Washington military. His years in the West probably even out with training from his father, who was a mullah with a beard on his stomach rather than on his face. The older Malik forced praying on cadets and younger officers, who were given negative marking if they missed their offerings. Reportedly, he had also advised General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s father-in-law, Lt General Ijaz Amjad, to renounce his Ahmadiyya faith and perform nikah with his wife to reaffirm the conversion. Interestingly, later it was Lt General Ijaz Amjad, who, as Nawaz Sharif admitted during a discussion with me, requested him to consider his son-in-law Qamar Javed for the position of army chief.
This certainly means that the new ISI chief will thrive well with the army chief’s socio-cultural, political, and organisational conservatism. He is also more likely to stay the course of conservatism on Pakistan-India relations, a policy different from what General Bajwa wanted to introduce. In fact, his links with the US military may prove useful in explaining to Americans the less-talked-about expansion of jihadi infrastructure, especially organisations like Jaish-e-Muhammad in the last couple of years in parts of Pakistan to keep India on an edge that Washington currently seems to be ignoring.
Aim to rein in judiciary
General Munir would certainly not want his wingman, the ISI chief, to be another Faiz Hameed or Ahmed Shuja Pasha. He would want Malik to carefully read his lips as he aims to change the political structure and inter-institutional balance to become more favorable to the army. The army chief is adamant to use the current political dispensation to help him cut the judiciary down to size and bring it back to where it was before the judges acquired an inflated sense of self-importance and power dating back to General Kayani’s days.
Former Chief Justice Iftikjar Chaudhry turned populist and powerful due to the influence he acquired being a partner of segments of the army that used him to push out General Pervez Musharraf. In recent months, the Supreme Court has proved to be a challenge for the GHQ, as a group of judges seem to be in disagreement with the army chief’s political plans. The decision of giving the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) its reserved seats is unacceptable to both the current political dispensation and the army leadership. Both players now want to snatch away the Supreme Court’s powers by introducing a constitutional amendment aimed at turning the highest court to a subservient institutional position.
The army is pretty adamant in helping the government create a constitutional court with the existing Supreme Court being relegated to the role of an appellate court. The argument given to support the plan is that it will create space and time for the Supreme Court to attend to its regular case workload without distraction of constitutional cases. Several countries like Austria, Italy, Hungary, and a few others have a constitutional court.
However, what these different cases demonstrate is that the selection of judges, their tenure and who gets to appoint the judges has a bearing on independence of such courts, and resultantly, quality of judgments. In Pakistan’s case, a constitutional court born from the womb of an authoritarian military-civil partnership doesn’t give much hope. The plan is to give power of appointment to the prime minister and not necessarily use the principle of seniority. The prime minister will also have the power to appoint and relocate any judge from any provincial high court to the Supreme Court. In any case, Faiz Isa, who is being viewed as a favourite to head a new constitutional court, has emerged as one of the most compromised judges in the country’s history. Isa, with his dislike for Imran Khan, will be used to not only reverse the decision granting PTI the reserved seats but perhaps ban both Imran Khan and his party.
This will generate even more frustration in the society, which is why Munir wants a capable and compliant ISI chief to be by his side.
Ayesha Siddiqa is Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)