From the head of the table, distinguished foreign visitors as his guests for dinner, prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto shouted out to his chief of army staff, Lieutenant-General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq: “Come over here, Monkey!” The prime minister, Bhutto’s biographer Stanley Wolpert recorded, would pretend to pull Zia on an invisible string, as one would do with a marionette. The cracks about his Generals never ended: their looks, their intellect, the promiscuity of their wives.
Zia unfailingly responded to the insults with a genial beam and a grovelling bow, thanking the prime minister for his “kind attentions, Sir!” Then, in the summer of 1977, the General ordered his soldiers to drive the prime minister out of his home, on a journey that would end at the gallows.
Later this week, when Prime Minister Imran Khan faces a no-confidence vote that few give him a chance of winning, it is likely to be seen as a triumph for Pakistan’s democracy. In 2018, Khan was installed in office in an election marked by the intimidation of his opponents, the misuse of the criminal justice system and outright rigging. Khan’s ruinous mismanagement of the country, the argument goes, made his position untenable, even to his patrons.
That isn’t the story, though: The Generals’ ability to shoo their chosen monkey off the throne, and replace it with a new pet, shows the power of the Pakistan Army is undiminished.
Also read: Pakistan Army can’t risk controversy with Nawaz Sharif, sacrificing Imran Khan easier
At war with the Generals
Last year, Imran Khan began a protracted, and ill-advised, battle against army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, refusing to sign on to the replacement of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director-general, Faiz Hameed, with Lieutenant-General Nadeem Anjum. Lt Gen Hameed is believed to have been instrumental in securing Khan’s election in 2018. The prime minister was told, among others by his occultist wife Bushra Khan, that losing Faiz would precipitate his own downfall.
Imran Khan’s decision to push back against Bajwa—and to ensure General Hameed’s appointment as army chief in November, when the top job falls vacant—crossed a fundamental red line. The removal of prime ministers who sought to intervene in the military domain has been a leitmotif in Pakistan’s post-Zia politics.
The man Imran Khan replaced as prime minister—and whose brother has now replaced him—has been at the centre of the story.
Elected in 1990—in a contest alleged to have been rigged by the ISI—Nawaz Sharif was seen as a reliable proxy by the Pakistani military establishment. Like Imran Khan, his politics centred around populist Islamism. He patronised Punjabi jihadist groups. Among other things, Sharif promised to make Pakistan’s legal system consistent with the Shari’ah, and proposed the Islamisation of the educational and economic systems.
Sharif’s unsubtle efforts to buy influence inside the army—which included handing out upmarket cars to top Generals—did not go down well with then-army chief, General Asif Nawaz.
“The Army Chief confronted Nawaz, who did not deny the allegation,” former Indian intelligence officer Rana Banerjee has recorded. Instead, “He offered the keys of a new BMW to Asif Nawaz, urging him not to keep driving his old Toyota Corona as it was not ‘befitting’ for the Chief!”
Sharif and General Nawaz clashed over the appointment of Lt Gen Javed Nasir, a member of the proselytising Tablighi Jamaat order, as the ISI director-general—without even consulting the army chief.
And General Nawaz’s efforts to transfer out Islamist-leaning Lt Gen Hamid Gul, who as ISI chief had ensured PM Sharif’s election, also caused friction. The army chief did not trust Gul to hold charge in his absence, and wanted him in a non-command position, where his ambitions would be contained. Eventually, Gul was retired, over Sharif’s strenuous objections.
Then, in 1993, General Abdul Waheed Kakar was appointed army chief, superseding Lieutenants-General Rehm-Dil Bhatti, Mohammad Ashraf, Farrakh Khan and Arif Bangash. Nawaz Sharif resisted this—and ended up losing his job as the army forced him to resign.
Also read: Gen Bajwa can bet on Pakistan’s divided politics. Imran Khan’s defiance will lead to nothing
Fresh skirmishes in a ‘hybrid democracy’
Following Nawaz Sharif’s reelection in 1997, fresh skirmishes broke out with the Generals. Hoping to strengthen his influence, Sharif appointed Lt Gen Khwaja Ziauddin Butt as ISI director-general. The army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, was incensed at the decision, made without his consent. Karamat then publicly criticised profligate government spending and demanded setting up of a National Security Council to institutionalise military involvement in decision-making.
In 1998, Sharif sacked Karamat, and handpicked Lt Gen Pervez Musharraf to succeed him, superseding Lieutenants-General Ali Kuli Khan and Khalid Nawaz Khan. Following the Kargil War, Sharif moved to sack Musharraf, who had gone to war without informing his prime minister. The General staged a successful coup.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government, which ruled from 2008-2013, also pushed back against military influence over strategic decision—seeking United States assistance, by one account, to set in place a new, civilian-led national-security system. The government survived, but its legitimacy was dismantled by the military.
Following the death of Zia in a still-unexplained 1988 air crash—blamed on the KGB, Mossad, CIA, hydraulics failure, nerve gas, and explosives packed inside crates of mangoes—the Generals instituted a system which diplomat Husain Haqqani described as “military rule by other means.” The army chief, scholar Hasan-Askari Rizvi has explained, became the pivot for this political system. He represented the institutional consensus of the army on the governance of the country, derived through discussions between the corps commanders.
“German history reached its turning point but failed to turn,” the historian AJP Taylor famously wrote of the revolutions of 1848-49. The praetorian system in Pakistan ensured politicians who fought what’s called ‘hybrid democracy’ met the same fate.
Also read: Many blame me for not building on Modi-Sharif meet. I did what was in Pakistan’s best interest
New leader, just like the old ones
Leaders in India have learned—usually the hard way—that the army makes decisions in Pakistan, not its prime ministers. President Asif Ali Zardari, elected in 2008, sought a historical transformation with his country’s eastern neighbour, asserting that “India has never been a threat to Pakistan.” At about the same time, it is now known, the Lashkar-e-Taiba was finalising its plans for 26/11. Zardari sought to put the perpetrators on trial, and to assert civilian control over the ISI—but failed.
Nawaz Sharif, similarly, promised to “make sure that the Pakistani soil is not used for any such [terrorist] designs against India.” His efforts to rein in terrorist groups, and have dialogues with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were derailed by the Pakistan Army.
Ever since 2019 Pulwama crisis, though, General Bajwa has reined in terrorism, leading to a significant decline in terrorism in Kashmir. Emissaries for the Pakistan Army chief and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are believed to have held back-channel negotiations to prevent the two countries from lurching into a conflict neither want.
Although it is possible General Bajwa will get an extension in office from Pakistan’s new prime minister, it is unclear how durable his India policy will prove. Gen Musharraf had almost sealed a peace deal with India’s then-prime minister Manmohan Singh. Fears that the deal might turn Pakistani jihadists against the country’s army, though, led to the collapse of the peace dialogue.
General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani pushed a very different vision from his predecessor, asserting that the Pakistan Army was an “India-centric institution.” He insisted this “reality will not change in any significant way until the Kashmir issue and water disputes are resolved.”
The Pakistan Army’s position as the country’s preeminent institution of power rests on its status as the guardian not just of the country’s borders, but also its ideological frontiers. Ever since the Independence, the army has cast itself as the custodian of Pakistan’s freedom, identity and Islam itself. Letting politics and politicians usurp that role would threaten the Generals’ very substantial economic privileges.
In the unflattering mirror held out by history, Pakistan’s new prime minister will be almost indistinguishable from the old one.
Praveen Swami is National Security Editor, ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)