Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif deserves high praise for relieving Admiral Mansoorul Haq of his duties. The Navy Chief embroiled his Service in unbecoming controversy, gave it a bad name and undermined its morale. He was a Zardari flunkey who should’ve been sacked by the caretaker government in the first days of its administration. When he wasn’t, people were quick to denounce President Farooq Leghari as “an indecisive leader” and caretaker PM Meraj Khalid as “an ineffectual man:. In the eyes of the public, the episode’s lowest depth was plumbed some months ago when Mr. Leghari and Mr. Khalid shrugged off public sensibilities and sat down at high table to dine with Mr. Haq in the company of Mr. Ahmad Sadiq — a ‘guest’ who was on the caretaker government’s ‘wanted list’ — on the occasion of his off-spring’s wedding. The prime minister must now consolidate on the public goodwill generated by this decision and appoint a non-controversial, honest, professional seaman to the top job in the Navy.
The sacking of a Service Chief at the hands of a democratically elected civilian government is not unprecedented — Mr Z.A. Bhutto, it may be re-called, ousted two Service Chiefs simultaneously during the early months of his regime. What is unprecedented, however, is the fact that the Navy Chief was sacked for the right reasons — Mr Bhutto’s sackings were for purely unwarranted political contingencies. If we have therefore, finally, come to the point that we cannot condone corruption in anyone in any civilian government, we can condone it even less in the armed forces where it cripples the morale of the soldier and corrodes national security.
The matter of corruption in the highest echelons of the armed forces is now a matter of public debate. The PAF, once the apple of our eye, is at its lowest ebb. The Service was first rocked by allegations of wrongdoing regarding the proposed Mirage 2000-5 deal. Then came Shaheen Foundation’s Pay-TV partnership with Mr Javed Pasha (another Zardari crony), a highly objectionable decision. Now the Service has been laid low by an international drug-scandal of such grim proportions that it is simply unbelievable. What now?
Some people are demanding that the Air Chief, Mr Abbas Khattak, should be chopped straight away. Their arguments is that his judgement is flawed, his reputation is tacky and he lacks the qualities of leadership that once made the PAF a true “defender of Pakistan”. These are disturbing charges. But there are meaningful extenuating circumstances which lead to the conclusion that the PAF should be allowed to cleanse itself in internal, institutional ways rather than by a sacking of its Chief.
In the absence of any evidence of financial corruption by Mr. Khattak, it is not fair to ask him to take the rap for those officers indicted for drug-smuggling recently. Soldiers go astray routinely in all armies of the world, but Service Chiefs are rarely, if ever, expected to sacrifice themselves for the indiscretions of a handful of men under their command. At any rate, with the Navy already shipwrecked, do we now want to ground the Air Force as well? What adverse effect might this have on the morale of the Armed Forces as a whole? Indeed, do we want to undermine the morale of the army, the leading element under-pinning national security, at a time when its leadership has finally come to rest in the hands of a top professional like General Jehangir Karamat?
A recent analogy past might serve to illustrate the point we are making. President Leghari, as everyone knows, was under considerable pressure to disqualify both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto from contesting the election on account of their corruption. Indeed, he could have done so on the basis of existing evidence against the two. But he did not exercise this option because it would have destroyed the two leading political parties of the country, stripped the process of elections of all legitimacy and derailed the very process of democracy that we are all applauding today. The same logic which was applied to the political parties and political leaders during the caretaker administration should therefore be applied by the new government to resolve the predicament of the armed forces. Spring cleaning is necessary but wholesale sackings are not justified.
That said, Air Chief Marshal Khattak would be advised to take stock of the PAF’s declining morale, order a quick court martial of the officers involved in drug-smuggling and band down stiff, exemplary sentences.
At the end of the day, therefore, only one fact remains undeniable. The Armed Forces are now not, nor can they ever hope to be, a sacred cow. As elsewhere, corruption favouritism and indiscipline have definitely seeped into their rank and file and eroded their efficiency. We are all in the same filthy hamam. Therefore the same cleansing laws should apply to everyone. The exercise of accountability must henceforth be extended ruthlessly across the board. If 22-grade Secretaries like Ahmed Sadik, Aslam Qureshi and Salman Farooqi can be investigated, why not Admiral Mansoor ul Haq, General Aslam Beg and Gen (retd) Zahid Ali Akbar Khan?
Accountability is here to stay. Thank God for that.