What do Gen Zia and Gen Beg have in common? Apparently little. Zia overthrew the constitution and ruled dictatorially for eleven years; Beg is expected to retire as schedule on August 16. Where Zia seized the first opportunity to propel himself to naked power, Beg studiously refrained from following in Zia’s footsteps. Zia had no patience with politicians and openly despised them. Beg, however, appeared to endure their improprieties, pulling powerful strings behind the scenes.
Significantly, however, the two generals manifested differing approaches to the world of real-politik and international relations. Zia flogged Islam as a legitimising ideology and knowtowed to the Americans’ Beg articulated an appearing ideology of ‘nationalism’, backing it up by a doctrine of ‘strategic defiance’ of the USA. Zia prostrated himself before the Saudis while Beg has tended to look towards their nemesis, Iran, for Pakistan’s strategic requirements. Where Zia could afford to ignore the signals of changing new world order, Beg has reacted peremptorily to a perceived US role in South Asia. AT a personal level, Zia all but sidelined Beg. Gen Beg, however, has lived uncomfortably in the shadow of Zia’s mysterious death three years ago.
More important, it is pertinent to ask which of the two legacies and styles, Gen Zia’s or Gen Beg’s, might conceivably be followed by Gen Asif Nawaz Janjua in time to come. Or will the new chief, perhaps, fashion a completely new logic on the collective will of the armed forces?
Take the domestic front. Gen Zia despised politicians and representative institutions. Although he reluctantly allowed them some political space, he closed the narrow corridor not long afterwards. Before he died, he was in a real fix because his system was patently unworkable. Gen Beg’s approach was markedly different. he nurtured a system of government in which politicians held formal office while effective power remained with the army. In retrospect, however, this approach divided and weakened civil society and eroded the social contract between the rules and the ruled, between state and nation, no less than Gen Zia’s. Will Gen Janjua be tempted to follow in Gen Beg’s footsteps, propping up certain parties and undermining others, for dubious short-term gains? Or will the new chief lend his shoulders to institutionalising fair play and consensus?
On the international front, Gen Beg’s legacies may be no less consequential. For forty years, while many emerging nation-states jealously guarded their sovereignty by joining the Non-Aligned Movement and cleverly playing off one superpower against the other, ruling establishments in Pakistan progressively narrowed their options by blindly lining up behind the Americans. Now, paradoxically, with the cold war over and a considerably reduced number of viable options on the horizon, Gen Beg’s Pakistan seems in Western eyes to be on the verge of defying the global compulsions for a new, more orderly world based on economic rather than military strength. Will Gen Janjua try to enlarge the scope of his predecessor’s doctrine of “strategic defiance” and fly in the face of new realities created by the West? Or will he, like the new leaders of the USSR, Eastern Europe, Middle-East, South Africa and even China, help dismantle the violent legacies of the past and build on economically dynamic and politically democratic country that is able to speak with honour among the new comity of nations?
The armed forces under the new chief must face the issues squarely. One side of the Pakistani coin is hunger, disease, unemployment, population growth and illiteracy. The other is national security. Neither can be ignored except at great peril to the other. An ideal situation would, of course, be one in which a suitable military deterrent could be effected with India which allow us to divert resources from military expenditures to the social sector. Gen Janjua has the unenviable task of presiding over a resolution of the Kashmir conflict with India and the nuclear stalemate with the US without dragging the country into a disastrous war with our neighbour or isolating it (like Burma) as a pariah in the world community.
Neither Gen Zia’s nor Gen Beg’s legacies may be of much help in the complex and formidable tasks ahead. A nation up in arms against itself, against a powerful neighbour and against an aggressive superpower is primed for trouble. What is needed is democratic consensus at home and determined diplomacy abroad. There is absolutely no reason why we should not succeed in reconciling the demands of national security with those of national prosperity. As a matter of fact, the two go together and we have no choice. But if Gen Janjua is to emerge as the man of the hour, he must have the courage and foresight to be able to distinguish between an unacceptable policy of laying down arms from the necessary policy of bidding a farewell to arms.