General Ashfaq Kayani’s low-key call on Nawaz Sharif last week has generated much speculation because both sides are tight-lipped about what transpired. But it doesn’t require rocket science to understand General Kayani’s motive in breaking the ice with a man who has not hidden his animosity for the military since it dethroned, humiliated, imprisoned and exiled him in 1999.
The signaling was apt enough by both sides. General Kayani arrived discreetly in an unmarked car in nondescript shalwar kameez. No battle fatigues, no cap, no swagger stick. The feigned humility was palpable. His host was equally disposed to signaling his firm stance – the meeting took place in Model Town, which is the office of the PMLN, and not in Raiwind, which is Nawaz Sharif’s home. This was business, not pleasure.
General Kayani’s views on core national security issues preceded him – the existential threat is internal from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Both must be put down. Equally, Nawaz Sharif has pledged to pursue the path of a negotiated peace with the TTP and had an electoral understanding with leaders of the LeJ. They couldn’t be further apart on both issues.
It was on General Kayani’s watch that the peace process with India launched by Nawaz Sharif in 1999 and extended by General Musharraf in 2004 was derailed by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayba jihadis in Mumbai in 2008. That one intervention set back the peace process by five years, just as another military folly in Kargil in 1999 had set it back five years earlier. General Kayani is also on record as saying that peaceful co-existence with India will follow the settlement of all outstanding disputes within a given time frame. This is at sharp odds with Nawaz Sharif’s view that peaceful co-existence should be accepted by both sides as a prelude to conflict resolution of outstanding issues one by one over an undefined time frame. Indeed, General Kayani’s tactical and strategic military doctrines vis a vis India are fashioned in response to India’s conventional and nuclear capacity and not intentions or overtures of peace. By contrast, Nawaz Sharif has publicly lamented the fact that Pakistan’ nuclear status is at the expense of bread and butter issues. “We have atom bombs but no electricity,” he declared recently, implying that the much-vaunted military might of Pakistan could not atone for its poverty, insecurity and helplessness. Indeed, he all but said that the former was at the expense of the latter, an unacceptable situation.
Mr Sharif has also drawn some hard lines in the sand regarding the fate of both General Kayani and General Musharraf. He has publicly said he is opposed to giving tenure-extensions to service chiefs and announced his intention to make the senior most general of the Pakistan army the next army chief when General Kayani retires in November 2013. In effect, with barely six months to go, this statement makes the forthcoming transition in GHQ both smooth and predictable.
Mr Sharif has also been loath to clarify his position about the fate of General Musharraf. While the PMLN has officially said it wants General Musharraf tried under Article 6 for treason, Mr Sharif has implied that he intends to defer to the law and constitution on this matter. This ambiguity is carefully contrived for leveraging with the military as an institution and not just with General Kayani who would like to negotiate safe passage for his former boss in order to forestall any precedent of holding army chiefs accountable for acts of omission and commission.
There is another matter of contention. Mr Sharif would like a full report of inquiry into the Kargil conflict, who initiated it and why, and who should be held accountable and culpable for the defeat and humiliation which Mr Sharif and his government had to endure personally and politically. But General Kayani would rather let sleeping dogs lie. No army chief wants to preside over an admission of such guilt, especially if the accused is a boss-predecessor. But here too Mr Sharif is probably creating space for leveraging his quest for political autonomy, if not independence, from the military during his five year term.
Clearly, General Kayani and Mr Sharif had much to discuss in their meeting, even if it was tentative and diplomatic. The bottom line for General Kayani was to assure Mr Sharif of his commitment to democracy and civilian supremacy and ownership of the political process. The bottom line for Mr Sharif was to tell the army chief that the 65-year paradigm of national security in which India was the eternal enemy and the defence budget was sacrosanct and unaccountable would have to be amended in view of the overwhelming demands of the time.
It is therefore only a matter of time when such informal and ad-hoc signaling by a prime minister and army chief is replaced by an institutional mechanism for dialogue, deconstruction and development in a civil-military partnership to salvage the future of Pakistan. – See more at: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20130531&page=1#sthash.5N895W0Y.dpuf