The new army high command is trying to dismantle many of the tragic legacies of the Zia-Beg regime. About time. It has finally signalled a change in Afghan policy in conformity with the UN peace-plan. Excellent. It is keen to mend fences with the US over the question of nuclear proliferation and weapons for Pakistan. Good. There is a perceptible attempt to clip the terrorist wings of the MQM. Better late than never. Fundamentalist ‘Islamic’ groups which have long blackmailed society and governments now find the going tough. Which is as it should be. In particular, the army chief is backing the policies of the elected government rather than thinking of taking over. Thank God for that!
These are potentially far-reaching developments. But we are entitled to ask whether they are sufficiently rooted in the institution of the army to sustain a liberal, more realistic posture in the years ahead. Or are these changed cosmetic because they are hitched to the personality of Gen Asif Nawaz as COAS rather than to the evolving ethos and political outlook of the officers’ corps?
Gen Ayub Khan’s cosmopolitan demeanor and political philosophy appropriately reflected the concerns and attitudes of the officers’ corps of his times. By and large, senior officers came from rural, economically self-sufficient, land-owning gentries in the Punjab and the NWFP with liberal, Westernised value-systems. The army fitted in well with the anti-communist agenda of the cold war. That is one reason why Ayub lasted ten years.
By the time Gen Zia ul Haq departed in the late 1980s, however, the liberal army elites had rapidly thinned. They were progressively replaced by officers recruited in the late 1950s and 60s with urban, middle-class backgrounds and relatively conservative, home-spun views emphasising upward mobility and cultural autonomy. Zia himself was an early forerunner of this trend though his rise to the top slot in the mid 70s had more to do with his personality and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s flawed vision than to any intrinsic merit or rootedness in the senior officers’ corps of the time.
All that changed radically in the 1980s. Zia discovered that a new officers’ corps was now at hand as a developed constituency on which to base his middle-class ambitions and ‘Islamic’ predilections. Fortunately, too, for him, the ‘Islamic nationalism’ of this home-spun elite sat comfortably with the new exigencies of the cold war, in particular the ‘Islamic jihad’ in Afghanistan. That is one reason why Zia lasted 11 years.
Gen Aslam Beg was not so fortunate. Although he too belonged to the new, indigenous officers’ corps, his Muhajir background wasn’t exactly conducive to building a personal base among his predominantly Punjabi-Pathan colleagues in a national mood pre-occupied by caste and ethnicity. Beg was also at odds with the requirements of the post-cold war world dominated by the US which demanded from Pakistan an open, liberal response rather than the anti-West, inward-looking stance espoused by him. That is why he lasted only three years.
Gen Asif Nawaz is among the last of a vanishing, liberal breed, circa 1950s. He is a Punjabi, Sandhurst-trained soldier whose professionalism conforms to the requirements of the new order in which Pakistan desperately seeks to find a passage t the new century. In that sense, he has much going for him and is exactly what Pakistan needs at this juncture.
But his task is no easy one. He has inherited an army whose officers’ mindset is suspiciously encumbered in the cultural milieu and ‘nationalist’ rhetoric of the 1980s as evidenced by soldiers of the new breed like Gan Hameed Gul. When Gen Beg articulated an anti-West, pro-Iraq position during the Gulf War, reflecting public hysteria in much of the Muslim world, he found considerable support within the army. When Gen Gul was abruptly transferred, eyebrows were raised again. It is also no secret that several senior officers in critical positions, who were promoted ruing the last two years, share many of the concerns of soldiers like Beg and Gul. Therefore, unless the new COAS is able to persuade his senior colleagues of the compelling wisdom of these times and institutionalise extensive reforms and re-education within the army, he will not be able to make his political initiatives stick.
Gen Asif Nawaz’s task is all the more difficult because fundamentalist groups who oppose his outlook have acquired a strong foothold in the IJI government which is out of all proportion t their electoral strength. Such individuals and parties have already succeeded in diminishing the liberal impact of the elected government and daily threaten it with reprisals unless it tows their line.
Neither Mian Nawaz Sharif nor Gen Asif Nawaz can singly hope to charter the frontiers of a modern, new Pakistan without shedding much of the dead wood of the past. Both are in danger of being left stranded if they do not clean up their respective houses first. There is much to be gained by taking the opposition into confidence and together straining to show the way forward. Otherwise an unholy alliance of fundamentalists and disgruntled generals which threatens to undo all the positive intentions in Islamabad and Rawalpindi cannot be ruled out.