Aqil Shah
Enough with the coup-mongering by Aqil Shah
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August 9th by Aqil Shah.
ON July 26, the PPP-led coalition government kicked up a dust storm with the decision to reign in the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) by putting it under the control of the interior ministry. Two weeks on the controversy generated in its wake refuses to die.
Retired generals, diplomats, defence analysts, TV anchors and other usual suspects have since ripped into the government like sharks, citing the decision and its quick reversal as evidence of the government’s incompetence, ineffectiveness, chicanery and, above all, its desire to appease the Americans angry over the ISI’s alleged support to the Taliban. In the words of one analyst, the episode was akin to “buffoonery with sinister intent”.
The few sane voices emphasising the principle of civilian control over the ISI were naturally drowned out in the deafening diatribe. Not that all the criticism of the decision was unreasonable. But neither was it all reasonable. The retired generals were quick to remind us ‘bloody civilians’ that internal and external intelligence are two distinct functions performed everywhere in the world by distinct agencies. Hence, the interior ministry has no business controlling the ISI, an agency primarily concerned with counter-intelligence like the American CIA, the British MI6 or the Indian RAW.
That is indeed true but in none of these countries is counter-intelligence run by the military. And unlike the ISI none of these agencies are in the business of rigging elections and destabilising elected governments. Neither do they run a foreign policy shop without civilian oversight. And above all, they are civilianised and actually report to their country’s chief executive.
In Pakistan the ISI too is responsible to the prime minister. Technically speaking, that is. It is common knowledge that the ISI chief is a military officer whose professional loyalties lie with the chief of army staff. When Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto appointed a retired general, Shamsur Rehman Kallue, to the post in her first tenure, he was reportedly kept out of the loop by his uniformed deputies. The same was apparently the case even with Lt Gen Ziauddin during Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure as he was considered close to the PM.
Prime ministers, in other words, usually have had little or no clue of what the ISI is really up to. After all, it was the ISI’s ‘midnight jackals’ who tried to engineer a no-confidence motion against the elected PPP government in 1990. Here is the problem: each civilian government finds itself in the unenviable position of claiming responsibility over the military and the ISI, as the prime minister did in Washington recently, but without the requisite authority to fulfil that claimed responsibility. Lacking an independent, reliable civilian source of intelligence, they rely on what the ISI tells them.
Is it not unfair that such a huge fuss was kicked up over one badly executed decision of an elected government which has the publicly mandated right to be wrong? One rarely hears loud protests when the army puts the entire constitutional structure of the state under its unlawful command as it did for instance in October 1999. The then ‘reluctant’ coup-maker Gen Pervez Musharraf was obviously well within his rights to lock up the elected prime minister under subhuman conditions and to usurp all executive powers by brute force. No blurring of institutional boundaries there. After all, how can the uniformed guardians of the state’s integrity do any wrong? They are always ready to protect us from ourselves and the politicians we put in office.
No wonder the civilian government has been in office for just four months and its funeral rites are already being delivered left, right and centre. The whispering campaign against it appears to be gathering momentum in and outside the electronic and print media. The army chief is being reminded by a few self-appointed patriots of his responsibility to save Pakistan from growing internal and external threats. The prediction in vogue: two more months and the present system is history.
Of course the civilian government has not done itself any favours by appearing rudderless and indecisive. Of course it should better communicate and coordinate its decisions with its coalition partners, the parliament and other stakeholders. Of course it should have carefully weighed and deliberated its options before taking the decision on the ISI and then stuck to its guns. But effective leadership and governance do not arise overnight in countries with long histories of military rule and entrenched military influence. The spectre of military vetoes and pressures haunts governments in post-authoritarian contexts. Where national leaders are routinely dismissed from office, jailed, exiled or killed, expecting the miracle of instant statesmanship from politicians is a fool’s dream.
Even as doubts about the coalition government’s survival abound, the PPP and the PML-N appear close to an agreement on the modalities of resolving the two key issues straining the coalition: restoration of the deposed judges and Musharraf’s impeachment. Their resolution will represent an important move towards strengthening democracy and civilian supremacy over the military, as will the repeal of presidential powers to sack governments and appoint military services’ chiefs. Once these critical bottlenecks are removed, the coalition government should be in a better position to expend more time and resources on the pressing economic, security and governance challenges facing Pakistan.
Regardless, we must not lose patience with democracy which is a cumbersome process. Mistakes are common, policymaking can be slow and often stalled, and even when its kinks are removed over time, democracy becomes ‘less imperfect’ at best. But to repeat a truism, any non-democratic option is hardly ever better. The patent failure of Musharraf’s authoritarian rule, if not those of his military predecessors, is here for all of us to see and it should serve as a dreadful lesson to anyone itching for yet another dose of ‘good governance’ under military auspices.
If our own experience with autocratic regimes is not sufficiently instructive for the coup-mongers amongst us, they should take a cue from the German and Italian intellectuals who initially welcomed fascism in the interwar period as an alternative to defective parliamentary democracy. They had nothing but regrets once fascism bared its ugly teeth. By then it was too late.
Dealing with militants by Aqil Shah
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July 26th by Aqil Shah.
STATES are supposed to wield legitimate monopoly over the means of coercion in the territory under their control. That’s what makes them states.
In Pakistan, however, Taliban militants have successfully challenged and displaced state authority in many parts of Fata and even some settled districts of the NWFP. While the image of a state collapsing before marauding Taliban militants might be far-fetched, it is not a good sign when they can routinely kidnap and slaughter security personnel with virtual impunity and openly threaten the NWFP provincial government with dire consequences if it does not call off military operations against them. And their actions across the border in Afghanistan are creating grounds for US threats of unilateral action in the tribal areas.
What is the federal government doing about all this? In view of the prime minister’s forthcoming visit to Washington, the coalition principals’ meeting held on July 23 expressed the government’s resolve to tackle militancy through political means backed by the threat of military force. But we have heard that before without much concrete progress on the ground. No doubt suicide attacks inside Pakistan have decreased in frequency since the civilian government assumed power in March. But then the militants have shown that they retain the right to strike any time, anywhere in Pakistan.
Cross-border attacks in Afghanistan have also reportedly intensified in recent months. With 45 fatalities, June 2008 proved the deadliest month for US-led forces since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. Facing intense external pressure to plug the flow of militants into Afghanistan, the government designated the army chief as “the principal for application of military effort”, and ceded him the authority to command “the Frontier Corps and other law enforcement agencies for military operations”, and to “decide on the quantum, composition and positioning of military efforts”.
Giving the military an autonomous and expansive internal security mission only seemed to belie the government’s earlier claim that it was pursuing a coordinated political-cum-military anti-terror strategy in the tribal areas. Brute military force was tried in Fata and it failed, period. Whether it was a problem of capacity or strategy, or both, the military’s anti-terror operations carried out under American pressure did not achieve their main objective of flushing out militants from their hideouts. What is clear is that heavy use of force alienated the local populations which only helped fuel militancy.
The use of force in fact cost the security forces dearly in the form of deadly suicide attacks inside heavily guarded military installations. When faced with heavy losses, the military haphazardly struck peace deals brokered by the JUI-F with the militants. While these deals typically bypassed the civil administration, they achieved little in terms of peace.
Under the terms of the North Waziristan pact of September 2006, for instance, the government ceased military operations, released militants, returned their weapons, removed army check posts and agreed to allow foreigners to stay in the tribal areas if they renounced violence. The militants pledged that they would not challenge the state’s writ, and cease attacks on Pakistani troops as well as cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. They obviously had no intention of sticking to their side of the bargain and swiftly denied the presence of foreigners in the area. In the meantime, they continued to run Taliban-style parallel mini-states and gradually spread their influence to other tribal agencies and the rest of the NWFP. That much we know.
On its part, the Bush administration has made a mess of things in Afghanistan and, by corollary, in Fata. The administration’s diversion of military and intelligence resources from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 allowed Al Qaeda and their Taliban and other allies to regroup, reorganise, recruit and train for the battle in Afghanistan. As America’s trusted ally, the military under Musharraf cooperated with the US in capturing Al Qaeda fugitives amid allegations that it was concurrently patronising at least the Afghan Taliban as an insurance policy against arch rival India’s growing influence in Afghanistan.
With the Taliban insurgency raging, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been repeatedly pointing fingers at Pakistan for what largely appear to be his US-backed government’s governance and security failures. Karzai has accused the ISI of orchestrating the July 7 car bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul which left nearly 60 dead. The Indian government too has alleged that “elements in Pakistan” are behind the Kabul blast. Neither has yet furnished any evidence to back up their claims. In turn, Pakistan has blamed India for using its consulates along the Pak-Afghan border for stirring trouble in Fata (and Balochistan), again without providing any evidence.
As the India-Pakistan rivalry reaches deep into Afghanistan, it will not be surprising if attempts continue to deny India a footing in Pakistan’s ‘backyard’. There is no denying that we live in a tough neighbourhood. But because it is devoid of any serious input from the civilian political leadership or civil society, our national security policy has traditionally reflected the military’s deep organisational biases towards India rather than our broad economic and/or foreign policy priorities. But it is not the Indians alone that scare us. We are told that once the Americans are done with Iran, or even before that, they are coming for us. Their plan, apparently, is to slice up and denuclearise the only Muslim nuclear state. These are not facts, at least not as yet.
But here is an undeniable fact to consider: the tribal areas of Pakistan are being used by foreign and local militants to launch cross-border attacks on Afghan and Nato forces. And Pakistan is under international obligations to deny the use of its territory to terrorists. UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and hence legally binding, directs member states to “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts” and “prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other States or their citizens”.One can only welcome the stated determination of the coalition partners to disallow the use of Pakistani territory for cross-border militancy. But actions tend to speak louder than words. Only if the government implements its avowed policy can it reverse the perception that it has passed the buck to the military.
The writer, a PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University, is conducting doctoral research in Pakistan.
as2552@columbia.edu
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