Manipal, India — It is small wonder that
Pakistan's army chief, Parvez Ashfaq Kiyani, prefers to dial the number of the
ever-obedient (to him) prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, rather than that of
the newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, who has apparently undergone an
epiphany since assuming what is formally the highest office in his country.
Zardari has changed from cue boy of the
Inter Services Intelligence – and thus by extension the Pakistan army – to a
leader with very different views on the correct path that his country ought to
follow. Instead of the endless repetitions of the many "sacred" wars
that the military has been touting as justification for taking away one-third
of the country's budget – directly and through agencies connected with it –
Zardari has given public expression to the view of most of Pakistan's
non-Wahabbi majority, that it is time to put aside jihad and concentrate on
economic growth.
The reason for such a transformation may
lie in the clumsy and continuous efforts of the army brass to prevent the heir
to the late Benazir Bhutto’s mantle from assuming any office in
"civilian-controlled" Pakistan. Numerous hints, designed to prod
Zardari into selecting yet another army pawn as the head of state, failed. So
the generals looked toward the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush
to scupper the move, having given their numerous backers in Washington details
about Zardari – details unsuitable for audiences below the age of consent.
None of this seemed to have affected his
marriage, however. Interestingly, Benazir Bhutto chose as her consort a man
very similar in temperament to her idol, her father Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. Like
his future son-in-law, Papa Bhutto was a playboy with a mercurial disposition
as well as an exuberant and sometimes extra-rational belief in his own
capabilities. Bhutto too spoke in populist language, even while being unstinted
in his taste for the good life. And he too saw the army as the single obstacle
to his power.
Unlike the pliant Gilani, who delights in
spending time with the brass and their families, since his inauguration
President Zardari has maintained a distance between himself and the army’s
General Headquarters. Although at first he seemed to accept the role of
camouflage agent that the Pakistan military has invariably asked the civilian
leadership to perform, within a month, things changed.
The army has been pointing to the civilian
leadership as the reason why it is "unable" to do more against the
Taliban state taking shape in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, when in fact it
has been its own terror-and-narcotics-driven linkages to the jihadis that has
stopped them from stamping this band out. Should the Taliban be denied the
financial and logistical support of GHQ, this ragtag band of adventurers would
fold in six weeks.
Sadly, as yet, both the Pentagon and the
Bush White House are in denial about the role of the Pakistan military in
propping up the Taliban. Now they have been given a choice: to back Zardari in
his coming duel against the generals, or to once again side with the men in
khaki.
Most U.S. "South Asia experts"
would favor Kiyani, who has been busy convincing them of the "severe
constraints" being invisibly placed by the civilian government headed by
Gilani, roadblocks that, according to Kiyani, are preventing more effective
action against the Taliban. Kiyani is known to favor the self-defeating policy
of "engaging" the Taliban in booty-sharing exercises rather than
bringing to bear the array of U.S.-supplied weaponry against them.
Should U.S. policymakers throw their weight
behind the army chief, within a few months a major scandal can be expected to
surface that would fell Zardari, who would then be swiftly replaced with an army
proxy. Of course, media everywhere can be expected to celebrate the fall of
"Mr. 10 Percent," the way they have lionized former Chief Justice
Iftikhar Choudhury, an individual openly linked to the wealthiest politician in
Pakistan, Mian Nawaz Sharif, who has made his peace with the army brass.
Zardari seems to have moved beyond showing
the caution of Benazir, whose pliability to the army's diktat did not save her –
or him. Rather, he is exhibiting the feistiness of her father Zulfiqar, in
refusing to act as the civilian face behind the army's desire to keep NATO out
of Pakistan's tribal areas, despite these being the base area for the war in
Afghanistan. He has, unlike his party's prime minister, refused to back the
generals in their covert war on India, preferring instead to go the route of
conciliation.
Kiyani is now in a process of consolidation
of power, and has handed out key posts only to those loyal to the "Kiyani
strategy" of overt cooperation with NATO combined with covert subversion,
driving out those officers from sensitive posts who were loyal to former army
chief Pervez "Busharraf."
Simultaneously, he has launched a charm
offensive in NATO capitals, talking in the tones of an ally while allowing the
civilians to convey the message that NATO should rely on Pakistan the way the
CIA so catastrophically did during the anti-USSR jihad in the 1980s.
As the Washington establishment all have a
history of credulity vis-a-vis the character of the Pakistan military, the
United States may yet decide to believe the men in uniform, stalwart chaps so
different from "Mr. 10 Percent," forgetting once again that the
Pakistan army is the only major provider of strength to the Taliban.
Unless the army's bluff is called, and it
is forced into either accepting NATO intervention or itself stamping out the
Taliban, the situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan will worsen terminally.
It is Zardari rather than Kiyani who may be the more reliable ally in the
anti-terror war now raging in the Pashtun heartland.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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