:: Inder Malhotra

Pakistan Army, US link and Benazir

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IT IS necessary to revert to the two important books on Pakistan, last discussed on May 28 — Shuja Nawaz’s Crossed Swords and Shyam Bhatia’s political biography of Benazir Bhutto — because of the great many insights they provide. Two notable chapters in Bhatia’s book are on Benazir’s "American connection" and "India link." Equally noteworthy is his massive marshalling of facts that underscore her husband Asif Zardari’s and her own alleged corruption on the one hand, and the fierce family feuds, particularly between her and her brother Murtaza, on the other. The latter led to his macabre murder by the Pakistan police when she was Prime Minister. The author emphasises that but for the sustained efforts of her American friend from Harvard days, Peter Galbraith (son of John Kenneth Galbraith and on Congressional staff then), Benazir might not have been rescued from Zia-ul-Haq’s tyranny, nor perhaps appointed Prime Minister in 1988.

Unfortunately for her — and this has always been the case with Pakistan’s "courting of Uncle Sam" — the Americans, as usual, tilted the scales in favour of the Army. To become the first, and so far only, woman Prime Minister of a Muslim country, Benazir had to enter into a Faustian bargain with disastrous results. As for India, the hype on both sides of the sub-continental divide that she and Rajiv Gandhi, the two young leaders "unencumbered" by the baggage of Partition, would usher in an era of lasting peace soon yielded place to rude reality. Benazir gave full support to the ISI-backed insurgency in Kashmir, delivered her famous hysterical speech close to the LoC, broke off foreign secretary-level talks, and promoted the Taliban in Afghanistan. During her prolonged self-exile, however, all her statements on India were positive. Whether, on returning to power a third time she would have honoured them would never be known, alas.

Where Bhatia’s book briefly overlaps that of Shuja Nawaz is on the issue of how Benazir "dealt with her generals". The sad truth is that it was the generals, led by the then Army Chief, General Aslam Beg, who treated her with scant respect and eventually delivered her a shattering blow. As Nawaz’s thorough and remarkable account establishes, Beg and the Corps Commanders had decided on July 21, 1990 that Benazir must go. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan sacked her on August 6.

It is a truism that the history of Pakistan, with all its painful twists and turns, is really the history of the Pakistan Army. On this count Nawaz’s Crossed Swords is both incomparable and invaluable. With a wealth of details and insights — some hitherto unavailable for being locked up in the archives of the Pakistani GHQ — he has shown how and why the Pakistan Army became the "prime player" on the national scene, remains so today and, despite the "end game" of the Musharraf’s expected exit, looks like maintaining its supremacy. Only the other day, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, went to the GHQ to proclaim that the Army remained the guardian of Pakistan’s frontiers as well as "ideology."

Nawaz is candid enough to admit that the discipline of the Pakistan Army had dwindled as early as during the first Kashmir War (1947-48). Many military officers had exuberantly joined the "raiders" without authorisation. Their later lament that "bungling politicians" had let them down by accepting the cease-fire was to become the theme song of Army officers, whetting the appetite of General (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan to seize power. Undoubtedly, both politicos and bureaucrats — Ghulam Mohammed and particularly Iskander Mirza — through their lust for power combined with folly, played straight into the hands of Ayub, who had written out his scheme in a hotel room in London years earlier! A telling remark of Nawaz in this connection is: "The US-Pakistan Army nexus was apparently on firm footing. The Mirza-US nexus was on less firm ground... "

A crass and compliant higher judiciary contributed materially to the Army’s consolidation of its power. Chief Justice Mohammed Munir had discovered or invented the "doctrine of necessity" that became "a talisman to legitimise the illegitimate," in the words of the conspicuously authoritarian former Army Chief, General Beg. To say this is not to overlook that Pakistan Army has never been free from the flaws and failings that had made civilian governments so expendable. These faults include the sectarian (Shia-Sunni) divide; tribal loyalties; rivalry between Punjabi and Pathan members of the officer corps on the one hand and between these two together and the mohajirs (migrants from India and their descendants), on the other. No wonder incredibly Byzantine intrigue and what Nawaz calls "wars within" have become routine every time a new Army Chief has to be chosen. Equally obvious is the huge damage done by Zia’s relentless Islamisation of Pakistan’s Army and society.

It is in this context that General Jehangir Karamat — one of the few highly respected former Army Chiefs and the only one to let a civilian Prime Minister ease him out — has stated pertinently: "As for as the track record of the military as rulers is concerned, I am afraid it is not much better than the civilians’."