More than a personality clash

Arifa Noor

THE civil-military saga continues to be the biggest

story coming out of Pakistan in the aftermath of
the Kartarpur opening. Many of the guests invited for
the ceremony haven’t stopped talking about all that is
hunky-dory between the PTI and the military.
Not that the visitors can be blamed, for most of us living here
can’t get over it either. Be it the critics of the government or
the government itself, this is a love story everyone believes in.
The prime minister himself can’t stop raving about it. Last
week, he claimed that the military stood by his party’s
manifesto, forcing the military spokesman to clarify what he
meant.
This obsession with all things nice between the inhabitants of
the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and those who live in Pindi is
a bit hard to understand, considering that there hasn’t been a
government which didn’t strive for and claim to be best
friends with the military in recent years.
Second, it is also hard to wrap one’s head around this
conclusion that all is well because Imran Khan was helped on
his way to Constitution Avenue.
And third, that he will get along well with the military because
he wants to.
The second of these arguments should have been put to bed a
long time ago, thanks to the manner in which each of the
PML-N’s terms have ended. The first and the third have been
challenged continuously in the post-2008 period, and yet we
expect Khan to live happily ever after.
The PPP and the PML-N too have had good moments with
the generals, as well as bad and ugly ones.
The 2008 elections followed complicated negotiations
between the PPP and Musharraf (who was represented by Gen
Asfhaq Kayani at times) which basically ended with the
understanding that elections would be held and the PPP
would be part of the government that came into being. That
Kayani was more than just Musharraf’s spokesman was
obvious as time went on.
Exclusive: The curious Presidency of Mr Zardari
The dispensation that came into being under the PPP was
never too uncomfortable letting the army take control. It was
in those heady days that Gen Kayani held meetings with
secretaries of key ministries such as finance, commerce and
agriculture at GHQ for the strategic dialogue with the United
States. Civilian supremacy was a myth back then too; we just
liked to pretend otherwise.
If anyone needs a reminder of the role Kayani played in those
days when democracy was vibrant, the politicians more
independent and the press freer, they should just go through
the WikiLeaks cables. At one stage, Kayani even bared his soul
to the US ambassador about ‘changing’ the president at the
height of the long march in 2009. And despite Kayani’s
dominance and the PPP’s mild manner, Asif Ali Zardari barely
spent six months without rumours of his departure
circulating.
In those days, the main opposition party wasn’t averse to
playing footsie with Kayani either. The 2008-2013 period was
when Shahbaz Sharif and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan were
regular visitors of a certain address in Pindi. And neither did
Nawaz Sharif’s distrust of the army (which we are all
supposed to accept blindly) prevent him from going to court
on Memogate. He is the one who asked the chief justice to find
out more about the Memogate scandal which had ‘ridiculed’
and ‘maligned’ the armed forces. Wonder where he got the
idea from?
In fact, there were many in those days who thought that
Nawaz Sharif, when he came to power, would enjoy a more
stable rule and better relations with the military because he
was Punjabi and a product of military rule. Neither of these
predictions came true.
Nawaz Sharif’s relations were even more tumultuous than
Zardari’s, despite the fact that he worked with three different
army chiefs. If Kayani’s stint passed quickly enough, the other
two seemed much longer than they were for the roller-coaster
ride that was civil-military relations. But like the PPP, Nawaz
Sharif didn’t declare war from day one. It was a love-hate
relationship in which there were always efforts to fix the
relationship till the summer of 2017.
Let’s not forget that at the height of the 2014 dharna, the
prime minister stood up in parliament and wondered if the
good general in Pindi would bother to mediate between those
sitting in parliament and those besieging it. And Raheel Sharif
took the speech so seriously that he invited Tahirul Qadri and
Imran Khan over for a chat. This happened at a time when the
entire PML-N and many more believed that the dharna was
orchestrated by some around Gen Sharif.
Dharna deadlock: Govt, PTI negotiators begin talks to end
crisis
This is not just a rant against the hypocrisy of the parties now
facing the wrath of the establishment, but to argue that civil-
military relations sour because of political fault lines. Despite
the baggage of the 1990s, the PPP and the PML-N too have
had good moments with the generals in charge, as well as bad
and ugly ones. And such is the nature of politics that the ugly
ones dominate.
Also, there is little chance that Imran Khan will have a very
different experience. Despite our tendency of turning civil-
military relations into simple cases of personality clashes, this
is far from reality. The tension doesn’t happen because the
Punjabi-dominated military doesn’t like Zardari or that
Nawaz Sharif hasn’t been able to get along with a single
military chief. Neither is it a case of military chiefs not being
able to make nice with politicians.
The problem is structural.
There is bound to be tension between a dominant stakeholder
and a civilian government which by dint of being in charge
ends up making decisions that will not always please the
former. This — and not personalities — causes the friction.
The opposition parties should remember this (and their own
backstage dealings with the military) as they complain about
Khan’s links with the establishment. And the PTI would do
well to remember this the next time it wants to once again
hold forth about the ‘one page’. Their Cinderella moment will
end too, once the clock strikes midnight.
The writer is a journalist.