Pakistan will regret letting the Army back in

It’s usually easy to know when a country has fallen to military dictatorship. Tanks on the streets, uniforms in gilded palaces, the political class interned en masse. Sometimes, however, the takeover is more subtle, more insidious. That is what has befallen Pakistan over the past few years, culminating in a constitutional amendment last week that gave its army chief, Asim Munir, additional powers and lifelong immunity from prosecution.

The “establishment” — Pakistanis’ euphemism for their powerful military and the industries and organizations it controls — has held a large share of power since its first decade as an independent nation. But democratic politicians have usually been arrayed in opposition, displacing it when it stumbled, such as after the country lost its eastern half, now Bangladesh, in 1971.

That’s not the case now. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is very conscious that he serves at Munir’s pleasure, not the National Assembly’s. As is his rival-turned-coalition partner in the Pakistan People’s Party, President Asif Zardari. In recent years, they have surrendered civilians’ hard-won privileges back to the army, and to Munir in particular. 

First, the general was granted economic decision-making powers, co-chairing a special investment council with Sharif meant to oversee strategically important projects. Then he was elevated to the rank of Field Marshal, becoming only the second person in Pakistan’s history to hold that distinction — alongside its first military dictator, Ayub Khan.

Now the army chief has been raised above the leaders of the other two forces, and put in sole charge of the country’s nuclear weapons systems. As Chief of Defense Forces, the clock on Munir’s tenure has been reset; instead of retiring, he will serve out a fresh five-year term in his new post.

If, at the end of that time, he tells the prime minister and president that he wishes to be re-appointed, will they deny him? Given the power that they have already granted Munir, it is impossible to imagine they will.

And that’s the problem. Munir may have reached for power, but it is the civilian leaders who have given it to him.

They might think their reasons for doing so are sensible. Zardari, who has spent years in prison already, may be so tired of prosecution that he welcomes a constitutional change that effectively confers immunity on the president as well as the defense chief. Sharif might well want to keep the military satisfied while the government goes about what he probably thinks is the far more urgent business of repairing Pakistan’s creaking economy. Inflation, at 38% in his first year, is now under control at around 3.6% year-on-year, and GDP is growing at 2.9% although it was negative in 2023.

And both will see Munir as an ally against the danger of the unstable populist Imran Khan, a former prime minister who was first propped up by the army and then turned against them. Khan’s party got the most seats in the last election — even though it had been crippled by its leader’s imprisonment — and he remains popular in large parts of the country.

But none of these count as a compelling reason to so easily relinquish advantages over the establishment that civilian politicians had worked long and hard to achieve. Two decades ago, Pakistan’s last outright military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, had to put on civilian mufti and pretend to be a regular president. (He resigned in 2008 because he feared the democratically elected national assembly was about to impeach him.) 

Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chose to retire when he decided his time had come, declaring that he shared “the general opinion that institutions and traditions are stronger than individuals and must take precedence.” And by the time Munir’s immediate predecessor, Qamar Javed Bajwa, retired, he was willing to admit that the army was unpopular because of its “interference in politics for the last 70 years” and promised that it would never do so again.

At no point did Pakistan’s democrats completely escape the shadow of the army — but institutionally and symbolically, the uniforms had begun to give way to the suits. The fear of instability, India, and Imran shouldn’t have led the politicians to give up on these two decades of progress.

Perhaps it’s been easy for the army men precisely because, this time, there have been no tanks on the streets. Munir, unlike Musharraf, is willing to share the limelight with civilians. His new prominence in affairs that shouldn’t be his remit — foreign affairs, economics — is accompanied by a theatrical deference to the civilian authorities even as his own power increases.

This is visible at international summits, most recently in Saudi Arabia, Beijing and Washington. Sharif brings him to meetings, introduces him to foreign leaders, and then the general steps back and lets the prime minister do the talking. The courtesies of civilian supremacy are punctiliously observed, while real power ebbs away — or, perhaps, is handed over. Pakistan’s fragile democracy is damaged either way.