State action and non-state actors: Pakistan’s politics

Since its inception, Pakistan has witnessed the active role of the army in influencing politics.

The horrific attack by terrorists belonging to The Resistance Front (TRF) in the Baisaran meadows of Pahalgam, killing tourists, a majority of whom were Hindus, has badly damaged the narrative of normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). 

It has once again demonstrated that as long as Pakistan continues to support non-state actors sent across the border, to use the phrase coined by US academic C Christine Fair in her book on the Lashkar-e-Taiba, there will be “no good options, just less bad options” for India.

After the attack on the Jaffer Express in Balochistan on March 11, a threat to raise the threshold of violence in Kashmir had become likely. It was almost implicit in the March 14 statement of Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director General, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in Pakistan, when he accused India of being its “main sponsor”.

The instigation seemed much more direct after the speech given by Pakistan’s army chief, Gen Asim Munir, at the Overseas Pakistani Convention in Islamabad on April 16, where he harked back to Pakistan’s creation on the basis of the 'two–nation' theory and re-iterated the oft-touted stance of Pakistani politicians and army generals about Kashmir being Pakistan’s 'jugular vein'. Munir exhorted Pakistanis to teach their children to remember that Muslims and Hindus had separate identities, cultures and ambitions.

One must go back to history to understand this decades’ old nexus in Pakistan’s use of terror to enhance its conventional military clout through non-state actors. Immediately after Partition, the army’s top leadership remained obsessed with visions of insecurity vis-à-vis the Indian Army. This angst stemmed from several glaring inequities in division of assets. The shortage of officers and stores was shared by both armies in a ratio of 36:64.

Pakistan got six armoured regiments, eight artillery and infantry regiments each, compared to India’s 12 armoured and 21 infantry regiments. It could inherit only two major institutions — the Staff College, Quetta, and the Army Service Corps School near Abbottabad, which later became the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul. In East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, the Army only got the regimental training centre in Chittagong. 

With the controversy over accession of Kashmir erupting, the die seemed cast as Poonchi ex-servicemen forged an alliance with tribesmen from North-West Frontier Province and Army regulars led by Colonel Akbar Khan, to provoke the first war between India and Pakistan in 1948-49. 

Akbar came up with a so-called “action plan” for “armed revolt inside Kashmir”, assuming the mythical identity of “Gen Tariq”, getting the Pakistan Army openly embroiled. After the January 1949 ceasefire, Akbar Khan, now promoted to Chief of General Staff, plotted with some mid-level officers and leftist politicians, and even poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, to launch the first unsuccessful coup attempt within the Army in March, 1951, which became known as the 'Rawalpindi conspiracy case'.

Through all these travails, the Pakistan Army cast itself in the role of defender of the country’s sovereignty, integrity and indeed, the very existence of the State of Pakistan. Dilly-dallying over Constitution-making was looked at askance and politicians of the day were disparaged. Islamic ideological underpinnings — of imam (belief), taqwa (fear of Allah), and jihad-fi-sabilillah (fight for the cause of Allah), were embraced as a crutch to justify military takeovers. The army subsequently never let go of control over the country’s security, and foreign and nuclear policies. 'Fighting to the end' (a phrase used by Fair to name her book on the Pakistan Army) against the arch enemy, India, became its unwritten raison d’etre. 

Role of the army 

Analysts refer to Pakistan’s army as having a State, instead of States having armies. The army’s political role was formalised over the course of four martial law take-overs, from Ayub to Zia to Musharraf, lasting through nine-to-11-year syndromes. The Kashmir issue was kept alive, if only to maintain domestic relevance and divert attention from governance failures.

The Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Enquiry report, submitted in July 1972, after the emergence of Bangladesh, temporarily damaged the army’s image, accusing it of carrying out senseless and wanton arson, killing intellectuals and professionals in Dhaka and Chittagong, and burying them in mass graves.

It also flagged corruption, the lust for wine and women in Yahya Khan’s coterie, and the endemic greed for lands and housing, to which a large number of senior army officers keep falling prey even today. Ayesha Siddiqa exposed these failings in her hard-hitting tome, 'Military Inc’' commonly termed 'Milbus' (military business).

When direct military governance became unacceptable to the army’s international patrons, experiments with hybrid models were started, promoting political protégés like Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and then Imran Khan. Ironically, each came to grief trying to remove shackles placed by their own hand-picked generals!

Asserting authority

Ever since Gen Asim Munir became army chief in November 2022, in somewhat controversial circumstances pertaining to his date of retirement, he has had to struggle to assert his authority both over peer officers and the political Opposition, which had been galvanised by ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan. 

Not only was Munir seen to come from the 'secondary' Officers Training Scheme (OTS) - against 'regular' Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) recruits, his top generals had to contend with Imran’s allegations referring openly to military leaders as 'Mir Jafars', or 'neutrals who behaved like animals'. 

The May 9, 2023 attack by irate masses on the Lahore Corps Commander’s 'Jinnah House' and other locations like the Army Headquarters, Rawalpindi and several martyrs' memorials all over the country revealed how much the army had come to be disliked by the common masses. 

Since then, as happens with any other army chief in Pakistan, Asim Munir was able to gradually assert his authority by bringing in loyalists like Lt Gen Shahid Imtiaz (also from the OTS stream) in crucial command slots like X Corps, Rawalpindi. He also extended the tenure of the Director General of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum and thereafter, brought in Lt Gen Mohd Asim Malik, son of a former general and 'sword of honour' holder of the 80th PMA Course, as the new director general. Malik has now been concurrently appointed National Security Advisor.

However, despite efforts to manage the February 2024 National Assembly elections and purge the higher judiciary perceived to be partial to Imran through the 26th Amendment, the impression has persisted that Munir is not working from a position of strength. The army leadership has failed to erode the narrative of victimisation or persecution projected so successfully by Imran Khan. The general masses feel, perhaps for the first time, that the Army as an institution has failed Pakistan. 

Emerging middle-class youth seem especially demoralised. There has been talk of a sustained 'brain drain', with opportunities being sought, through illegal traffickers too, to leave for Europe. In his talk on April 16, in some desperation, Munir tried to explain this away as 'brain gain'!

With a calibrated kinetic response from India probable in the near future, the army leadership may seek to unite the disgruntled masses behind it, if only to sustain its image as the country’s saviour all over again.

(Rana Banerji retired as Special Secretary at the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India.)