Limits of khaki ability

Legal eye
Before ‘patriots’ pounce on the use of the term ‘ability’, it is not used pejoratively to discredit khakis but only to refer to the suitability of the army to do certain things as opposed to others. The question of khaki ability is relevant as messiah season is upon us again. If we are to be saved it will be because General Raheel Sharif has decided to save us, many are saying. Corrupt politicos can’t self-correct; only someone from outside can cleanse political stables. And the only institution with the power and ability to do so is the military, goes the argument.
The military high command ought to beware. This is a false argument. It was used to flatter and encourage military dictators and army chiefs in the past to subvert the constitution, usurp political power and take direct control of the state. And it will continue to be used in the foreseeable future. The previous results weren’t pretty (for the military or the country) and future misadventures will only aggravate our multifarious problems. Our dictators failed not because they couldn’t do it right, but because their solution has a design fault.
General Sharif has done most things right so far. The politicos ought to have forged a national consensus against terror but didn’t. General Sharif launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb to reclaim the state’s writ over vast swathes of territory lost to the TTP (which his predecessor failed to do), extended the anti-terror operation to Karachi and cultivated public opinion in favour of indiscriminate action against terrorists of all hues. This is no mean achievement. And his PR team has done a great job building his brand as a relentless soldier who means business.
But it is important not to get carried away while the going is good. Remember how General Kayani was projected and pampered during the first couple of years of his tenure as army chief? He was the soldiers’ soldier, the thinking general, the one who could counsel President Obama on how to fight the war on terror. And then he got a tad overambitious. It was downhill all the way from the moment he decided that three years weren’t enough and he wanted more.
Are there cultures around the world where flattery has acquired the form of art it has in ours? The mastery that the ambitious have over using false praise and projecting sincere agreement with nonsense, the joy that the powerful derive from puffery and their refusal to accept any criticism, and the propensity of otherwise sensible grown men to stay mum to avoid ruffling feathers creates a habitat where illusions of grandeur and indispensability can grow magically without any connection to reality. It is worth reminding any wannabe De Gaulles what Charles said about indispensables: that graveyards are full of them.
There is little doubt that the military is the only entity in Pakistan that thinks and functions like an institution. Its organisational ability and skill is the basic reason why we are less susceptible to falling off the precipice in the face of a challenge as daunting as terror, despite being a polity afflicted by extremism. But having the ability to singlehandedly prevent a state from falling off the precipice is one thing and curing it of its ills and leading it out of the woods is another. The military’s ability to do the former is no basis to proclaim that it capable of doing the latter.
And in order to keep doing the former effectively, it is essential that it keep in check the instinct to save the country from corruption and mal-governance. The military is primarily our external security agency. Post-9/11 it has continued to evolve as the predominant internal security agency too. Post-Peshawar, it has emerged the primary agency executing the National Action Plan. As part of the NAP, it is involved in tracking and controlling terror funding, which in turn has involved it in tracking and controlling the produce of crime in Karachi.
While tracking the produce of crime in Karachi and by virtue of being in control of the intelligence infrastructure, the military ends up becoming aware of instances of corruption, white-collar crime and wrongdoing by public officials. But it is here that it must draw a red line. Rather than getting involved with checking building encroachments and other malfeasance that falls within the civilian realm, the information should be passed on to other relevant agencies (i.e. NAB or FIA or provincial anti-corruption departments).
The failure to do so will raise questions about growing civil-military imbalance, drag the military into the political thicket, distract it from the required focus on fighting terror and render the required anti-terror operation vulnerable to being perceived as a cover to expropriate already circumscribed civilian authority. The point is not that corruption and mal-governance are tolerable, but that it is not the military’s job to sit in judgement over the failings of civilian institutions. And it isn’t as if there isn’t already enough on military’s platter.
The leadership challenge for General Sharif isn’t tackling civilian mal-governance. The real challenge is two-fold.
One, ensuring that with the belligerent statements emanating from the Modi government in India and the growing anxiety of the Ghani government in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s national security policy and mindset don’t regress back to the 90s, and that the state of Pakistan doesn’t preserve non-state actors and the jihadi project to deter India or retain its leverage with Afghanistan.
Two, implementing the resolve to eliminate terror in all its manifestations and treating the dismantling of ability of any and all non-state actors to attack the state and challenge its monopoly over violence (even if they are not doing so at present) as the next logical step in the anti-terror operation. And in this context taking the lead to deweaponise seminaries and ensure that they are neither nurturing terrorism nor preaching extremism.
It was the use of non-state actors as an extension of Pakistan’s national security policy that allowed religion-inspired militancy to emerge and acquire strength of such proportion that it became capable of challenging the state of Pakistan. Given the hostility emanating from the ruling Indian regime and the deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan, it could be tempting to see the good jihadists as a necessary evil in the immediate future. The military high command must not commit such fatal error once again.
Let us acknowledge that Pakistan’s problem is not that its politicos alone are unaccountable but that its entire power elite is unaccountable. In his seminal work, The Power Elite, C Wright Mills had argued in 1956 that interests of political, military and corporate elements of the society are aligned and entwined and the citizens are powerless in comparison and subject to exploitation by these interest groups. The history of Pakistan confirms the theory: abuse of power and accumulation of pelf have been equally rampant during civilian rule and military rule.
If politicos are unwilling to allow penal consequences to flow from abuse of authority, which institution willingly presents itself for public or legal scrutiny? The khaki sense of esprit de corps is probably the staunchest amongst institutions. But don’t bureaucrats band together to defend their tribe? Has the Supreme Judicial Council emerged as a forum of effective judicial accountability? Do we hear about licences of lawyers, accountants or doctors being revoked by their professional bodies? The point is that it is easy to hold others accountable.
If the military wishes to get into the business of accountability, let charity begin at home. Do any generals live beyond their known or declared means? Let the military hold them to account publicly and shame other institutions into following suit.
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu