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Thursday March 28, 2024

Larger than life

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.In Imran Khan’s political world, all praise belongs to him and him alone. It was therefore exceptional for the PTI chairman to change his strict rules of self-compliment and call General Raheel Sharif, the current

By Syed Talat Hussain
August 31, 2015
The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
In Imran Khan’s political world, all praise belongs to him and him alone. It was therefore exceptional for the PTI chairman to change his strict rules of self-compliment and call General Raheel Sharif, the current chief of army staff, the most popular person in the country today. Imran said this in a televised interview knowing well that millions would be either watching it or would get to know about his statement through repeat telecasts.
His statement was in part meant to mock his arch rival, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but primarily it was in sync with the new narrative that is being built around the person of General Raheel Sharif in social as well as mainstream media that he is the man who can turn mountains of troubles into manageable molehills, that he is a miracle-maker, a saviour.
Such depiction of the leader of one of the world’s largest and nuclear-armed professional armies isn’t unusual. Historically, all those who were fortunate enough to make it to the top position that General Raheel Sharif holds today had their share of positive depictions that made them sound and look like exceptional human beings.
In his lifetime, Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s portrayal as reformer par excellence was as strong as General Yahya Khan’s stated acumen and astuteness was during his tenure. General Ziaul Haq’s shrewdness and piety was as big a legend of his days as General Aslam Beg’s assumed democratic credentials and strategic outlook. General Asif Nawaz’s reputation of being the ‘rock’ of his times competed only with General Waheed Kakar’s much-publicised fastidious adherence to ideas that he took a liking to. General Pervez Musharraf was famed as a combat-specialist-turned big planner while General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kiyani while in service was lauded as a man of thoughts and deep strategic thinking.
Each of these men (and there are any number of others who couldn’t command the army but tried to develop special auras around themselves by their own words spoken through their own mouths) in their position in power had the privilege of being served the most delicious meals of constant attention and endless compliments. If research wasn’t such a tedious thing, reading old newspapers would reveal fascinating tales of honour, dignity, bravery and talent about army chiefs designed for the consumption of the public.
(Just as fascinating is to read what was said about all of them the moment they retired or faded away! You would not find many compliments there.)
Viewed through the columns of their times they all appear Yeti-sized men in the one-and-only category, starkly different from and totally superior to the last one and unique in the sense of being irreplaceable. For each of them there was a darbar where poets wrote couplets in their unique honour and courtiers filled their endless yards kneeling, hailing, worshipping. Power is a strange powder. When sprinkled from above, it affects the darbar and darbaris more than the king himself.
Indeed all of them had special traits, some good, some bad but the manner in which they were built up while in they were in the lead position had little to do with who they actually were. It was a direct result of their position as army chiefs.
But in the case of General Raheel Sharif it would be wrong to see the hero-worship of his times to be a result of an historical practice alone. There are some hard realities at work that have allowed his man-of-the-moment image to be stamped all over the country. One of these realities is the expanding nature of the mandate that the federal government had given to conduct Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan. The legal, administrative and operational framework that has accompanied this important culmination of a decade-long military offensive to cleanse and stabilise the Fata region has now grown into a full-fledged idea to fight terror in all its forms, and everywhere.
The federal government had the key responsibility to keep counter-terror directives straight and narrow by shouldering the burden of other important reforms in the police and the judicial system and in tackling political challenges head-on. This responsibility has been discharged poorly. The military runs the courts, commands the police, fights corruption, rescues calamity-hit population, guarantees free and fair elections, mans Karachi’s politics, is central to dialogue with Baloch militants, is soon to play a central role in operations in southern Punjab and of course defends against aggression and devilish plots to destabilise the country.
Not only this; on critical areas such as terror finance, mega corruption and urban gangsters gobbling up government and state authority, federal agencies have simply either opted out of frontline roles or have been placed under the jurisdiction of the armed forces. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who refuses to have serious meetings included in his schedule after 7pm, has been lacklustre and underwhelming in his role as the chief executive of the country. Naturally, the dynamic has shifted towards the chief of army staff whose media managers’ slickness has added to the inflation of his presence on the national scene. From Shawal to Sialkot, from Karachi to Kotkai, the chief is everywhere.
The other hard reality contributing to the ongoing legend-making exercise is connected with politics. The popular theory in PML-N circles is that because most of the complex problems like our Fata troubles, Karachi’s mafias, and Balochistan turbulence have roots in the army’s past forays into politics, these should best be tackled by the brass itself. This means that the civilian authority suffers no great sense of being challenged by the generals when they choose their own way of interpreting their mandate to resolve these issues. As long as the results are in its favour and it does not have to pick up the political cost, the Nawaz government would not mind General Raheel Sharif earning all the lime-light as he cleans up the Aegean stables. This is lousy politics but is the inescapable result of laziness in wielding civilian authority in key matters of governance.
For the opponents of the Sharif government, essentially the PTI, an expanded role of the army in what are classic civilian affairs, serves two valuable purposes. One, it shows the federal government as incompetent and dysfunctional and incapable of leading the nation; the other is that it enhances the chances of friction in civil-military relations growing into some sort of a crisis allowing the call for fresh polls to have more resonance. Then the argument can be that a government that is useless, whose mandate is challenged and which has bad ties with an institution that is fighting for the survival of the country has no right to be in power. Praising General Raheel Sharif as the most popular man in the country, therefore, is useful in the framework of power politics.
Another equally important reality relates to the army’s image as a default option for the country in desperate times. Over the years, messages released on national days or statements that army chiefs make at important occasions speak of ‘the army and the people’ standing as one. They always express the resolve of never ‘letting the nation down’ and winning with the backing of the valiant people of Pakistan. All references to elected governments are conveniently omitted.
In its own assessment, the army’s self-image is too large and central to national existence to be confined to incompetent wielders of political power. The chief of this institution is not just another head that the prime minister appoints. He is an authority in his own right who, by doing the right things for the people of this country, can speak on their behalf as well. He is not elected but he looms larger than all elected representatives put together.
Because of considerable development in representative institutions, a liberated civil society voices, an active judiciary and inclusive media platforms, this idea of the army’s ‘natural mandate’ does not translate into outright interventions. But it does find unmistakable expressions in the kind of haloed imagery of General Raheel Sharif that we are witnessing these days.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12