Harvesting the civ-mil imbalance

The writer is an analyst and
commentator.

In his second address to the nation after the Panama Papers were released at the start of the month, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his intent to write that long-awaited letter to the chief justice to establish an inquiry mechanism into the leaked documents from Mossak Fonseca.

Sadly, it would have been hard to spot the announcement of the letter to the chief justice if one had not watched or heard the address by the prime minister carefully, because the announcement was buried at the very end of a long-winded diatribe that had little to do with the issues at the heart of the ‘Panama leaks’.

The controversy of the leaks is that officials elected to the highest offices in the land need to have blemish-free affairs, especially when it comes to finances. When people see the name of their prime minister or his close family members in a scandal like the Panama Papers, the confidence they have in the honesty and transparency of office-holders is jolted. Since Pakistani leaders already carry the burden of reputation, the degree of financial propriety becomes even more important. Since these leaders are trying to establish Pakistani democracy against great odds, getting things like this right becomes ever more critical.

Unfortunately, a third-time prime minister tends to be a little smarter than many of us in the peanut galleries. PM Sharif is a survivor of every manner of scandal. In his almost four decade-old political career, this is not the first time he has had to contend with disapproval. He knows both his audience, and his own strengths, and in his second address to the nation, instead of addressing the Panama Papers, the prime minister felt he would be much better served by digging up skeletons of the past.

It was a poor show, for those who seek a constantly improving democratic dispensation in Pakistan. It was also a smart move. The harvest of Pakistan’s civil-military disequilibrium is a bitter pill that both democrats and non-democrats alike will have to keep swallowing. Perhaps, ad infinitum.

The normative analysis here is painfully obvious. Public office is a sacred trust and those who breach it are not fit to lead us. The reality is even more painfully obvious, to those who would dare to take a break from the hyperventilating. Any breach of public trust is nearly impossible to prove, especially in a system of governance in which the courts, the police, the prisons system, investigators, prosecutors, and even laws, rules and regulations are in a deep state of disrepair.

When PM Sharif chooses to deflect attention from the alleged corruption of his own family, to the 1999 military takeover and the alleged corruption of other actors, both political and non-political, this is no simple act of deflection. It is political theatre at its most complex. The big question is whether he realises the quantum of damage this kind of theatre wreaks upon Pakistani democracy.

The stakes in the Panama Papers scandal are not as linear as many of us would like to pretend. Especially not when the news tickers come alive with stories about the dismissal from service of senior army officers, some as senior as three star generals. Why would the military begin leaking stories of such dismissals in the thick of the Panama Papers scandal? Why would the army chief issue a statement announcing his support for across the board accountability?

One reason is that the word corruption has been made synonymous with politics. It is a red rag that gets thrown around largely by army-worshipping types, for whom all good comes from Rawalpindi, and all evil comes from the ballot box. This is no exaggerated caricature. The problem isn’t that Pakistan’s public discourse is flush with such clowns. The problem is that many of these clowns constitute the thick-chewy centre of our mainstream.

Of course, our politicians don’t help matters. It is disgraceful to see pictures of the leaders of a poor country shopping at expensive stores, driving expensive cars, whilst facing questions about financial integrity. Yet the context here is critical. If most of the reason for such boneheaded behaviour has to do with how venal and truly corrupt Pakistani leaders are, at least some of it has to do with an innate desire to demonstrate having thick skin. Not every PR disaster is an accident. I would not be surprised if the Zardaris and Sharifs of this world sometimes go out of their way to confirm stereotypes as an act of defiance.

And this brings us back to PM Sharif’s seemingly ridiculous tactic of digging up the 1999 coup as a context for the Panama Papers scandal. The PM has been in the ring for so long, the only thing he knows how to do it seems is to take swings. Like Al Pacino’s character in ‘Justice for All’, when challenged, he bellows: “I’m outta order?”. And then responds himself: “You’re outta order, the whole trial’s outta order, they’re outta order…”. To Nawaz Sharif, and his supporters, the whole court, the whole system, is out of order. Which somehow, twistedly, makes it okay for him to be – if he really is – out of order. Twisted logic? Sure, but forget how twisted this is, from a normative lens. It also happens to be operationally dangerous. The reason this line of argument is dangerous and damaging for Pakistani democracy is much more urgent.

The civil-military divide, in which the word corruption has indeed been used as a dog whistle, needs bridging not because of corruption per se, but because of the imperfections, fallacies and distortions that a deep civ-mil imbalance creates.

One of the fruits of our national surplus of military wisdom is a problem so wide and vast that all of Pakistan’s foreign policy is essentially constrained and defined by it. For lack of better terminology, let us call it the Haqqani Network problem.

Last week’s terrorist attack in Kabul has mobilised two important constituencies firmly against Pakistan. The first is the US security establishment which, though ham-fisted and nearly-defeated in Afghanistan, sources a significant portion of its frustrations to Pakistan. The second is the National Unity Government in Afghanistan, which, though divided on many things, seems to be able to unite on how every shard of fuming shrapnel in Afghanistan is sourced in Pakistan. No greater proof of this consensus could be found than the big speech by President Ashraf Ghani on Monday, in which he essentially threw in the towel on talks with the Taliban, and asked Pakistan to start either killing or arresting leaders of the “Afghan Taliban” – which is his shorthand principally, in this case, for the Haqqani Network.

The debate about whether Pakistan is at fault or not in Afghanistan is open only inside Pakistan. Everywhere else in the world, fairly or unfairly, when Kabul burns, it is Pakistan’s fault.

Since 2012 there has been a growing civ-mil consensus on the need for a major change in Pakistan’s approach to Afghanistan, and indeed, many aspects of the relationship have changed. Yet many things have stayed the same, and it is often impossible to assess where the contaminants in the Pakistan-Afghan dynamic come from and how long they will take to extinguish.

If PM Sharif takes his role as a transformative democratic leader seriously, if he considers the regional connectivity agenda to be a serious one, and if he believes that better relations with Afghanistan and India are a serious component of Pakistan’s national interest, then he must ask himself and his speechwriters and advisers one simple question: was the digging up of skeletons of 1999 good for Pakistan?

Democrats in Pakistan cannot expect to continue to play victim ad infinitum, in the absence of a coherent and visible strategy to contain the primary symptoms of the disease of an intergenerational civ-mil imbalance. These symptoms have names: Jaishes, Lashkars, and at the very apex of the mountain, the Haqqani Network.

The unchallenged fallacies about the connection between corruption and terrorism will remain unchallenged if the best defence our democratic leaders can present to the Panama Papers is a diatribe about their victimhood and the unconstitutionality of the 1999 coup d’état. Of course, to challenge these fallacies, if would help if our democratic leaders were in fact not guilty of corruption in the first place. Sadly, it seems that the harvest of Pakistan’s civil-military disequilibrium is a bitter pill we will have to keep swallowing. Perhaps, ad infinitum.