The anatomy of a coup

October 12, 1999 was a normal day as far as routine functioning went. I was at home free from my daily chores of taking care of the air chief as his personal staff officer. Surely elsewhere, like the Prime Minister’s House, thing would have gone on per normal; at least no sign of an abnormality had come to our notice.

There wasn’t a need to even consider so, for the air force was so far removed from anything politic; our day at all times made of only what concerned the air force. An odd politico was an exception, but that came later.

Except that things were anything but normal everywhere else. The army chief, General Pervez Musharraf was on a visit to Sri Lanka, a friendly nation where they make you feel important if you were a Pakistani. The general would have surely had a happy break from the intensity of a vilifying campaign against him which had come to underwrite his relationship with the government and especially the PM – the aftermath of his adventurous assault in Kargil had brought about an all-round embarrassment. Only Bill Clinton’s 4th of July intervention could help save us some face. General Musharraf still doesn’t agree with this conclusion but there hasn’t been a bigger strategic blunder in Pakistan’s recent history.

For four months, after Kargil came to light and became an open embarrassment, the air was pregnant with the possibility that the army chief could go. Except that Nawaz Sharif just could not bring himself to doing so. So, scared he sat, undecided and seething in private company. It is rare that a clamour against an army chief achieves such proportion in a country like Pakistan – yet the PM came out toothless. Till of course the army chief was on his way back in an aircraft from Sri Lanka, away from any possibility of a contact with his colleagues who minded the fort while he was away.

In choosing this moment, as devious as what his army chief had employed in keeping the political hierarchy and everyone else in the decision chain oblivious to his Kargil infatuation, Sharif lost his moral mantle. Both he and Musharraf appeared equally deceitful. His choice of appointing General Ziauddin Butt as Musharraf’s replacement was trashed for lack of merit, and for the ungentlemanly manner of his appointment. Nawaz Sharif chose late and chose wrong. And paid for it.

I was called into the Air House at around 5pm by the chief. Unaware of what had befallen this unfortunate nation’s fate in the last one hour, I found the chief already busy with someone on the phone. He brought me up to speed on what had happened and asked me to mind the second phone. Soon he was asking questions of General Aziz Khan, the CGS, about the confusion, while I got busy with passing instructions onto the air force. At one point when Base Commander Chaklala called to inform about some army officials having made their way into the base contending to take over the air traffic control tower, an air force installation, the chief lost his cool. It was then that he spoke to Gen Aziz. Aziz tried to explain, at the same time asking for support.

It is then that he asked him, ‘Who is running the government? Why should I not be listening to the prime minister?’ On being told that change was under process, he informed him, ‘Whatever you guys are doing, it better be quick for I will not listen to someone in the army till the air is cleared on whether the prime minister is still the PM’. That surely did not go well with those working the coup in the GHQ.

I asked the base commander to throw the army intruders out of the base premises and ask them into his office to assist according to the instructions passed onto him. The Air Force’s policy about the coup was being formulated as we worked the phones. A VVIP plane, under the PAF, on its way already to Karachi for routine maintenance was diverted to Nawabshah where Musharraf was being pushed to land. Unsure whether he would be flown as a prisoner or a chief executive, the plane shadowed Musharraf’s flight anyway.

At the end of it all Musharraf refused to fly the aircraft as the chief executive. And refused to fly it for many months later till his confidence with the air force was re-established. The Kargil episode, unfortunately, had left serious divisions among the chiefs on how they took in the adventurous undertaking and its mostly maleficent fallout.

The coup was underway when we were still on the phones. General Butt, stars pinned by no other than the Military Secretary to the PM and the PM himself, soon sat in the MS’s office and began seeking the support of senior generals. As he called the acting chief, General Zafar, informing of his promotion and appointment, the general in turn checked with the GHQ if indeed that was true. That is when the key insiders of the coup began their counter-move. Surely planned in the intervening four months after Kargil, which the Sharif inaction afforded them, the moves were crisp.

General Mehmud walked into the PM House with his swagger stick and asked Nawaz Sharif to follow him. He and his all did in due deference. General Iftikhar, GOC Malir, similarly took over Karachi airport and made Musharraf land who was till then stranded in the air under the express orders of the PM, soon to be the former PM, still unsure if the coup had indeed succeeded. Three generals and their subordinate organisations is what it took to materialise our last coup. Except that when in place most of the army stood with their chief. Those who became suspect by commission were gradually purged out in a civil parting.

Not a drop of blood; no defiance, not even a supporting rally marked the departure of a two-thirds majority government. Pakistan and Turkey are indeed very different. There were some who seethed over how events had progressed and had consequences to deal with but they too belonged in the military.

A rupture within the military in Pakistan is an asking too far. Turkey’s failed coup is important for all to read for other reasons, mostly on why it occurred at all. Why it failed is quite well known.

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com