The good general

Legal eye

General Raheel Sharif is walking into the sunset. Good for him, for the army and the country. We will run with #ThankYouRaheelSharif for two more days. Then some amongst us will now work tirelessly to build the next chief into a demigod, project him as a messiah and bait him to emerge as the saviour to save us from us. What will General R’s legacy be? There are two main achievements and a personal virtue that we hear about when he is presented as the ‘finest military leader’ of his time.

First, the achievements. Remember the time when a special committee of negotiators representing the state of Pakistan was escorted by the TTP’s security escort to negotiate a peace deal with TTP leaders somewhere in Fata? Remember the time when TV anchors and analysts looked petrified speaking about the TTP and had to invite TTP patrons or appeasers to ‘balance’ the discussion? Remember the time many worried about Pakistan taking on the TTP, as they didn’t know who would win? Well, that time ended under General R’s watch.

It doesn’t matter that most agencies had been cleared in General Kayani’s time and only one remained. If Operation Zarb-e-Azb was one of the many Zarbs, it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. In the spring of 2014, the army under General’s R command decided that the TTP had to go along with cousins that worked as its allies, such as the LeJ. This was a time when many of our bigoted politicos were still referring to terror as the misguided ‘means’ employed by our ‘brethren’ to pursue ‘noble’ objectives in face of an ‘alien’ war.

It was in General R’s time that Karachi began to be cleaned up (previously rest-and-recreation destination for all terrorists), and intelligence-based ops were carried out across Balochistan and Punjab. As important as wrestling physical space from terrorists was reclaiming control over the terror narrative. Whether out of fear, complacency or sympathy, up until APS we had been presenting the TTP and the state as two sides in a legitimate conflict. That narrative changed only after General R threw all his institutional weight to force the change.

Many say the success of Zarb-e-Azb is greatly exaggerated and that it took too long to clean up one agency. So be it. There is a palpable difference in the threat of terror as perceived by ordinary Pakistanis before and after Zarb-e-Azb. There is no sense today that Pakistan is on the verge of the precipice. That is the true mark of success. One can dish out statistics such as more lives being claimed by traffic accidents than terror. But countries don’t live in mortal fear due to reckless driving and unsafe roads.

The second great achievement of General R is that he has neither turned out to be a usurper nor an extortionist. That we are projecting absence of such vices as an achievement may be a sad reflection on the times we live in. But personal ambition led Musharraf to molest the constitution, twice. Kayani, who succeeded Musharraf, found the allure of power, pomp and perks that come along with the office of chief too intoxicating to hang his boots when the time came, and negotiated a three-year extension.

The jury is out on whether General R didn’t want the extension or didn’t get it. A chief can’t grant himself an extension, after all. And there has been no news that he was offered one. Amid intense speculation that he was vying for extension, he had clarified that he would leave on time.         But that did not        deter posters emerging across cities in the dark of the night, asking him to stay. Petitions were filed in courts to get him an extension.      Khaki-inspired anchors and analysts invited him to intervene. And there were dharnas creating room for praetorianism.

Was General R coy about his ambition? Did he have the longing but not the craft to broker an extension? Did he have ambition but not the will to overthrow an elected government? Did his regard for family legacy trump personal ambition? Did many misconceive his penchant for publicity as ambition? Or did the over enthusiasm to build him up cultivate a false sense of vanity about him? Whatever the truth, General R is the most popular chief we have had so far and he might just stay respected because he is leaving when the tide is high.

General R comes across as a good man. His actions fit the public morality we respect. He remained scandal-free. We don’t know what his children do. We haven’t heard an unkind word about him from subordinates or seniors. He reportedly contributed proceeds from an expensive plot he received as chief to a charity fund. He celebrated Eid with troops. He frequently toured the frontlines. And he was at funeral prayers and consoled families of martyrs. In a time of moral decline, the country was proud of General R’s personal morality.

Notwithstanding all the good, the challenges General R is leaving behind for his successor are no less significant than the ones he inherited.  

One, in terms of internal security things have improved because of the draining of the swamps in Fata and effective fire fighting against terror groups fighting the state in the rest of the country. But despite Zarb-e-Azb and NAP, there is no conceptual clarity on militants not yet attacking the state and factories nurturing extremism remain alive and well. We know labour force within our terror industry is extremely mobile. You can be with Al-Qaeda one day, then the TTP, then Daesh and onto the next terror enterprise.

The jihadi enterprise has been part of our national security thinking. Are we going to keep the paraphernalia and only fight groups and subgroups that go AWOL and pick up arms against the state? Are we hoping that the world will again come to see non-state actors as legit extensions of state’s national security infrastructure or are we just running on inertia without thinking? If we are to make Pakistan terror free, we will need to tackle extremism and its patrons who can’t exist without state support or complacency.

Two, our external security scenario has grown nastier. Are we getting into the kind of nutcracker (ie hostile borders on the east and the west) we have dreaded? With a no-holds-barred India and the LoC heating up, what leverage do we have against India? It is one thing to churn out the rhetoric of teaching India lessons that will be the stuff of textbooks, but what is our game plan really? If the gap in the national power Pakistan and India wield keeps growing due to size differential, how long will our present policy remain sustainable?

And finally, there is our civ-mil conundrum. Our military is overgrown because civilians are corrupt and ineffectual, is the popular fad. Let’s concede that for a second. Can Pakistan enhance its national power in this day and age on the back of one institution, however efficient?    How much of a meaningful difference can be made even if the ability is steadily acquired to shape the narrative produced by our 24/7 news cycle – the chief attending funerals and consoling victims of terror being a part of that narrative after the fashion of a PR exercise to build image and legacy? Is the assertion of control over political space and narrative by design? And, if so, to what end?

In an insightful essay (shared by Feisal Naqvi) on ‘Solitude and Leadership’ delivered at the US Military Academy in 2009, William Deresiewicz explained that, “leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.”         As we wish General R well and welcome the new chief, let’s hope he approaches the challenges he is inheriting with Pakistan’s next generation in mind and not just his three-year term.

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu