The trust deficit

Capital suggestion

Our elected prime ministers feel that our generals are out to capture political space that rightfully belongs to the elected leadership. Our political leadership also feels that once elected, they should be free to govern for their mandated period without any check or balance and that the generals are an obstacle to democracy.

There also is the feeling that the top general routinely steals both the limelight and the policy space that rightfully belongs to the civilian leadership. Our elected prime ministers also feel that the military mindset is fixed and that the military eyes see everything in either black or white.

Our generals, on the other hand, have, over time, convinced themselves that military rule is not the solution to Pakistan’s challenges and it is neither feasible within nor acceptable around the world. There’s a feeling in parts of the army hierarchy that the incidence of incompetence and corruption runs high within the elected leadership. There’s a feeling within the uniformed bureaucracy that the civilian half of the state is being run on personal rather than institutional lines for personal rather than national interests. Surprisingly, with regard to India, there seems to be a general consensus within the army high-command that the temperature between the two countries needs to be brought down.

There’s a feeling within parts of the army hierarchy that our elected leadership at times attempts to drive “a wedge between the people and the army” and tries to create “splits within the army”. And that the elected leadership gives “an impression to the rest of the world that the problem is the army and it needs to be sorted out” (Shuja Nawaz’s ‘Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within’).

The sentiments of the elected leadership and those of the military hierarchy aside, the fact remains that there’s been an uninterrupted civilian rule for a nine-year period, which began in 2008. The other fact remains that the past nine years did give birth to a dozen vacuums but the generals refused to fill even one of them (read: taking over the government).

Now on to the DG ISPR’s tweet of April 29. The undisputed fact that took place before the tweet is the ‘breach of national security’ on October 6, 2016. The two post-tweet facts are: a civil-military communication breakdown and a very visible civil-military trust deficit.

The PM’s political allies are convinced that the DG ISPR’s tweet violates the constitution. The PM’s political opponents are adamant that the DG ISPR did the right thing. A non-political analysis is that a ‘breach of national security’, after a passage of seven months, has yet to be filled. A non-political analysis of the DG ISPR’s tweet is that the tweet is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the civil-military trust deficit.

Yes, mistakes have been committed by both sides: the government has failed to identify the real culprits behind the national security breach and the military should not have ‘rejected’ a prime ministerial notification. To be certain, the aggrieved party in this case is the army (as the army is in a state of war and there isn’t a unit in the army that hasn’t sacrificed for the sake of this country). The elected leadership must understand that when the COAS stands in front of his troops, he demands their blood for the sake of Pakistan and, in return, the troops demand answers on issues of national security.

For the greater national interest, there should be frequent top-level civil-military huddles to bridge the trust deficit. Our three-time prime minister ought to subordinate his purely political and personal interests for the greater national interest.

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Twitter: @saleemfarrukh