Pakistan's military leadership briefed a joint session of Parliament last week on operation Geronimo. Army chief General Asfaq Parvez Kayani probably wants to send an unequivocal message that the military and the civilian government led by Asif Ali Zardari are on the same page. With this in mind, the army supposedly 'wants to throw the ball in parliament's court' with regard to the war on terror and Pakistan's relationship with the US and India, according to the English daily, The News.
The army ostensibly wants to mend its image which has taken quite a beating even domestically, in addition to the flak which it has drawn internationally in the aftermath of the Bin Laden killing. The main opposition party Pakistan Muslim League (N), PML-N, in a scathing attack on the army blamed all the country's ills on military dominance. Party supremo, Nawaz Sharif who recently recuperated from an illness lambasted the institution -- which initiated him into politics -- in his first press conference on May 11, after political hibernation.
Sharif blamed the army for domestic turmoil and the damage done to Pakistan's image in the international arena, as a consequence of Osama Bin Laden being found on Pakistani soil. The former also said that an enquiry into the Osama Bin Laden killing should be conducted by the judiciary rather than the army. In fact the PML-N has even called for the joint session being made public. Senior party leader, Chaudhry Nisar expressed the view that this joint session would be a mere 'eyewash', if at least certain sections of it were not made public. Nisar also made a recommendation that a few journalists should be present at the joint session, so as to give it legitimacy.
But is this joint meeting an indicator of a change in the civil-military equation? While the army may want to give this image publically, the reality is far from that. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's speech in Pakistani parliament, which seemed more a defense of the army and ISI than the country itself, the impending visit to China and a recent interview to The Time magazine in which he called for a re-negotiation of the Pak-US partnership clearly prove that the army is still in the driver's seat and the weak, corrupt civilian government is in no mood to challenge the supremacy of the Pakistan army.
In all probability the army will make use of the India bogey and use the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Afghanistan to convince the political leadership about India's hegemonic designs, and the civilian leadership aside from the PML-N would play safe by going along with the army's.
So once again, the civilian leadership in Pakistan has missed out on a golden opportunity to tame the establishment, which has been severely discredited in the aftermath of the Osama killing. S Akbar Zaidi, a prominent Pakistani analyst, in a column, for the May 13 edition of Dawn, rightly states, that 'the problem in this relationship of power between the military and civilian and (for once) democratically elected institutions is not so much the strength of the military, but more importantly, the cowardly, dithering and weak civilian elites and the compromises they make with military power. They are equally implicated in making Pakistan a national insecurity state'.
The US which has been asserting itself vis-à-vis the Pakistan army should not relent and should aim to strengthen enlightened forces. Aid should be targeted at improving the quality of health and education, rather than the Pakistan army. It would also do well to reach out to political actors, especially the PML-N, which it has avoided in the past.
As far as India is concerned, Dr Manmohan Singh must be lauded for his Kabul visit where he made it amply clear that India would support Afghanistan in reconstruction, and was there to stay. At the same time, Singh also dispelled the notion that India was toying with the idea of US style operations on Pakistani soil.
It is high time that enlightened Pakistanis realize that the real threat to the existence of the Pakistani state comes from their own army which has usurped authority due to debilitated political institutions and geo-political concerns of western powers. The real battle for Pakistan's survival needs to be fought within and it would be disingenuous to single out external players for the hopeless situation, Pakistan finds itself in at the moment.
(Tridivesh Singh Maini is an Associate Fellow with Observer Research Foundation)
Courtesy: American Security Council Foundation website
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