Anyone who has a basic understanding of Pakistan’s political history could discern a clear and oft-repeated pattern in the DG ISPR’s latest press conference, where he openly attacked the leadership of a popular political party— the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The pattern is related to images that have recurred throughout our nation’s political history - of Pakistan’s military leadership pitted against popular political forces. When the first martial law was imposed in the country in October 1958, popular trends in the country's politics had not yet started or had not yet taken root in society. Ayub Khan faced a popular students’ movement towards the end of his regime, but this popular movement didn’t resist General Yahya Khan when he replaced Ayub in a bloodless coup.
Since 1971, the Pakistani military has participated in a rather long list of confrontations with popular mass based political parties or forces across Pakistan.
Yahya Khan presided over the dismemberment of the country after a prolonged confrontation with a popular uprising in Eastern Pakistan led by Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman. This was perhaps the first instance of a direct confrontation between the Pakistani military and a popular political force that had mass support, a political party named the Awami League. The Pakistani military had engaged tribal chiefs and their retainers in 1958 when it carried out a military operation against the Kalat state in Balochistan. But obviously, you cannot talk about popular or mass based political forces in a tribal setting.
Since 1971, the Pakistani military has participated in a rather long list of confrontations with popular mass based political parties or forces across Pakistan. In 1977, the military again imposed martial law and this time, they had to confront the workers and activists of the Pakistan People’s Party in Sindh. The military again confronted a popular political force in the early 1990s in Karachi, when it carried out an operation in the city against militants allied with MQM.
The post-Zia period saw another type of confrontation between popular political forces and the military, where the military leadership became instrumental in removing and installing political governments in Islamabad. There was confrontation between the military leadership and a political leader elected by the popular vote, Benazir Bhutto, when she was removed from the office of Prime Minister in 1990.
Benazir Bhutto criticized the then-military leadership, which ensured that she didn’t win the subsequent elections. The military leadership again staged a coup against Nawaz Sharif in October 1999. The rather trivial resistance put up by Sharif fizzled out within a short period of time.
Of course, the military was not completely at fault all the time. In 1971, the Awami League had a militant faction which was trained and equipped by the Indian RAW, and obviously the military could claim to have acted in national security interests in moving against the Awami League. The MRD movement in Sindh in 1985 was armed and violent. The MQM’s militant faction was involved in criminal activity. The post-Zia period, which saw a game of political musical chairs being played between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, was not entirely a period when democracy was flourishing in the country. None of the self-proclaimed champions of democracy in that decade could be described as paragons of democratic values (or virtues).
The post-9/11 security situation in Pakistan paved the way for the military’s enhanced role in the enforcement of law, and the management of violence. This allowed the military to take direct control of the domestic coercive machinery of the state.
The criminalization of politics and political parties’ tendencies to engage in violence against their opponents has been a well-established fact in our political culture. Notwithstanding all these caveats, the military’s highhandedness in each of the above-mentioned cases left a trail of burning popular grievances against the military as an institution. At least once, these popular grievances led to the dismemberment of Pakistan; in another instance, in Balochistan’s case, a popular middle-class insurgency is underway in what is Pakistan’s largest province by area.
In some cases, the popular political force with grievances against the military was co-opted into the ruling elite, as happened in the case of MQM during General Musharraf’s nine years in power. The PPP and PML-N both tasted power after arriving at some kind of agreement with the incumbent military leadership.
The post-9/11 security situation in Pakistan paved the way for the military’s enhanced role in the enforcement of law, and the management of violence. This allowed the military to take direct control of the domestic coercive machinery of the state. In other words, the military as an institution didn’t relinquish the control it had assumed of the coercive machinery of the state during General Musharraf’s nine years rule after Musharraf had stepped down.
The wave of popular sympathy and anti-military sentiments that Imran Khan is riding at the moment was not generated by Imran Khan himself.
This control was put to effective use in the post-Musharraf period when the military leadership had to face defiance from popular political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan—both of whom were placed in the Prime Minister house after reaching some kind of agreement with the military leadership.
When each of them fell out with the military, one after the other, they landed in prison. To an outsider not familiar with Pakistan’s political culture, but still exposed to whispering campaigns in Islamabad, it appears funny that whenever a Prime Minister picks a fight with the military, he finds himself not only out of office, but inside a cramped 4 by 4 prison cell.
The Pakistani criminal justice system just acts as a facilitator for the usurpation of democracy, as it has always done. The same person could again find himself in the Prime Minister House if he succeeds in making space for himself, and lands himself in the court of the military leadership’s favor. The same criminal justice system would then proceed to clownishly exonerate him of all the crimes that he was accused of in the past. This is scary - that the military leadership can exert disproportionate influence and control of the coercive machinery of the state, to the extent that the political arena ceases to be a level playing field for all players in the game.
The military leadership, however, appears to be naïve in believing that they can continue on this path for an indefinite period of time. The wave of popular sympathy and anti-military sentiments that Imran Khan is riding at the moment was not generated by Imran Khan himself. Nawaz Sharif is due his credit for his efforts in fomenting this wave of grievance. Anti-military rhetoric in Central Punjab was spawned by Nawaz Sharif, after he was ousted from power in 2017 through a judicial order. His rhetoric gradually became more and more targeted against the military leadership. According to many observers, what Nawaz Sharif had to say was well received among the Punjabi middle classes in Central Punjab, and thus helped generate the wave of anti-military sentiment. Imran Khan is now riding that wave as Nawaz Sharif receded from his staunch anti-military position, discontinuing his anti-military rhetoric after the current Prime Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, cut a deal with the military on his behalf.
The Pakistani criminal justice system just acts as a facilitator for the usurpation of democracy, as it has always done.
Imran Khan is a typical Punjabi political leader, who, just like his cronies, is in the same boat with the military bureaucratic elite, as their political and economic interests are similar. Their fates are interlinked, primarily because they belong to the same central Punjab upper middle classes, who have deep linkages in the ruling establishment of the country. Hence for military leaders, political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran are eventually manageable. A leader perhaps from the lower middle classes, one more radical at the political level, who has the ability or capacity to cash in the anti-military wave in Central Punjab (or a more aggressive strain of the anti-military wave that originates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) will not be as manageable as Imran Khan or Nawaz Sharif. Manzoor Pashteen is an example that comes to mind.
Just the other day, I saw on television the DG ISPR employing the silent majority argument to reject the claim that the results of February 8 parliamentary elections drowned out the May 9 narrative of the military. According to the general’s figures, the PTI secured only 8% of votes of the total Pakistani electorate, and hence, 92% are sympathetic to or support the military’s point of view. I think it is the other way around.
The Punjabi middle-class voters of Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan are the same people who support pro-military political trends in our society. In Pakistani society, the grievances against the state and the military are varied, and come from varied political forces. If you subtract Imran Khan from the equation, who by the way shares political, economic and class interests with the military elite, you may come face to face with those grievances that largely lay dormant in our society, but trust me, you will dread the ugliness of how these sentiments are articulated.
The anti-military sentiments that Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif’s narratives have created are not simply a concern for domestic politics, they are an issue of national security. A military at odds with the people it's supposed to be defending is obviously not standing on very firm ground. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that a military at war with its people loses the rationale for its existence.
As a military, you are not supposed to defend any particular type of people in your society. Theoretically, a military is supposed to defend each and every citizen of the country, and each and every group in society, no matter what their political inclinations, ideology or ambitions. A military in a state of political confrontation with any group in society which it is supposed to defend, is creating the worst possible security nightmare for itself.
But political neutrality is not the path that Pakistan’s military establishment has picked for this crucial state institution. Criticizing a political group and its leader is a political act of first order.