It has been a little over a fortnight since a change of command in the Army took place and the new chief, Gen. Qamar Bajwa, has assembled his team made up of mostly experienced and freshly promoted lieutenant generals, capping one of the biggest reshuffles of the top command by an incoming chief.
The changes in senior military leadership were partly driven by the transition that saw two generals—Gen. Zubair Hayat and Gen. Qamar Bajwa—promoted as Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Army Staff and four others being superseded. This threw open at least six lieutenant-general positions. Moreover, it is noteworthy that Gen. Bajwa’s predecessor, Gen. Raheel Sharif, did not move officers around in his final days in GHQ.
Right from the first day, Gen. Bajwa appeared to be keen to build his own team as he kept the chief of general staff or CGS, one of the most important positions in the Army after the COAS, vacant for nearly two weeks. He then started by posting out GHQ’s military secretary, the man in charge of transfers and postings, and followed up with the promotion of seven major-generals to the next rank of lieutenant general. Those promoted were all undoubtedly proven and upright officers, but in doing so he superseded more than two dozen generals, including a few high-profile officers.
CGS Lt Gen Bilal Akbar
Newly promoted generals were given some of the more important corps: Rawalpindi (Lt-Gen Nadeem Raza), Bahawalpur (Lt-Gen Sher Afgun), and Multan (Lt-Gen Sarfraz Sattar). Peshawar was, meanwhile, assigned to Lt-Gen Nazir Butt, who was posted as president of the National Defense University (NDU) in Islamabad, and the Karachi posting was filled by Lt-Gen Shahid Baig Mirza, who was earlier holding the military secretary’s position. Quetta, Lahore, Gujranwala, Mangla Corps and the Strategic Forces Command have, however, remained unchanged so far.
Significantly, ISI Director-General Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar was transferred to NDU and ISPR Director-General Lt-Gen Asim Bajwa was moved to the Arms Branch at GHQ. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, having been posted out after two years, got a shorter stay at the ISI than some of his predecessors and was not given a corps to command.
The appointment of Lt-Gen Naveed Mukhtar as the next ISI chief did not come as a surprise to many. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar appears to be the perfect choice for the position of spy chief in view of his career trajectory. He headed the ISI’s counter-terrorism wing and led operations in Karachi as the corps commander. His detractors were quick to attempt to sully the appointment by mentioning his distant relationship with the ruling Sharif family. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar is married into the same family as the prime minister’s grand-daughter. But, in the appointment of the new ISI chief almost everyone missed that it was after a very long time that the change at ISI headquarters happened quietly and the civilian government got a free hand in appointing the person of their choice and confidence. Some of Gen. Naveed Mukhtar’s predecessors were direct nominees by the army chief even though it has always been the prime minister’s prerogative to make the appointment.
Now that the reshuffle at the top has been completed, it is the right time to have a look at the policy implications of the new appointments, particularly of the DG ISI and CGS.
It remains to be seen how much Gen. Naveed Mukhtar’s relationship with the Sharif family will, if at all, affect his job, but his views are generally in line with the institutional thinking of the Army be they civil-military relations or ties with India and Afghanistan. Furthermore, the change at GHQ, where a pro-civilian government chief is in the saddle could also alter some of the opinions held by the new ISI chief.
In his last posting as Karachi corps commander, he was critical of the provincial government. Speaking at an NDU regional workshop in Karachi last year, Gen. Naveed Mukhtar had accused the civilian government of the province for failing to deliver the “necessary infrastructure and services”, which then gave space to terrorist and extremist groups. He observed that political expediencies and vested interests were behind the failures in governance.
On the external front, Gen. Naveed Mukhtar is in favour of a ‘moderate’ Taliban being accommodated in governance in Afghanistan and aggressive action taken to counter Indian presence there. “Pakistan needs to prevent the opening of another hostile front should Afghanistan emerge as a proxy for India,” he wrote in his dissertation at the US Army War College. “Consequently, Pakistan will closely follow India’s efforts to influence Afghanistan and may take aggressive measures to undermine India’s efforts in this regard.”
His former colleagues say he has strong views on India. This at least points towards continuity of the policies at the ISI vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan.
COAS Gen. Bajwa has already made his views on terrorism very clear and this will have an important bearing on the ISI’s counter-terrorism strategy. Gen. Bajwa has vowed zero tolerance for terrorism and has directed focused and indiscriminate operations against terrorists.
The Chief of General Staff’s appointment seldom gets the attention that it deserves. The CGSs have been behind some of the crucial decisions that the army takes. Gen. Ishfaq Nadeem, once a front runner for COAS, fell out of favour because of the candid opinion that he had been expressing as CGS. (He is said to have not been in favour of PM Nawaz Sharif on sending troops to Yemen.)
Gen. Bilal Akbar, according to some of his former colleagues, is outspoken and liberal minded. In his position as director-general of the Sindh Rangers, he remained in the limelight because of the Karachi Operation. The jury is still out on whether or not the operation was successful, but arguably it has brought some respite to Karachi. During his days in Karachi, the Rangers were often accused of exceeding their mandate and trespassing into the jurisdiction of civilian authorities. It is also true that while the Muttahida Qaumi Movement bore the brunt of the Karachi Operation, extremist groups still operate there. But, then Gen. Bilal Akbar was simply implementing the policies of the army command of the day. Let’s see how he runs the Army. One thing is clear. The working relationship Gen. Naveed Mukhtar and Gen. Bilal Akbar, developed during their tenures in Karachi, would help them develop greater synergy between Rawalpindi and Aabpara.
Maj-Gen Muhammad Saeed, currently General Officer Commanding, Hyderabad, is tipped to succeed Gen. Bilal Akbar at the Sindh Rangers. A formal notification is still awaited, however.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at mamoonarubab@gmail.com and @bokhari_mr
