In a closed-end outfit such as the Pakistan Army, the going is tough but the tough ones hang on till the very end as giving up flies in the face of the fighting spirit the institution instills in its personnel. It is quite rare to witness premature retirement by high-ranking members of general staff, despite dessicated prospects of professional progress in the aftermath. Camaraderie motivates them to continue in the ranks and this in turn is strengthened by undying loyalty to the institution. The Pakistan Army has successfully fine-tuned institutional loyalty to a reverential level where an individual feels spiritually captivated and abhors cutting ties with it. The lure of remaining in uniform is additionally buttressed by considerable financial benefits that length of service brings.
It is against this backdrop that the decision to retire for Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar, the president of the National Defence University, naturally evokes curiosity, particularly when he is not the first three-star officer to prematurely doff his uniform. His retirement was due in October 2018.
In the first top-ranking promotions carried out by General Raheel Sharif as COAS, six three-star generals were promoted in September 2014 and Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar of FF Regiment was at the top of the list
Akhtar headed the premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but his retirement may not apparently be related to his erstwhile association with it. Five of his predecessors, as serving or former ISI chiefs, were made or constrained to leave the army before their regular superannuation on one pretext or the other. Only one of them was removed at the behest of the political leadership (as DGI, which is how they refer to the director-general of the ISI) and the rest were ousted by their superior authority in uniform, reflecting the army’s intense self-analysis and introspection.
Lt-Gen Hameed Gul
The agency was moulded into a formidable entity underpinning the deep state during two long stints of its fifth DGI, known as the mentor of Nawaz Sharif, Lt-Gen Ghulam Jilani Khan (seven years) and the sixth DGI, related to Gen Zia who perished with him, Lt-Gen (later General) Akhtar Abdul Rahman (eight years). The ISI was briefly headed by Lt-Gen Muhammad Riaz Khan, the father-in-law of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who handed over charge to the diehard jihadist Lt-Gen Hameed Gul.
An unabashed publicity-fond general, Hameed Gul, was unceremoniously removed by Benazir Bhutto as DGI after being in the post for two years after his Jalalabad offensive, which she opposed, came unstuck. His egotistical nature ran afoul of COAS Gen Asif Nawaz who transferred him from Commander II Strike Corps in Multan to DG Heavy Industries, Taxila but he refused the assignment, retorting that he fights with armour, not supervises its manufacture! Gen Asif Nawaz sacked him.
Lt Gen Asad Durrani
Lt-Gen Asad Durrani, an intensely political general considered the intellectual guru of the army officer class, was removed by COAS Gen Waheed Kakar for his support of elements with extreme Islamist leanings. His removal from service was quite undignified when while returning from a visit abroad as Commandant National Defence College (now a university), he was informed at the airport of his dismissal from service two years before his retirement. During his ISI days, he had curried favour with Benazir Bhutto who appointed him ambassador to Germany in the good old days when Western Europe accepted former army officers as envoys, a facility withdrawn after Gen Musharraf’s takeover in 1999. A vociferous proponent of the military point of view, Lt-Gen Durrani was posted as ambassador to Saudi Arabia by Gen Musharraf and was much in the news in recent times about his involvement in the Mehrangate illegal monetary transactions.
Lt Gen Javaid Nasir
Lt-Gen Javed Nasir, awkward of manner and radically Islamist in thought, was the first engineer officer to be appointed DGI by PM Nawaz Sharif. He turned global in his agenda by airlifting anti-tank missiles for the Bosnians, providing support to Chinese Muslim Uighurs and Muslim rebels in Central Asia and the Philippines. Under extreme pressure, COAS Gen Kakar removed him and some days later he was given the status ‘struck from duty’, signifying his dismissal from the army eight months before his superannuation. He was later on employed by Nawaz Sharif as his security adviser but his main calling was adorning the ranks of the Tableeghi Jamaat in Raiwind.
The next rupture occurred when another appointee of Nawaz Sharif, another engineer officer, Lt-Gen Ziauddin Khwaja was removed by Gen Musharraf upon his military takeover in 1999. He was incarcerated in solitary confinement and his pension benefits were withheld. Gen Musharraf used ‘scouts penalty’, a discretionary form of punishment not requiring a crime, to get rid of Lt-Gen Ziauddin. Shehbaz Sharif employed him in 2008 but Nawaz Sharif did not entertain him after his return to power.
Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed
Lt-Gen Mehmood Ahmed, the ferocious look alike of the Nawab of Kalabagh, was the next ISI chief to be sidelined by Gen Musharraf. He was the prime mover of the coup against Nawaz Sharif in 1999 as he was commanding the strategically placed X Corps in Rawalpindi. He was in Washington parleying with his American counterparts when 9/11 happened and he was forced by Joe Biden to stop supporting the Taliban and help the Americans remove the Taliban government in Kabul. Lt-Gen Mahmood was removed by Gen Musharraf after they developed differences. Gen Mahmood also turned into a proselytiser and was rarely heard of afterwards.
In the first top-ranking promotions carried out by General Raheel Sharif as COAS, six three-star generals were promoted in September 2014 and Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar of FF Regiment was at the top of the list. Commissioned in 1982 through the 66 PMA Long Course, he had commanded 9 Infantry Division in Kohat that participated in Operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan in 2009-10 and had also commanded a brigade in FATA. He was serving as DG Rangers in Sindh and was said to be planning a wide-scale operation to curb urban terrorism.
During Gen Raheel Sharif’s tenure, his parent arm, the FF, was demonstrably prominent in the promotions ladder. During Gen Kayani’s times, out of 29 three-star positions, three were occupied by the Piffers (Lt-Generals Shuja Pasha, Alam Khattak and Raheel Sharif) and were reduced to two (Lt-Gens Javed Iqbal and Maqsood Ahmad) at the advent of Raheel Sharif. The first promotions he supervised in 2014 saw a rise in the number of Piffers to top command positions from two to six: COAS and Lt-Generals Javed Iqbal (retired), Maqsood (retired on secondment with the UN Peacekeeping Force), Rizwan Akhtar (president NDU), Ghayur Mahmood (Military Secretary) and Nazir Ahmed Butt (Commander XI Corps, Peshawar). He also added Lt-Gens Anwar Ali Hyder (Adjutant General) and Aamer Riaz (Commander IV Corps Lahore) in 2015 and 2016, respectively increasing the number of Piffers in general staff to eight. The current number of three-star Piffers in the general staff is four.
Akhtar headed the premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but his retirement may not apparently be related to his erstwhile association with it. Five of his predecessors, as serving or former ISI chiefs, were made or constrained to leave the army before their regular superannuation on one pretext or the other
Clearly discernible in the promotion regime was a change of emphasis in promotion considerations whereby the salient criterion appeared to be battleground exposure against terrorism. It may be noted that such emphasis was not always present during the times of Gen Kayani whereby officers with combat records were frequently superseded. It may be that their combat experience was downplayed in response to the circumstances prevailing then, constraining open recognition of their service contributions. The altered policy pursued by Gen Raheel was a tacit admission of the altered realities, probably reflecting a change in the thinking process of the army.
Lt-Gen Rizwan was sent to head the ISI right after his promotion and after the turbulence of his predecessor, Lt-Gen Zaheer-ul-Islam, his stay at the top was relatively calm. It was quite obvious that Gen Bajwa will carry out the traditional reshuffle in general staff but Lt-Gen Rizwan was probably upset at not having been given a corps and being downgraded as president of the NDU. Although the army attaches considerable value to instructional commands—Gen Raheel commanded the PMA, so did Lt-Gen Nazir Butt, Corps Commander Peshawar and Nadeem Raza, Corps Commander Rawalpindi—to command a corps is a dream for officers that went sour in the case of Lt-Gen Rizwan. Being close to Gen Raheel may have also played a part in his decision to seek premature retirement as he may be taken on the rolls of the Islamic Military Alliance, a joint force sponsored by Saudi Arabia.
Ali Siddiqi is a former bureaucrat and runs an academic training outfit in Karachi. He can be reached at tviuk@hotmail.com
