You talk about the formative experience of the army in your book. To what degree do you think the founding fathers could have avoided (or not) creating a conducive environment for military foray into policy?
To be fair, the founding fathers faced the onerous task of creating a coherent state out of what was essentially a disjointed rump of the Raj, with meager human and financial means. But whatever the constraints, some oftheir choices did have disastrousconsequences for our political development. For example, Jinnah’s forcefulimposition of the “Urdu only” policy fractured the polity along ethno-regional lines before it could cohere into a nation united by more than a shared religion. Similarly, the civilian leadership’s decision to ‘liberate’ Kashmir in 1947-58 by politicizing junior officers of the Pakistan Army radicalized a section of the officer corps, and their dissatisfaction over the ultimate outcome of the first Kashmir War led to the “Rawalpindi Conspiracy.” That war, rightly or wrongly,reinforced Pakistan’s existential concerns vis-à-vis “Hindu” India. Building military capabilities to answer the perceived threat of imminent conflict became the state’s main goal, which set in motion a process of militarymodernization/institutional development prior to, and at the expense of, political institutionalization.
How important is the military’s perception of civilian rule as a cause of military intervention? Could you tell us how the army’s training institutions play a key role in inculcatingtutelary attitudes in the military?
Military perceptions are a crucial ingredient in the high command’s calculus of intervention. But officers’ negative opinion of a civilian government is not sufficient to cause coups. They also have to believe that a coup is a legitimate method of political change.
In my book, I focus on the training materials of the National Defense University (NDU), which trains almost the entire senior officer corps. The NDU reinforces the military’s guardian norms by initiating officers into an expansively defined professional role. This is done through formal instruction, lectures by screened civilian expertsas well as individualand group research on a vast array of non-military topics, such as economic reform, poverty alleviation, education, health, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with the military studying these topics in the context of national security. But the context matters. So does educating the officers about the military’s proper subordinate role in a democracy, which is missing from the NDU curriculum. For example, of the total 987 student contact hours in the 2012-2013 National Security and War Course, officers just attend one two hour-long lecture on the constitution of Pakistan.
[quote]The military's proper subordinate role in a democracy is missing from the NDU curriculum[/quote]
Some think active institutional mechanisms such as National Security Council can be utilized to obviate civil-military cleavages. Do you think “bringing the military in to keep it out” mantra will work in Pakistan?
I think that is a deeply flawed assumption sold by the military as well as influential civilians. Whether one likes it or not, the normative goal of civil-military relations in any democracy is the supremacy of elected officials over the armed forces. The NSC as conceived by the generals overturns that logic. Nowhere in the democratic world is the military formally included in national decision-making. Even Turkey has abandoned its archetypal NSC because it institutionalized undue military influence to the detriment of civilian authority.I think the present government has made a serious mistake by inducting the service chiefs into the re-designated DCC under the same “keep them in” logic. But once you invite them in, the real question is: how do you get them out?
Some say that the recent gains of democratic dispensation are largely symbolic with no concrete changes in the civil-military equation. Do you agree?
They are right to a large extent. The military still has a de facto veto overthe country’s foreign and defense policies towardthe U.S., India, and Afghanistan, etc. as well as its corporate autonomy and budgetary allocations. But we have to remember that democratic control of the armed forcesin transitional contexts can take time to consolidate, if at all. For instance, it took Brazil almost two decades to exert proper civilian control over the military-controlled intelligence sector. As long as a democratictransition remains on track, a praetorian military can be technically weaned off of its interventionist inclinations. But in Pakistan’s case, that task is also complicated by the military’s disproportionate and undue influence over the state, which is in turn a consequence of the enduring conflict with India.
Based on the military’s capacity & willingnessto manipulate the media, do you agree that its hold over power today ismuch more dynamiccompared to, say the 1950s?
The military has no doubt adapted its tactics to the changed context marked by outwardly independent broadcast media amongst other things. For example, it contests civilian authority by either directly articulating its disagreement and/or by using pliant private news channels to manufacture public opinion against erring elected governments. But as the audacious attack on Hamid Mir shows, when a channel hits the military a bit too close to home, the generals can take off their velvet gloves.
There is a tendency, especially in the academia, which seeks to define Pakistan’s structural issues in class politics? How do you think the Left is helping the debate on issues such as terrorism and military dominance?
As you rightly pointed out, the academic Left expectedly filters the social world throughthe reductionist lens of exploitative class relations. Hence, for some, the Swat Taliban can become the vanguard of the peasantry’s war against landed elites. While the balance of class power is an important driver of domestic politics, quite a few leftist scholars deny the relatively autonomous role of institutions in shaping the interests and incentives of social classes/groups. Besides, their often justifiableaversion to “American imperialism”leads many on the Left to reduce the problem of terrorismto the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan/drone strikes (much like the rightwing does, ironically). Similarly, prominent authors such as Tariq Ali see the Pakistani military’s political dominance as a product of its ties to the U.S. In this oversimplifiedview, the GHQ virtually becomes the fifth side of the Pentagon and the generals act as the malleable local intermediaries of the global capitalist order. In sum, institutional capacity, interests and ideas have no place in this structurally over-determined view of historical continuity and change.
You have talked about the contingent relationship between Islamist parties/pressure groups and the establishment. Given the PTI and PAT long marches, do you think these parties are hand in glove with the establishment or are they well-meaning?
Theslash and burn politics of the PTI and the PAT leave little to the imagination. For instance, their stated objective is to overthrow a democratically elected government. Now we all know who the resident experts are in that matter. It is also no coincidence that both Khan and Qadri decided to bring a revolution when government-military relations had soured over several issues, including Musharraf’s trial. And look at their targets and their demands: both rail against the corruption of politicians (in this case, the Sharifs) as Pakistan’s key governance problem andwant a national/technocratic government as a way out. Short of a coup, this has been a textbook military diagnosis and solution (at least since the 1990s)to what the generals see as a dysfunctional parliamentary form of government.
Abdullah Zaidi is a freelance writer. He tweets at @abdullahz88
To be fair, the founding fathers faced the onerous task of creating a coherent state out of what was essentially a disjointed rump of the Raj, with meager human and financial means. But whatever the constraints, some oftheir choices did have disastrousconsequences for our political development. For example, Jinnah’s forcefulimposition of the “Urdu only” policy fractured the polity along ethno-regional lines before it could cohere into a nation united by more than a shared religion. Similarly, the civilian leadership’s decision to ‘liberate’ Kashmir in 1947-58 by politicizing junior officers of the Pakistan Army radicalized a section of the officer corps, and their dissatisfaction over the ultimate outcome of the first Kashmir War led to the “Rawalpindi Conspiracy.” That war, rightly or wrongly,reinforced Pakistan’s existential concerns vis-à-vis “Hindu” India. Building military capabilities to answer the perceived threat of imminent conflict became the state’s main goal, which set in motion a process of militarymodernization/institutional development prior to, and at the expense of, political institutionalization.
How important is the military’s perception of civilian rule as a cause of military intervention? Could you tell us how the army’s training institutions play a key role in inculcatingtutelary attitudes in the military?Military perceptions are a crucial ingredient in the high command’s calculus of intervention. But officers’ negative opinion of a civilian government is not sufficient to cause coups. They also have to believe that a coup is a legitimate method of political change.
In my book, I focus on the training materials of the National Defense University (NDU), which trains almost the entire senior officer corps. The NDU reinforces the military’s guardian norms by initiating officers into an expansively defined professional role. This is done through formal instruction, lectures by screened civilian expertsas well as individualand group research on a vast array of non-military topics, such as economic reform, poverty alleviation, education, health, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with the military studying these topics in the context of national security. But the context matters. So does educating the officers about the military’s proper subordinate role in a democracy, which is missing from the NDU curriculum. For example, of the total 987 student contact hours in the 2012-2013 National Security and War Course, officers just attend one two hour-long lecture on the constitution of Pakistan.
[quote]The military's proper subordinate role in a democracy is missing from the NDU curriculum[/quote]
Some think active institutional mechanisms such as National Security Council can be utilized to obviate civil-military cleavages. Do you think “bringing the military in to keep it out” mantra will work in Pakistan?
I think that is a deeply flawed assumption sold by the military as well as influential civilians. Whether one likes it or not, the normative goal of civil-military relations in any democracy is the supremacy of elected officials over the armed forces. The NSC as conceived by the generals overturns that logic. Nowhere in the democratic world is the military formally included in national decision-making. Even Turkey has abandoned its archetypal NSC because it institutionalized undue military influence to the detriment of civilian authority.I think the present government has made a serious mistake by inducting the service chiefs into the re-designated DCC under the same “keep them in” logic. But once you invite them in, the real question is: how do you get them out?
Some say that the recent gains of democratic dispensation are largely symbolic with no concrete changes in the civil-military equation. Do you agree?
They are right to a large extent. The military still has a de facto veto overthe country’s foreign and defense policies towardthe U.S., India, and Afghanistan, etc. as well as its corporate autonomy and budgetary allocations. But we have to remember that democratic control of the armed forcesin transitional contexts can take time to consolidate, if at all. For instance, it took Brazil almost two decades to exert proper civilian control over the military-controlled intelligence sector. As long as a democratictransition remains on track, a praetorian military can be technically weaned off of its interventionist inclinations. But in Pakistan’s case, that task is also complicated by the military’s disproportionate and undue influence over the state, which is in turn a consequence of the enduring conflict with India.
Based on the military’s capacity & willingnessto manipulate the media, do you agree that its hold over power today ismuch more dynamiccompared to, say the 1950s?
The military has no doubt adapted its tactics to the changed context marked by outwardly independent broadcast media amongst other things. For example, it contests civilian authority by either directly articulating its disagreement and/or by using pliant private news channels to manufacture public opinion against erring elected governments. But as the audacious attack on Hamid Mir shows, when a channel hits the military a bit too close to home, the generals can take off their velvet gloves.
There is a tendency, especially in the academia, which seeks to define Pakistan’s structural issues in class politics? How do you think the Left is helping the debate on issues such as terrorism and military dominance?
As you rightly pointed out, the academic Left expectedly filters the social world throughthe reductionist lens of exploitative class relations. Hence, for some, the Swat Taliban can become the vanguard of the peasantry’s war against landed elites. While the balance of class power is an important driver of domestic politics, quite a few leftist scholars deny the relatively autonomous role of institutions in shaping the interests and incentives of social classes/groups. Besides, their often justifiableaversion to “American imperialism”leads many on the Left to reduce the problem of terrorismto the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan/drone strikes (much like the rightwing does, ironically). Similarly, prominent authors such as Tariq Ali see the Pakistani military’s political dominance as a product of its ties to the U.S. In this oversimplifiedview, the GHQ virtually becomes the fifth side of the Pentagon and the generals act as the malleable local intermediaries of the global capitalist order. In sum, institutional capacity, interests and ideas have no place in this structurally over-determined view of historical continuity and change.
You have talked about the contingent relationship between Islamist parties/pressure groups and the establishment. Given the PTI and PAT long marches, do you think these parties are hand in glove with the establishment or are they well-meaning?
Theslash and burn politics of the PTI and the PAT leave little to the imagination. For instance, their stated objective is to overthrow a democratically elected government. Now we all know who the resident experts are in that matter. It is also no coincidence that both Khan and Qadri decided to bring a revolution when government-military relations had soured over several issues, including Musharraf’s trial. And look at their targets and their demands: both rail against the corruption of politicians (in this case, the Sharifs) as Pakistan’s key governance problem andwant a national/technocratic government as a way out. Short of a coup, this has been a textbook military diagnosis and solution (at least since the 1990s)to what the generals see as a dysfunctional parliamentary form of government.
Abdullah Zaidi is a freelance writer. He tweets at @abdullahz88