A pointed statement by the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, has sent politicians and media scurrying for cover. It is as though, to translate an Urdu phrase, they have all sniffed a snake and would like to stay clear of it.
General Kayani didn't take names. But he did point the finger at the Supreme Court and the media and accused them of transgressing the limits of their authority and freedom, thereby undermining the writ and credibility of the army and affecting its morale adversely.
In terms of the judiciary, General Kayani's allusion was to the ISI case in which the SC held former army chief General Aslam Beg and former DGISI General Asad Durrani guilty of violating the constitution by rigging the 1990 elections and ordered the federal government to prosecute them accordingly.
The SC has angered the military in other unprecedented ways too. The CJP has taken a particularly hard line on the violation of citizens' fundamental rights by the military and its agencies in Balochistan and FATA. The FC, ISI and MI have received an earful from the CJP. In their black and white worldview, they are combating a separatist foreign-inspired insurgency in Balochistan and Al-Qaeda-Taliban terrorism in FATA that are unrelenting in exacting serious military and civilian casualties. Instead of being appreciated for working in a very difficult environment, they believe they have been unfairly castigated for their troubles. They are not used to it, they don't like it and they have told their Chief how they feel.
The SC and the media are held jointly responsible for exposing a former DG-ISI, General Javed Ashrad Qazi, and two other retired generals in the Musharraf era to hostile public scrutiny over the controversial privatization of urban land owned by Pakistan Railways in Lahore to make room for a luxury Golf Club in Lahore. NAB is investigating the three generals for alleged kickbacks in facilitating the deal. Naturally, they are hopping mad.
The media is also in the army chief's firing line. One case refers to three retired generals in charge of the NLC who lost Rs 4 billion of public money by unwise and unauthorized investments in the stock market. The military says they will be re-employed into the army, investigated and face a court martial. The media accuses the army of protecting its own unfairly.
The media has also targeted General Kayani himself. It has speculated that he is angling for another extension in tenure. This is coupled with a whispering campaign against two brothers of General Kayani for allegedly cornering lucrative projects in government.
General Kayani is also feeling defensive over some other issues. The military was severely embarrassed by the Raymond Davis affair and the US Navy Seal raid to kill OBL on May 2. Its attempt to derive mileage out of Memogate backfired because its chief witness wasn't credible. So did its decision to halt NATO supplies and whip up anti-Americanism because of drone strikes because it had to restore NATO supplies and couldn't stop the drones for the sake of retaining a working relationship with the US.
Last year, the military indirectly sought a gagging order on the media from the SC when it was smarting from the public backlash of the US Navy Seal raid. But the court has only now fished the case out for hearing when the media is firing on all cylinders and sees this case as a futile and foolish attempt to encroach on its hard won freedom.
It is unprecedented for nine top generals - two former army chiefs and two ex-DGs-ISI - to be in the dock. The internal pressure on General Kayani to stop this dangerous slide into civilian supremacy and accountability has clearly provoked him to fire a warning shot across the bows of the government, opposition, media and judiciary.
General Kayani has vouched his anti-civilian statement by prefacing it with a mea culpa of sorts. Yes, he says, the military has made mistakes. Yes, he says, it doesn't have a monopoly of defining the national interest. But there is no concrete evidence that the military is ready to define a new paradigm for Pakistan and civil-military relations or that it is talking from, and about, a higher plane of discourse and national security.
There's the rub. For the first time in Pakistan's history, there is a consensus in civil society, government, opposition, media, judiciary and bureaucracy that the military cannot call the shots any more and civilians must take charge of the destiny of their nation, for better or for worse.
It is also true that the pendulum seems to be swinging too fast and too furiously against the military for political comfort in a difficult existential moment for Pakistan when all state actors need to be on the same page. Therefore the judiciary, media and military should take stock and learn to pull their punches in the larger national interest.
Published in The Friday Times, November 10th, 2012.
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