Extension to Gen Kayani: Dangerous Portends

When General Ashraf Parvez Kayani took charge as Chief of the Pakistan Army in 2007, he exhorted the rank and file to keep away from politics. He initiated moves to revert 152 military personnel on deputation to public sector institutions back to the Army. The self-portrayal of Kayani as an apolitical army man was to dupe the Pakistani people and the international community. It may be remembered that he was Deputy Military Secretary to Benazir Bhutto when she was Prime Minister, and later, he inveigled his way into the inner-coterie of Musharraf. It was Kayani who  to hammered a power sharing deal between the exiled Bhutto and Musharraf before she was assassinated on return to Pakistan.

In recent times, the constitutional emasculation of President Asif Ali Zardari and consequent enhancement of powers of Prime Minister YR Gilani must have had tacit support of Kayani. It is therefore difficult to believe that that there were no inducements or intimidations to Gilani by the General in securing extension of service. However, Gilani did not want this obvious notion to gain currency and so decided to announce the decision on television rather than through customary press release. Kayani comesout turn out shrewder than Ayub, Zia and Musharraf. 

This is not the first time that an army chief has been granted extension. Iskandar Mirza, the Governor General of Pakistan and later the President gave Ayub three extensions. But Mirza was a bureaucrat and had no political base. However, after the last extension in 1958, Ayub usurped power from his benefactor. Ayub Khan gave four years extension to General Musa in 1962. Yahya Khan on taking on power in 1969 automatically gave himself an extension. Zia seized power in 1977 and extended his tenure by nine years (till 1986) after which he declared himself the President. Later, the Army Chief Mirza Aslam Beg vigorously lobbied to secure an extension through the establishment of a new institution “Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces”, a move that was torpedoed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who was powerful and by virtue of having served under three military dictators had an astute understanding of matters military.

However, this is the first time that a civilian government has given “full term” extension to an Army Chief.Musharraf held on to the post of Army Chief for nearly a decade and bowed out only because of intense international and domestic pressures, in that order. Will Kayani be satisfied with just ‘extension’? His extension of tenure will result in increasing age and seniority gap between the army chief and the corps commanders, thus making his stature and position further unassailable within the army. The road to a takeover could well be open for Kayani as he completes his extended tenure.

The extension given to Gen Kayani should not come as surprise. His clout in Pakistan vis-à-vis the President or the Prime Minister  is clearly discernable. The US and its NATO allies have contributed no less in strengthening this perception. It is evidenced by the importance accorded to Kayani in US-Pakistan strategic dialogue. It is evidenced by Kayani’s insistence on keeping India out of Afghanistan. It is evidenced by Kayani’s flirtations with Islamic terrorist groups and various factions of Taliban for furtherance of Pakistan’s agenda at the cost of ‘war against terrorism’ for which the American tax payer is being bled economically.

The US dollars pumped into Pakistan have not changed the internal and external discourse of Pakistan. In fact, the same dollars are being used by the Pakistan Military-Intelligence establishment to keep the senior officers of the Pakistan Army, affected by Gen Kayani’s extension, in good humour. Nevertheless, the price the army has paid for these extensions and military takeovers is erosion in professionalism and the degeneration of military culture, which has manifested in increasing use of irregulars / jihadis for furtherance of strategic objectives of the Pakistan Army of which the ISI is an intrinsic part. That the US and NATO forces are being targeted by the same jihadis with the indulgence of Pakistan’s ISI is a fact which was too well known to have been accentuated or altered by a Wikipedia leak. The US leverages in Pakistan are palpably becoming feeble, and Kayani, the man who once headed the ISI, and now controls it as Army Chief, is becoming the arbiter of Afghanistan and the global war against terrorism.

It is a well known fact that the Pakistan Military-Intelligence establishment does not brook any civilian interference in matters relating to critical foreign policy, especially with regard to India, China, US and Afghanistan; as also nuclear policies and programmes. The sudden cantankerous posturing of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, SM Qureshi in his recent interlocution with the Indian Foreign Minister,  SM Krishna was a part of backroom calibration of Indo-Pakistan relations by Gen Kayani. It was almost a replay of the role played by Musharraf when Atal Bihari Vajpayee reached out to Nawaz Sharif. The Indian establishment needs to seriously ponder over the futility of spending effort, time and money in talking to a civilian leadership in Pakistan, who are of no consequence.

Kayani, therefore, is part of the problem and as long as he calls the shots, a US- effected Afghan solution is not possible. His tenure extension in fact, will provide further impetus to the phenomenon of terrorism in the name of Islam. There is nobody, who knows better than Kayani, the selective use and calibration of Islamic terrorism. Even with increasing frequency and intensity of terrorist attacks within Pakistan, the Pakistani citizens do not seem to realise that this script of military-intelligence establishment has gone awry.

The US does not realise that its Pakistan policy is creating an environment for 9/11 to reinvent itself in much more pernicious form in its sweep and stake. India will continue to be impacted by this Pakistan brand of terrorism. It has learnt to live and cope with it, but the US and the NATO countries by surrendering their role in rolling back Islamic terrorism from its epicentre, would make their respective homelands, assets and interests abroad extremely vulnerable.

The jihadis, and their sponsor Pakistan, are just waiting to announce victory over another superpower.
 

RSN Singh is Associate Editor of Indian Defence Review

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of the editorial committee or the centre for land warfare studies)