Nonetheless, it is hoped that Gen. Bajwa will recognize the high costs for Pakistan in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Currently Pakistan faces threats from a host of terrorist outfits, including ISIS. It simply can’t afford to retain terror as a strategic tool in an aggressive confrontation with India. Neither is such a confrontation necessary. Even if one assumes that India means Pakistan harm, which is certainly not the case, both sides have nuclear weapons and deterrence. There is thus no need for insecurity on part of Pakistani army elite.

Anyone familiar with Pakistan’s history knows that most of the last 70 years since independence have been dominated by that county’s military. Pakistan’s history and its politics have been more about the military than about its civilians. Whether military has governed directly under dictatorial military generals as it has done for 32 years, or whether it has ruled through other indirect, but equally intrusive, means, as it has when not directly running government, much of what Pakistan has become has been moulded by Pakistan’s military and its various institutions. Whether it is Pakistan as a (failed) national security state, or a breeding ground for various forms of Islamic Jehad, onus goes to Pakistan’s military.

This does not mean that civilian and political actors are innocent in anyway. But having been constrained in numerous ways by the overtly-dominant and overtly-invasive military, for whether Pakistan has been a failed or failing state, a rogue state involved in nuclear proliferation, or a state which allowed the world’s most wanted man to live well-protected for five years in Pakistan, responsibility on civilians and politicians, in absence of any real power, must be rather thin. Moreover, it is well recognized that whether it is Pakistan’s nuclear power, Afghan policy or policy towards India whether in terms of peace or trade, real power rests not with the civilian elected political body, but with the military particularly the army.

Yet, there have been moments of change in this dominant narrative as well, such as following the 1971 war when Z A Bhutto took over a demolished and defeated Pakistan. Or, more recently, when led by a group of civilians and political actors in 2007 and 2008, an arrogant military general dictator was eventually ousted, to the extent that he was allowed to live freely (and in great comfort) in exile abroad. It was this opening, in 2007 and 2008 that gave many Pakistanis a fleeting hope of a stronger, and perhaps more permanent direction of democratization, than perhaps at anytime ever before. While some of those expectations have been postponed, many still remain and, in fact, show signs of maturing.

Since 2013 much of the political discourse in Pakistan has been about two Sharifs. One, a democratically elected Prime Minister, who won unexpectedly majority in an election seen as the most free and fair since 1970, which in Pakistan means that it was without military interference or influence and the other, appointed by the incoming Prime Minister following May 2013 election. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed General Raheel Sharif to what many still consider to be Pakistan’s most important and powerful office, that of the Chief of Army Staff, although the latter is meant to report to the former. However, much public discourse over last three years has been in assessing and obsessing over which one of the two Sharifs has been more powerful, which of the two would oust the other.

General Sharif became the most popular and beloved man in Pakistan, also probably the most powerful, such was the hyped message constantly churned out by Raheel-obsessed media. He was the defender of Pakistan’s international borders and, its security, as well as, the prominent guarantor of Pakistan’s only economic and investment project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. He led Pakistan’s army’s war against jihadis and Islamic militants.
In three years he was COAS, General Sharif was also thanked by many pro-democracy observers for not undertaking a coup against the elected democratic set up, for which he might have had at least two opportunities: once in 2014 during Imran Khan’s Islamabad dharna, and again in 2016. Banners across many cities in Pakistan urged the Chief of Army to take over, or at least rescind his decision to retire. Such has been the precarious nature of Pakistan’s democratization that civilian actors have had to literally thank the army chief for not taking over. (IPA Service)