Analysis: Defusing civil-military distrust is key to stability

The "midnight knock" to pick up a parliamentarian, the brazen clobbering of another provincial parliamentarian in Punjab and fear-inducing tactics like a constable or journalist bashing are certainly not law-enforcing methods.

Instead, these are crude and callous ways that erode respect and incite resentment, employed when civilians cross the army leadership's invisible red line.

The recent arrest of Javed Hashmi, the PML(N) parliamentarian and the chairperson of the Alliance for Democracy (ARD), is a case in point.

If Javed Hashmi was violating a specific law then there has got be a more civilised and legal way of handling the situation.

In fact, the Hashmi case brings into the limelight the broader questions of the military's intervention in politics and of civil-military relations in Pakistan.

The Pakistan army seeks like all armies a special status in society, and linked to that immunity from criticism and civilian-managed accountability. Pakistan's army has been into controversial multiple tasking. Yet the Pakistan military as a force enjoys public respect and affection and is viewed as a saviour against external threats.

However, its leadership has faced unending criticism from the political class for hijacking democracy, for contributing to the break up of the country, for adopting objectionable national security policies and for manipulating politics.

This presents no easy situation to a military leadership that seeks respect for its institutional leadership.

The army leadership remains the principal manager of political power in Pakistan today. It has justified manipulating Pakistan's political landscape to 'safeguard national interest.' It has created new parties, attempted to divide and destroy old ones, even destroyed and divided its own creations.

A host of factors, especially the early demise of two political leaders Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, as well as nascent political parties, the security threat from India, the security cum ideological nexus between Pakistan's civil-military bureaucracy and the US, all contributed to the assertion of the khaki over the mufti in Pakistan's power scene.

Also to fall in line were two key institutions – the Election Commission and the judiciary – which would in other democratic dispensations ensure that the democratic process and the exercise of democratic power proceeded according to set rules. In Pakistan they gradually became the tools of the key power managers. Hence the institutional framework required for democracy to function with checks and balances has remained virtually non-existent.

The lessons that many aspiring politicians drew from the early political set-backs the political class suffered from civil-military bureaucracy's intervention was to 'play ball' with Pakistan's key political managers.

Political leaders like Bhashani, Mujib-ur Rehman, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Mufti, Achakzai resisted the civil-military bureaucracy's intervention in Pakistan's political space. Unable to evolve as a power, the political class grew weak, scattered and divided, a losing 'battle' between unequal forces.

Tragically in Pakistan an unintended, misplaced yet inevitable 'battle' between the genuine political class and the political managers, laid the foundations of suspicious civil-military relations.

Pakistan's political history is replete with well-meaning yet disastrous moves by key military and civilian governments which has increased this distrust. Till today this civil-military distrust remains the fundamental cause of political instability in Pakistan.

The irony is that a lot that is positive is happening in Pakistan in many different areas; society itself aided by the electronic and print media is going through a positive social transformation. Yet this civil-military divide overshadows much of this positive trend.

The onus of bridging this divide rests squarely on the current military leadership; specifically General Parvez Musharraf himself. He must recognise that the very logic he expounded in China regarding the linkage between political stability, absence of conflict and economic progress, hold true for Pakistan too.

He is best positioned to end that political stability. There is no option for him but to cut deals with key political parties, resolve the LFO problem and initiate a genuine bridging of the civil-military divide.

He has to rise above traditional and institutional ways of dealing with the political opposition. All those are tried and failed ways. Today the government enjoys minimal political and moral credibility and political instability persists.

General Musharraf has to take steps to alter this reality and take steps to ensure that genuine democracy can return to Pakistan. Only then will he have served Pakistan well.

Nasim Zehra is a Harvard Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center