This article presents an assessment of role of Army in politics in Pakistan, with reference to Aqil Shah’s work The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Drawing on new archival and valuable military sources, Shah’s book focuses predominantly on the military’s institutional role in politics during significant historical junctures; military as an institution of the state; from the view point of the military mind-set; and on civil-military relations in Pakistan. The book is an interpretation based on the facts as understood, experienced, and expressed by military officers and civilian elites to illuminate the classical paradox: Who guards the guardians? Examining the political role of Pakistani army it is a significant work that provides deep insight into the military mentality.
.jpg)
There are number of works on Pakistan that discuss exclusively military and its role. In 21st century, especially because of the Pakistan army’s pivotal role in the US-led war against Islamist terrorism, it has received considerable attention from scholars and government officials, policy analysts and journalists. For example, in pre-9/11 era some important works on a balanced role of military in Pakistan—both positive and negative—include: Stephen Cohen’s The Pakistan Army (1998); Hassan Askari Rizvi’s The Military and Politics in Pakistan: 1947–1997 (2000); Khalid Mahmud Arif, The Role of Military in Politics: Pakistan 1947-97, in Hafeez Malik’s Pakistan: Founder’s Aspirations and Today’s Realities (2001). In post-9/11 era, some of the works on this issue include Vali Nasr’s Military rule, Islamism and democracy in Pakistan, The Middle East Journal (2004); Hussain Haqqani’s Between Mosque and Military (2005), in which he skillfully analyzed military’s role in both domestic politics and foreign policy in the context of its ties to Islamic extremism and Islamist parties. Hassan Abbas in his work Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (2005) framed his useful study of growing Islamic extremism in Pakistan in relation to the Army’s well-known policies and US-Pakistan relations. Similarly, in his Crossed Swords (2008), Shuja Nawaz’s tome on the Pakistani military is rich in historical descriptions of its nature and role in both war and politics. To this list may be added the works of Ayesha Sidiqa’s Military Inc. (2007) and Mazhar Aziz’s Military Control in Pakistan (2008). Each of these works has their own assets and merits but none of them is to as composite as Aqil Shah’s work The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan.
Shah’s interprets, through an examination of the political role of Pakistani army and illuminates the classical paradox—“Quis custoiet ipsos custodies?” or Who guards the guardians?—that has puzzled, what I label as “the world’s PPP”—Philosophers, Political scientists, and Policy makers.
Drawing on and using new archival and valuable but underutilized military sources including extensive interviews, professional publications (like Pakistan Army Green Book), research papers, and the strategy documents of the military premier war college, the National Defence University (NDU), Shah has examined and explained military politics in Pakistan and military as an institution of the state from the view point of the military’s belief system, “the military mind-set” or the “military mentality.” Thus peeping into the [army’s] black box, Shah makes us to know how one can assess the military’s particular conceptions of professionalism [which] shape its involvement in politics.
Shah’s book sums up Pakistan’s political history as a “story of repeated coups followed by protracted periods of military government, briefly punctuated by elected civilian rule”. He is of the opinion that until 2013, “Pakistan did not experience even one democratic transfer of power from one democratically elected government that had completed its tenure to another” because all its previous democratic transitions were “aborted by military coups”. Pakistan has been described as a “garrison state” as it has been ruled by military for most of its existence. Since its inception in 1947, the military has ruled directly for more than three decades—under Generals Muhammad Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan during 1958-71, under Zia ul Haq during 1977-88, and under Parvez Musharraf from 1999 to 2007—and indirectly, army has wielded decisive political influence behind the scenes for the rest of the time. Thus Pakistan has been one of the main military authoritarian exceptions to the global pattern of democratic resurgence.
Aqil Shah in work traces the origins of military authoritarianism in the formative decade after independence (1947-58). It is followed by an examination of reinforcing military habits of generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan and the military’s reassertion of political power. Shah, in the subsequent chapters, elucidates the role of institutional beliefs and motives in shaping the military’s behaviour during subsequent moments of transition from and to militarized authoritarian rule. Besides, he also takes into account the increased importance of influential new centers of power in both state and society, such as media and judiciary—which now harbour ambitions to “guard the guardians”—to assess their impact on how the military exercises its political influence in post-authoritarian context. Moreover, Shah evaluates the prospects of democratic reforms in civil-military relations in Pakistan in a comparative perspective. Reading his work it makes clear that: In Pakistan, the historically shaped combination of domestic and external factor—a strong perceived threat from India and weak national integration—defined the military’s formative experience in the early years after independence and critically shaped its institutional propensity to exercise independent political power (p. 254). The perceived insecurity vis-à-vis India led Pakistan’s founding civilian elites to subordinate the needs of society to that of security, which fostered rapid military institutional development (p.255). In Pakistan, the military’s predominantly Punjabi composition worsened the Bengali sense of exclusion from and resentment against the state (p.256). The military under General Zia ul Haq ruled Pakistan with an iron hand, and thus represented a new phase of military intervention, expanding from the armed defender of the territorial borders of an “imagined Muslim nation” to the protection of its “ideological frontiers” (p.258). Zia’s death in 1988, paved the way for transition to electoral democracy—and beginning of so-called ‘decade of democracy’ in Pakistan—and the military retreated to the barracks to preserve its public prestige (p.258). In October 1999, the military executed another ‘bloodless’ coup, and thus began General Parvez Musharraf’s dictatorship, which reinforced officers’ beliefs in a politically expansive professionalism that involved a direct military role in nation-building (p. 259).
The work begins with the central paradox of modern state, namely “who guards the guardians” and ends with a related question: “How shall we guard the guardians”? Shah like others blames military for having given major blows to the process of democratization in Pakistan and thus having deepened the country’s structural problems (p.284). But at the same time he is optimistic on certain conditions about the democratic stability in present day Pakistan (with the democratic transfer of power in May 2013) as he points out very insightfully: “Although the challenges [faced by the present government], including a domineering military and resource constraints, are many and complex, democracy might have a better chance of consolidation if elected governments can deliver on public expectations, solidly move toward resolving Pakistan’s urgent problems, and, together with the opposition, respect democratic and constitutional norms in both rhetoric and practice” (p.285). In this way, they can continue to maintain both “democratic and performance legitimately and thereby deny the military the opportunity to exploit political divisions and assume responsibility for the direct or indirect conduct of civilian affairs” (p.285).
Thus, Shah’s book is not a history of the Pakistani military and its origins, evolution, or battlefield effectiveness, but instead, an “interpretation” based on the facts as understood, experienced, and expressed by military officers and civilian elites, to illuminate the classical paradox: Who guards the guardians? Drawing on new archival and valuable military sources, Aqil Shah’s The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan is a rich source of comprehensive orientation on Pakistani military’s dominance; military politics in Pakistan; military as an institution of the state; and military’s particular conceptions of professionalism which shape its involvement in politics—from the view point of the military mind-set or the military mentality.
There are number of works on Pakistan that discuss exclusively military and its role. In 21st century, especially because of the Pakistan army’s pivotal role in the US-led war against Islamist terrorism, it has received considerable attention from scholars and government officials, policy analysts and journalists. For example, in pre-9/11 era some important works on a balanced role of military in Pakistan—both positive and negative—include: Stephen Cohen’s The Pakistan Army (1998); Hassan Askari Rizvi’s The Military and Politics in Pakistan: 1947–1997 (2000); Khalid Mahmud Arif, The Role of Military in Politics: Pakistan 1947-97, in Hafeez Malik’s Pakistan: Founder’s Aspirations and Today’s Realities (2001). In post-9/11 era, some of the works on this issue include Vali Nasr’s Military rule, Islamism and democracy in Pakistan, The Middle East Journal (2004); Hussain Haqqani’s Between Mosque and Military (2005), in which he skillfully analyzed military’s role in both domestic politics and foreign policy in the context of its ties to Islamic extremism and Islamist parties. Hassan Abbas in his work Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (2005) framed his useful study of growing Islamic extremism in Pakistan in relation to the Army’s well-known policies and US-Pakistan relations. Similarly, in his Crossed Swords (2008), Shuja Nawaz’s tome on the Pakistani military is rich in historical descriptions of its nature and role in both war and politics. To this list may be added the works of Ayesha Sidiqa’s Military Inc. (2007) and Mazhar Aziz’s Military Control in Pakistan (2008). Each of these works has their own assets and merits but none of them is to as composite as Aqil Shah’s work The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan.
Shah’s interprets, through an examination of the political role of Pakistani army and illuminates the classical paradox—“Quis custoiet ipsos custodies?” or Who guards the guardians?—that has puzzled, what I label as “the world’s PPP”—Philosophers, Political scientists, and Policy makers.
Drawing on and using new archival and valuable but underutilized military sources including extensive interviews, professional publications (like Pakistan Army Green Book), research papers, and the strategy documents of the military premier war college, the National Defence University (NDU), Shah has examined and explained military politics in Pakistan and military as an institution of the state from the view point of the military’s belief system, “the military mind-set” or the “military mentality.” Thus peeping into the [army’s] black box, Shah makes us to know how one can assess the military’s particular conceptions of professionalism [which] shape its involvement in politics.
Shah’s book sums up Pakistan’s political history as a “story of repeated coups followed by protracted periods of military government, briefly punctuated by elected civilian rule”. He is of the opinion that until 2013, “Pakistan did not experience even one democratic transfer of power from one democratically elected government that had completed its tenure to another” because all its previous democratic transitions were “aborted by military coups”. Pakistan has been described as a “garrison state” as it has been ruled by military for most of its existence. Since its inception in 1947, the military has ruled directly for more than three decades—under Generals Muhammad Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan during 1958-71, under Zia ul Haq during 1977-88, and under Parvez Musharraf from 1999 to 2007—and indirectly, army has wielded decisive political influence behind the scenes for the rest of the time. Thus Pakistan has been one of the main military authoritarian exceptions to the global pattern of democratic resurgence.
Aqil Shah in work traces the origins of military authoritarianism in the formative decade after independence (1947-58). It is followed by an examination of reinforcing military habits of generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan and the military’s reassertion of political power. Shah, in the subsequent chapters, elucidates the role of institutional beliefs and motives in shaping the military’s behaviour during subsequent moments of transition from and to militarized authoritarian rule. Besides, he also takes into account the increased importance of influential new centers of power in both state and society, such as media and judiciary—which now harbour ambitions to “guard the guardians”—to assess their impact on how the military exercises its political influence in post-authoritarian context. Moreover, Shah evaluates the prospects of democratic reforms in civil-military relations in Pakistan in a comparative perspective. Reading his work it makes clear that: In Pakistan, the historically shaped combination of domestic and external factor—a strong perceived threat from India and weak national integration—defined the military’s formative experience in the early years after independence and critically shaped its institutional propensity to exercise independent political power (p. 254). The perceived insecurity vis-à-vis India led Pakistan’s founding civilian elites to subordinate the needs of society to that of security, which fostered rapid military institutional development (p.255). In Pakistan, the military’s predominantly Punjabi composition worsened the Bengali sense of exclusion from and resentment against the state (p.256). The military under General Zia ul Haq ruled Pakistan with an iron hand, and thus represented a new phase of military intervention, expanding from the armed defender of the territorial borders of an “imagined Muslim nation” to the protection of its “ideological frontiers” (p.258). Zia’s death in 1988, paved the way for transition to electoral democracy—and beginning of so-called ‘decade of democracy’ in Pakistan—and the military retreated to the barracks to preserve its public prestige (p.258). In October 1999, the military executed another ‘bloodless’ coup, and thus began General Parvez Musharraf’s dictatorship, which reinforced officers’ beliefs in a politically expansive professionalism that involved a direct military role in nation-building (p. 259).
The work begins with the central paradox of modern state, namely “who guards the guardians” and ends with a related question: “How shall we guard the guardians”? Shah like others blames military for having given major blows to the process of democratization in Pakistan and thus having deepened the country’s structural problems (p.284). But at the same time he is optimistic on certain conditions about the democratic stability in present day Pakistan (with the democratic transfer of power in May 2013) as he points out very insightfully: “Although the challenges [faced by the present government], including a domineering military and resource constraints, are many and complex, democracy might have a better chance of consolidation if elected governments can deliver on public expectations, solidly move toward resolving Pakistan’s urgent problems, and, together with the opposition, respect democratic and constitutional norms in both rhetoric and practice” (p.285). In this way, they can continue to maintain both “democratic and performance legitimately and thereby deny the military the opportunity to exploit political divisions and assume responsibility for the direct or indirect conduct of civilian affairs” (p.285).
Thus, Shah’s book is not a history of the Pakistani military and its origins, evolution, or battlefield effectiveness, but instead, an “interpretation” based on the facts as understood, experienced, and expressed by military officers and civilian elites, to illuminate the classical paradox: Who guards the guardians? Drawing on new archival and valuable military sources, Aqil Shah’s The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan is a rich source of comprehensive orientation on Pakistani military’s dominance; military politics in Pakistan; military as an institution of the state; and military’s particular conceptions of professionalism which shape its involvement in politics—from the view point of the military mind-set or the military mentality.
No comments:
Post a Comment