There is an absolute benchmark in civil-military relations: civilians have a right to be wrong. Advocates of military rule in Pakistan have argued that civilian leaders have not done their job in providing security, economic development, and arguably, even social cohesion. But the solution to civilian incompetence cannot be military intervention. Why is that?
The concept of modern statehood and governance has two consecutive levels of agency. The first is accorded by the people, presumably through free and fair elections, to elected leaders. This is a very broad appointment of agency, that is, the people empower the elected leaders to make decisions on their behalf. The second act of agency is accorded by elected representatives to specialised bureaucratic institutions such as the military. This is a narrow agency, what is called an "administrative agency," and requires the agent to follow the directions of the principal, in this case the civilian leadership, to good and bad decisions.
Militaries take over power by arguing that they are temporarily violating the second order of agency to be able to protect the first. The argument is predicated on the generals? claim that the civilian leadership has violated their trusteeship of public confidence, and in order to repair that primary relationship, the secondary administrative relationship must be broken as well. In effect, two wrongs will hopefully make a right.
The military?s logic in this context is incommensurate. The military?s approach of throwing out civilian governments is akin, if the saying could be reversed, to bringing a needle to a war (as opposed to bringing a sword to mend torn clothes). The first order of agency from the people to the government is a much larger problem than the relatively smaller second order of agency that the military violates when overthrowing civilian governments.
Moreover, the entire logic of military rule?we want to fix a broken system?necessarily implies that the military has to give up power once the system is fixed. There is an obvious problem with this argument: how does anyone, and especially the generals, know when the system is fixed and it is time for the military to get out? The timing issue is a difficult one. But given the conceptual limitation on the length of military rule, generals tend to lose whatever legitimacy they can muster faster than democratic leaders.
To remove a military from power requires a pact between moderates in the military and moderates in civil society. A military regime composed entirely of hardliners will believe that it can perpetuate its rule and will not allow any political liberalisation. This route ultimately leads to totalitarianism. Thankfully, Pakistan is not on it. An opposition of radicals, on the other hand, wants perfect democracy and the persecution of military officers who committed excesses during martial law. They scare even the moderate generals to want to keep their hold on power. Thus, an agreement of transfer of power between moderates on both sides holds the key to successful democratisation. We have seen this process at work in countries from Spain to Chile.
There is nothing no empirical proof nor a conceptual argument to suggest that military governments have ever been successful in any of the tasks they have set for themselves, including providing security. The example of how Argentina waded into a war of defeat over Falklands should be a salutary reminder of the fact that militaries when they are in government are unable even to provide security, their primary task as an institution. The use of force achieves its best results when combined with political initiatives. Even military officers know that the pursuit of political goals must guide armed action. A government that is in effect an instrument of coercion, however benignly led, becomes a government of one policy the use and the threat of use of force.
As for larger social, economic, and legal issues such as land reform, unemployment, education and other sectors, the military does not even usually attempt to bring change. What it can do and indeed often does primarily for the purposes of public relations' is to appear to bring political stability, when stability is a nothing more than a sign of inaction. As raucous as Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's rule was, as corrupt as his son-in-law could be, and as air-headed as Mr Nawaz Sharif became, there was political action and movement in Pakistan. In comparison, General Ziaul Haq's period was the most sterile time in Pakistan. It was also the time when the middle-class began to flee from the country.
The moderates in civil society have to show certain characteristics. First, they must show a readiness to become involved with national security issues (conversely, it is in the interest of moderate generals to bring into the national security debate moderates from civil society). Second, they have to forgive and not insist on persecuting past regimes for crimes and corruption. This might sometimes include politically neutralising the radical opposition. This gives the democratisation game a forward rather than backward-looking perspective. Third, they have to assert the absolute standard of civil-military relations mentioned above: that elected officials have the right to be wrong even in national security decisions. This creates a political legitimacy for the civilian leaders and sets the rules that allow regime change negotiations to occur. Where this pact does not emerge, and a military government continues to extend beyond its organisational capabilities or moderates in the civil society are unable to neutralise the radicals and provide a vision of security, it leads to cataclysmic events that compel regime change.
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The international community, including the United States, has a major stake in Pakistan’s stability, given the country’s central role in the US-led effort to, in US President Barack Obama’s words, “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al Qaeda; its war-prone rivalry with India over Kashmir; and its nuclear arsenal. As a result, US policy toward Pakistan has been dominated by concerns for its stability — providing the reasoning for backing Pakistan’s frequent military interventions — at the expense of its democratic institutions. But, as the recent eruption of protests in the Middle East and North Africa against US-backed tyrants has shown, authoritarian stability is not always a winning bet.
Despite US geopolitical support to the military, stability is not Pakistan’s most distinguishing feature. Many observers fear that Pakistan could become the world’s first nuclear-armed failed state. Their worry is not without reason. More than 63 years after independence, Pakistan is faced with a declining economy and pernicious insurgencies, mostly nested in, and radiating out from, its Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It is still struggling to meet its population’s basic needs. More than half of its people face severe and multidimensional poverty, which fuels resentment against the government and feeds political instability. In 2010, Foreign Policy even ranked Pakistan as number 10 on its Failed States Index, placing it in the ‘critical’ category with such other failed or failing states as Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. The consequences of its failure would no doubt be catastrophic, if for no other reason than the possibility of al Qaeda and its affiliates getting hold of the country’s atomic weapons. The Pakistani Taliban’s dramatic incursions into Pakistan’s northwestern Buner District (just 100 kilometres from the capital) in 2009, raised the spectre of such a takeover.
Pakistan is, of course, a weak state with serious political, economic and security challenges. But it is not on the fast track to failure, ready to be overturned by warlords, militants or militias. Even though an emboldened and violent Islamist fringe is trying to monopolise the public sphere, Pakistani civil society has proved itself capable of resisting both state and non-state repression. Its numerous universities, assertive professional associations, vocal human rights groups and free (if often irresponsible and hyper-nationalist) media sharply distinguish Pakistan from the likes of Afghanistan or Somalia. The country’s political parties are generally popular and parliamentary democracy is the default system of government. And its bureaucratic and judicial branches still have plenty of fight left in them.
The military, moreover, is a disciplined and cohesive force which is unlikely to let the country slide into chaos or let its prized nuclear weapons fall into the hands of the Islamists (even though the power and growth of Islamists in Pakistani society is a consequence of the generals’ sponsorship of militancy in Indian Kashmir and Afghanistan).
But while the army is professional, it has no respect for the political system. It has not mattered whether the army is under the command of a reckless figure, such as General Pervez Musharraf, or an apparently more prudent one, such as the current chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. As an institution, it deeply distrusts politicians and sees itself as the only force standing between stability and anarchy, intervening in politics whenever it decides that the politicians are not governing effectively, which is all too often a pretext used for the advancement or preservation of the military’s parochial organisational interests. These repeated interventions have weakened the country’s civilian institutional capacity, undermined the growth of representative institutions and fomented deep internal divisions in the country. In 2008, the military ostensibly staged its most recent retreat from government and politics. But the generals are reportedly back to their old tricks, propping up new political coalitions to ‘divide and rule’ from behind the scenes.
Pakistan is unlikely to collapse, but the imbalance of power between its civilian and military branches needs to be addressed if it is to become a normal modern state that is capable of effectively governing its territory. The best way to further boost Pakistan’s democracy will be by habituating the military to democratic norms and raising the costs of undermining democratic governance. That is easier said than done. But there are reasons to be optimistic. For instance, by amending Article 6 of the Constitution that deals with ‘high treason’, the current parliament has removed constitutional loopholes that military leaders used in the past to avoid prosecution for coups, and proscribed the judiciary’s frequent practice of legalising military rule.
While more direct attempts at exerting civilian control have backfired (for example, the government’s short-lived July 2008 decision to bring the ISI under the control of the interior ministry), these setbacks should not prevent civilian politicians from continuing to take measured steps to establish civilian supremacy. For instance, instead of staying out of defence policy completely, the civilian government should call regular meetings of the cabinet’s defence committee to discuss and make key national security decisions. Civilians should also try to ‘demilitarise’ the ministry of defence, subject military expenditures and defence policy to debate, and enact legislation to bring the ISI under democratic-civilian control. No less important, the government should appoint a special committee of the cabinet or parliament to scrutinise and approve top-level military appointments. All of this will not happen overnight, but the time for initiating the democratisation of civil-military relations was yesterday.
For its part, the international community, especially the US, must resist using the generals as shortcuts to stability, demonstrate patience with Pakistan’s civilian authorities and help them consolidate their hold on power. Some progress toward a resolution of the Kashmir conflict could help scale the military back and even reduce the attractiveness of using militancy as an instrument of foreign policy. External actors should help Pakistan and India in resolving their enduring rivalry, which not only threatens international security but has spilled into Afghanistan. In the meanwhile, they should clearly convey to the generals that any interference in the political or electoral process would seriously jeopardise external military assistance.
Pakistan is too important to be left to the devices of its generals. If their rhetoric is to be believed, Pakistan’s main parties, the PPP and the PML-N, are committed to the goal of keeping the military out of politics. Will they walk their democratic talk when the chips are down? Only time will tell. External actors have fared no better, sacrificing democracy for order. The results have been less than ideal, especially for the people of Pakistan. Pakistan urgently needs support from the international community to help stabilise its civilian institutions and to bolster its economy, which will cement public confidence in democracy. Only such support will ensure its reliability and stability as a partner in fighting militancy and terror.
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Pakistan can be described as a praetorian state where the military has acquired the capability, will, and sufficient experience to dominate the core political institutions and processes. As the political forces are disparate and weak, the military’s disposition has a strong impact on the course of political change, including the transfer of power from one set of the elite to another. Such an expanded role is at variance with the traditions and temperament of the military at the time of independence in 1947.
The Pakistan military inherited the British tradition of civilian supremacy over the military, aloofness from active politics, commitment to professionalism, and assistance to the civilian authorities with respect to law and order and national calamities. Its role expanded gradually. At first, it emerged as an important actor in the decision-making process, especially in defence and security affairs. In 1958 General (later Field Marshal) Mohammad Ayub Khan, Chief of Army Staff [COAS] from 1951 to 1958, overthrew the tottering civilian government. He ruled under martial law until June 1962, when a new presidential constitution was introduced which civilianised military rule through co-option of a section of the civilian elite. In March 1969, General Yahya Khan, COAS from 1966 to 1971, took power after Ayub Khan’s resignation in the wake of mass agitation against his rule. Yahya Khan abolished Ayub’s constitution and ruled the country under martial law until December 1971, when he was forced to hand over power to a civilian leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, following the surrender of the Pakistani troops in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to India.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was temporarily successful in asserting the primacy of civilian government. He enjoyed popular support in the early stages of his rule while the military’s reputation had declined dramatically owing to the East Pakistan debacle. However, Bhutto’s assertion of civilian supremacy did not prove durable for three major reasons. First, his efforts to personalise power rather than work towards establishing viable participatory institutions and processes eroded his popular support. Second, in their determination to dislodge Bhutto, some of the opposition leaders made it clear in the later stages of anti Bhutto agitation in 1977 that they would not challenge the military in the event of his overthrow. Third, by 1977 the military had recovered from the shock of 1971. When the senior commanders found that the Bhutto regime was discredited and could not survive without their support, they retrieved the political initiative.
This was accomplished when General Zia ul Haq, COAS from 1976 to 1988, staged the third coup in July 1977, and governed under martial law until 1985. During this period he tailored a political system and carefully stage-managed partyless elections to ensure the continuity of his rule after the termination of martial law. When Zia ul Haq died in an aircrash in August 1988, the military allowed the constitutional process to become operative, facilitating the holding of elections and transfer of power to an elected leader, Benazir Bhutto. However, the military monitored the elected government’s actions and periodically commented on its performance. Differences developed between the military commanders and the civilian government over the government’s performance, which was considered unsatisfactory. The military joined with the president to dismiss the government in August 1990.
In addition to the privileges of exercising power, other considerations which impel the senior echelons of the military to maintain interest in politics include overall political stability, the size of the defence budget, security and foreign policy, professional interests, especially the autonomy of the military in its internal affairs, and corporate interests, including the privileges and benefits for military personnel, especially senior commanders.
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