The army is no solution

Army is not trained nor has capacity to govern even for short-term. Yet, it has tried doing both & failed miserably.

It is laughable, if not lamentable as well. The demand to hand over Balochistan to the army reeks of abject ignorance on the part of those who are asking for it or perhaps, it is simply a rhetorical clamour from quarters suffering from self-induced amnesia or perhaps, it is a manifestation of our ashrafia’s infatuation with the army. Let me however, hasten to add, I am not talking about the grief-stricken Hazara Shias who lost nearly a 100 of their near and dear ones in the mindless massacre. They have every right to make any demand, which they in their emotional state of mind and heart feel, could stop the unending mayhem against their community

In the first place, how can you hand over to the army a province, which is already under its tight control? Secondly, the army has consistently failed to restore peace and order in that blood-drenched province and for decades now, a strident demand for its withdrawal has been made by politicians of all hues and colour, as well as by the civil society. In fact, the Baloch Liberation Front, which is waging a war of ‘liberation’ against the Pakistan Army is said to have come into being, in reaction to the army’s oppressive campaigns against the unarmed Baloch population, especially during the almost decade-long rule of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

Also, there has been a demand from both the MQM and the ANP for handing over Karachi to the army. Here, too, I detect a self-induced amnesia among those who are making this demand. I am sure the people of Karachi have not forgotten the horrendous experience of 1992-1994 when the army was bunkered in the city. The bloody stalemate was brought to an end when Benazir Bhutto, immediately after taking over the reins of government for the second term, sent her interior minister, the late Naseerullah Khan Babar and his team to rescue the army from a battle which was not winnable.

The army has an overwhelming presence in parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, including Swat and in Fata. Still, there has been no let up in the bloody incursions of militants led by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in these regions. In fact, the army has suffered innumerable casualties in this war against terror, in this part of Pakistan in the last 12 years or so, without any sign, so far, of the enemy losing ground. The cruelty with which these militants deal with the captured security personnel is simply revolting. Decapitation of captured soldiers is being used by the TTP as a tactic to terrorise their comrades to flee the battlefront.

The army has the capacity to rule and that, too, only for a short period. But it is neither trained nor does it have the capacity to govern even for a short-term. However, the Pakistan Army has, time and again, tried to do both simultaneously and for longish periods and failed miserably to do even a fraction of what General Park Chung Hee of South Korea, Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore or Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia did for their respective countries.

One only hopes that the current crop of our generals have learnt their lessons from our history of military takeovers and their miserable denouement. As it is, they are already engaged in tackling a serious internal threat (which the chief of army staff rightly believes is a bigger threat than the external one) that makes it impossible for them to, once again, wear more than one hat.

Those who are challenging the army today in the battlefield are none other than the very people who were trained in terrorism by our intelligence agency personnel to be used as instruments of foreign policy and defence while negotiating a favourable Kashmir settlement with India. Somewhere along the road to 9/11, and because of subsequent developments, we have completely lost the effectiveness of this instrument and had to abandon it in a hurry. But the instrument, which meanwhile has assumed a life of its own, is now refusing to get lost and has been resisting with all its strength, attempts by the army to change course by putting Kashmir on the back-burner and establishing normal trade, economic and people-to-people relations with India.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2013.