Challenges for the new chief

As General Raheel Sharif takes over as chief of army staff (COAS), and moves into the most powerful office in the land, he must device a strategy to combat an enemy out to destroy the force that he commands and the state that it defends. Militancy has already been defined as the most serious threat to the country by the army high command and the outgoing COAS, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has made it a point to state this in the clearest possible terms on more than one occasion.



While General Sharif must deal with various challenges, some coming from across the borders on either side of the country, the biggest challenge he confronts is dealing with terrorists based on our own soil. Political divisions over this complicate matters and create confusion over how best to deal with the problem. But General Sharif must keep in mind his primary duty to keep the country safe, and there can be no doubt that the Taliban and affiliated outfits are out to cause harm to it. The idea that has floated in some quarters for years that these groups, or some amongst them, are ‘strategic assets’, which can be used against external enemies, must be recognised as a flawed one and be discarded. If the new COAS and his team can devise a strategy to defeat militants, once and for all, he would go down in history as a true hero.

The new army chief must also build on the careful process of keeping the army out of politics that his predecessor has so carefully navigated — indeed, the military should eventually confine itself to proffering its expert opinion to the civilian government in relevant matters rather than calling the shots. Perhaps, one of his biggest challenges on this front will be maintaining institutional neutrality during the upcoming legal proceedings against two former army chiefs — Pervez Musharraf and Mirza Aslam Baig. How he chooses to act as these progress will be a test of his take on civil-military relations in the country. We hope that his will be a tenure that will take this country forward rather than backwards in this regard, and translate into making democracy and the democratic process even stronger.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.