The changeover of command

When dust of praise settles, Kayani will eventually be remembered for his soft image, cautious & watchful approach.

Now that the farewell and welcoming speeches have ended and the baton of command has exchanged hands, it’s time for the new COAS to reflect on the challenges ahead. The slower route taken by PM Nawaz Sharif to finally make his choice has already deprived the man on the horseback of some valuable time. Had this announcement come three months earlier — keeping up with military traditions — General Haroon would still have resigned and the next two senior-most officers in the line of seniority would actually have been much better prepared to take on their new roles. What political wisdom necessitated the delay in announcement of these appointments? Whatever it was, General Raheel Sharif will now do well to focus on not what General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has done but what he could not do.

During General Kayani’s military leadership, the disjointed civil-military approach of which he was an essential part, failed to deliver on some important fronts. No straightening out of the police force was carried out — not, at least, on a scale where domestic security could eventually be handed over to them and thus enable the army to exit and revert to its conventional fighting role in future under some given time frame. With all its failures, Isaf will bow out from Afghanistan after training over 300,000 security personnel to take over Afghanistan’s security. Extricating one-third of the deployed army from the western frontier without giving an impression of losing this war is the biggest challenge that will confront the new COAS’s art of generalship.

General Kayani was the best placed military leader to take a decision on the issue of missing persons before he finally bowed out. A risk he didn’t take. Having stayed as DG ISI and then COAS for six years, no one could have better understood the complexities and dynamics of this issue and the roadblocks that prevented the army from seeking its resolution. Against this backdrop and the recent public commitment by a proactive judiciary and the incoming defence minister to resolve the issue in the coming week, the new COAS, even before he has properly harnessed himself in the saddle, has been put on the spot. It’s not news that dangerous detainees are kept locked up by the military, something I have already written about in a column for The Express Tribune titled “Illegal Detention Centers” published on April 4, 2013. The real news would be if the incoming COAS swallows the bitter pill and allows the appearance of these detainees on the public scene. Seen as a ‘strategic military rebound’ and an important ‘military concession’, the likelihood is that General Sharif will not make this decision any time soon. Why would he? Firstly, this decision will make him look detached within the army, which holds an absolute institutional opinion on such detentions. Secondly, why would the army like to commit (officially) that it has been involved in the business of illegal detentions? Wouldn’t this mean its leadership and intelligence agencies would have to be accountable in a court of law?

Unprecedented and unabated praise is being showered by the media on all the military and non-military accomplishments of the outgoing COAS. This is fine. Yet, when the dust of praise settles down, General Kayani will eventually be remembered as a COAS for his soft image and his cautious and watchful approach. Commanding an army in a state of war, he hangs up his boots at a time when the overall outcome of this deadlocked war against the Taliban remains doubtful. It’s likely that General Kayani will be remembered more for ‘avoiding risks’ in war rather than practicing neutrality and non-interference in politics for which he is being rightly credited. Those who consider the ‘individual-led neutrality’ practiced by General Kayani an institutional choice are also making a mistake. For 14 years, only two generals (General Musharraf and General Kayani) have affected the careers and decided the fates of the senior general officers in the army. Vested with the unquestionable authority of postings, transfers and appointments of the general officers corps — which is the sole prerogative of the COAS — General Kayani like his predecessors faced little or no opposition in implementing his individual preferences in the army. Disguised as policy change, these individual preferences — Islamisation of the army under General Zia and enlightened moderation under General Musharraf — have been top-down directive enforcements on an army whose senior military hierarchy knows too well the rewards and punishment of submission or dissent. This senior military hierarchy thus seldom questions or opposes the individual preferred change.

Leading the army in a state of war for six years, General Kayani pursued (preferred) two different ends to this war; confrontation as well as reconciliation. Both failed to give any decisive direction to the war. With over 5,000 military deaths in combat, not even one underperforming general was fired. Under General Kayani’s brinkmanship, the joys of being rewarded and promoted for generals in this stalemated war were more common than the fears of being fired or relieved of duty.

His own retirement was deferred and delayed by three years when he was granted a full extra tenure in 2010. This political act of kindness had little to do with the professional competence of the general as the next in line always has almost the same military talent and competence. It had everything to do with the mindset of the ruling civilian elite of the time that saw ‘avoiding risks’ as the most important practicing tool for a military leader to hold on to the prized seat.

The top military commander is recognised for correctly seeing and reading the battlefield and imagining its likely military, political and geostrategic consequences. He is not recognised and rewarded for being non-political. A sound military strategic leadership at the top is supposed to create the security circumstances and environment from which the political end of a war proceeds.

Is Pakistan less threatened and less secure than it was in 1999? The answer to this question should sum up the performance of the two top generals who together led the sixth-largest army in the world in a war in which the cost the army paid exceeded its gains.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2013.

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