Trying Musharraf

Here is the man and here also is the moment. To the dislike of many, I wouldn’t call him a traitor or a coward. Not so because in the ruffled and uneven playing field of civil-military relations in this country, a time comes when individual preference (boldness and courage) is substituted by institutional dictate (compromise not meaning surrender). Such a time came on the fateful and critical morning when the general left his farmhouse to appear in the special court. Earlier, those planting bombs (and those discovering them in time) on the route to the court were doing their best to give the much-needed time to the ‘solution seekers’ to find a way out of this predicament. The military has all along been the most concerned institution on the detention and trial of the general. A definite behind-the-scene ‘solution seeker’.

Displaying classic military unity, cohesion and discipline, the army, despite the obstacles in October 1999, rescued its leader mid-air. All the corps commanders and principal staff officers unanimously agreed to put the entire weight of the army’s power and support in rescuing its leader and ‘reinstating’ and elevating their ‘sipah salaar’ to the position of chief executive of the country. Back in 1999, the entire nation saw how the ‘COAS’s constituency’— the army — rose to defend both, its leader and its corporate interests. The truth is that the 1999 coup was neither ‘individual-led’ nor ‘individual-guided’. It was an institutional response to a crisis situation, the designers and architects of which belonged to the same ruling party that rules us today.

The party is characterised for practicing and employing some of the harsher methods of exercising civilian control over the military. From a failed ‘mid-air hijacking’ in the past to the present attempts of dragging the ex-sipah saalar of the army to face a trial under the charges of treason in court, the party refuses to step back and allow the military to function from within its ‘comfort zone’.

We know that many civilian eyebrows have been raised on the timing of the general’s heart and other multiple ailments. What we don’t know is that many ‘military eyebrows’ were also being raised on the detention and trial of its sipah salaar, who had commanded and led the military for eight long years. These raised military eyebrows have been asking some pertinent questions. Why should political questions be resolved through the judiciary? Didn’t Pakistanis and the politicians they elected collectively through the legislative assemblies, consented to President Musharraf’s authority and responsibility to protect the state of Pakistan? Didn’t he become democratically accountable to the voters when he held elections in 2002 and put in place a civilian government? The general has been in Pakistan for the last seven months. If high treason was the ultimate charge for which he was to be tried, then why this delay? Were the other cases more important than the fundamental case of usurpation of power and authority in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution? Who masterminded the timings of the initiation of this case to proceed after the retirement of General Kayani and the chief justice of the Supreme Court? These are some important questions and depending on how they are answered, we will know the direction the general’s flight will take in future.

You can’t berate the army and still expect General Raheel Sharif not to come under pressure for doing little or nothing at all. General Kayani’s mute response, while in service, may have drawn him appreciation and praise from politicians, but within his own constituency, ‘the army’, he was seen as a commander who avoided and sidestepped his responsibility. He owed it to his Boss.

The assumption that the army is not as powerful as before and its power is declining is a political assumption. In reality, the military is deducing from the political responses that ‘it’s the others who are trying to catch up’. It does not mean that the military’s power is declining. If catching up means attacking the corporate interests of the military, then I am afraid the stars will have to protect and safeguard the interests of ‘stripes and uniform’. Because if they fail to do that — and let me say that General Kayani failed — the ‘stripes and uniform’ will demand an honest answer to one simple question: how come we fought the war on terror for eight long years under a sipah salaar, who we are now being told by the politicians is a traitor and the enemy of the state?

Guilt and treason are the two significant words in Article 6. However, one word that comes to mind when you think of all the legislators and political parties, which voted and kept General Musharraf in power and which are now asking for his trial: ‘shameful’.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2014.

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