Feroz R Khan July 22, 2004

Tags: military , pakistan , politics

rel="tag" href="/tag/military">military’s participation in national politics has sowed more evil than its has harvested any good consequences. Sometimes the discussion becomes esoteric and loses its focal clarity, because the question is not the removal of the military’s influence from politics, as much as how it should be removed. The removal of the military’s influence in politics does not generate any dissent, because it is generally understood that the continued role of the military in politics, would not be beneficial to the growth of democracy in Pakistan. The disagreement stems from a lack of consensus on how to remove the military from national politics, and how to find a relatively safe way of creating a wall of separation between the barracks and the politics.

The military in Pakistan is, by all accounts, a “state within a state” and it has its own institutional interests, which it safeguards by ensuring for itself a continued role in national politics. The realm of politics is a very egotistical endeavor and its is, invariably, the perpetuation of those interests, which give politics its meaning for existence. Over the years, the political evolution in Pakistan has been unfolding as a balancing act between the sphere of the civilian political authority and the sphere of the military’s political power. There is an argument, which suggests that the military is a symbiotic reality of political power in Pakistan and to remove it from its civilian twin, will cause too many problems. This is the argument of the status quo, which is favored by the military itself as a justification to legitimize its intrusions into the politics of Pakistan.

The argument does hold some value, because it asks the basic question of how to remove the military from politics and the lack of an answer suggests the acceptance by the civilian politics of this argument. The civilian acceptance of this logic does not necessarily imply an appeasement to the power of the military, but it does hint of a division of opinion within the civilian politics itself. The fact that the civilian politics is unwilling to challenge this assumption can be attributed to two possibilities. One possibility might be that the civilian politics is willing to tolerate the idea of the military, defined by the military itself, as the defenders of Pakistan’s geographical and ideological frontiers. The second possibility is that the civilian politicians see, within the continued presence of the military in politics, a means of protecting their own interests, whereby the military acts as a political fulcrum, which prevents power from being imbalanced in the politics of Pakistan to the disadvantage of any one political interest group.

Another argument, which is favored in the debate over the military’s role in Pakistan, is the one that seeks an immediate return of the military back to its barracks. This is one of the more concise arguments, which clearly states its intentions, but it suffers from an inability to produce a tangible mechanism on how to make the military shuffle back to its barracks. Another problem towards the realization of this proposition is that the military will only return to its barracks, if and only if, when it feels that its institutional interests in Pakistan politics are secure. A compromise to this intractable scenario might be to offer the military a “phased withdrawal” from politics, but this would simply end up defeating the whole argument itself, because even in a constitutional sense, the military would still be involved in the politics.

There is another school of thought, which believes that the role of the military, from Pakistani politics, cannot be removed, but it can be marginalized and then later, as events progress, the military would stop being such a dominant political power in Pakistan. This idea is fraught with optimism, because in any such constitutional framework, the onus rests on the military to behave within the paradigms of its powers and there is no guarantee that military will abide by the terms of its contract for sharing political power in Pakistan. The past experience of military rule in Pakistan forecloses any consideration of this idea, because the bitter experience, which has been the hallmark, of military rule in Pakistan is the refusal of the military to hand over power, without creating a political system, which secures its interests in politics.

The idea, which suggests a military pre-occupied in the creation of a political system to protect its institutional interests in Pakistan, implies that democracy in Pakistan, under such conditionality, will always be restrictive. The growth of political power and hence, the evolution of political maturity demand that politics in Pakistan be allowed to arrive at a consensual division of power through a process of political natural selection. Politics in Pakistan will only be stable once they have reached a point of equilibrium, where all the political interests are equally protected and insured against any trespasses of political power. One of the more feasible attempts at this idea is for the allowance of political bargaining in politics, without the military being an interested party. The problem in Pakistan’s politics, traditionally, has been when the military has on purpose poisoned political negotiations and prevented any national politics from developing just to secure its own vested interests in Pakistani politics.

The process of political bargaining will only succeed in Pakistan, when the politics of “divide and conquer” are no longer practiced in the national political arena. This suggestion is as applicable to the military as it is for the civilian politicians and all the interested groups in Pakistani politics have to realize that politics is a process of natural compromises and not the dominance of one idea over another idea. Once all these groups bargain and mutually create their own parameters of power and hereby, create a balance of political power within Pakistan, (which is not only acceptable to all parties, but all when all parties agree to maintain it), Pakistani politics will be more natural than artificial in its dissemination of political power.

Once such a level of political consensus can be reached in Pakistan, then the next step is to formalize this consensus as a political agreement, till such a point, when the military will be move back to its barracks. The implication is not to advocate a constitutional role for the military in Pakistani politics, but to bargain away it’s political powers and privileges, constitutionally, within a system in which the military itself is an interested party. The Pakistani military has to be constitutionally removed from political power, by first of all, making sure that its political interests are protected and then later, handing over the protection of those interests to the civilian politicians. The end result of this process should be the creation of a political system within Pakistan, where the civilian politicians end up as being guarantors for the military’s political interest and thus, disallow any incentive for the military to enter the politics once it has been forced out of it.

One of the ways in which this process can be completed, is to convince the military of the futility of its role in politics. The military needs to be convinced, not through a show of force, but through the use of cold political logic, which highlights the costs and the benefits of such a scheme. Since the military, as a political party in Pakistan, is interested in the self-preservation of its institutional interests, it is as rational as any other political interest group to the political calculus of self-perpetuation of its interests. The critical assumption is to define and isolate the political interests or other related interests, which prompt the military to periodically enter politics. The military’s interests, in intervening in Pakistani politics, can be safely termed as the existence of the army itself and the continued existence of its officer corps, as a distinct political caste in Pakistani politics capable of sharing political influence.

Therefore, if the military’s role in Pakistan politics has to be ended, the civilian politicians in Pakistan need to create a political dialogue, which impresses upon the military that its political interests would be protected. The best and the most efficient manner, in which to convince the military of this stratagem is to argue that the only obstacle to this is, ironically, the continued role of the military in the civilian politics of Pakistan. An argument has to be created and chiseled into perfection, which logically states that the military is its own worst enemy, when it comes to the protection of its political interests and if the military persists in the continuation of its role in politics, it will end up committing an institutional suicide. Therefore, the argument needs to stress the point that only way, in which the military can protect its institutional interests, is to leave politics before the popular opinion mitigates against its continued presence in, or even existence within, the national politics.

Consequently, the only way in which the military will leave politics and return to the barracks is, when it is convinced that its continued role in politics would eventually destroy its own institutional interests. If the military is wise, it should end its militarization of Pakistani politics, because if does not, then the continued militarization of politics will destroy the institution of the military in Pakistan itself. Hence, the only way in which the officer corps of the Pakistani military can protect their interests is by forcing the military to leave. As long as the military stays in power and denies power to the civilian politicians, the officer corps of the army will be progressively denied its own political rights. Once the military is made to realize this irony, will it end its interventions in the politics of Pakistan, because of the exigencies of self-interests; the existence of the army itself and the perpetuation of its officer corps as a political interest group.

The question is: are the civilian politicians of Pakistan capable of making this argument and convincing the army of the folly of its own ways in Pakistani politics? If the civilian politicians of Pakistan can make this argument, they would have helped in re-opening the door to the barracks, and encouraging the army not to fear entering the barracks once more. The answer happens to be a qualified “yes”. The only caveat is that the civilians can wrest the political levers of power from the military, but only if they are able of representing a sense of coherent political unity in face of the army’s domination of Pakistani national affairs. This coherence must come from the civilian politicians themselves and the first step towards realizing this goal is for the civilian politicians in Pakistan to stop appeasing army by making alliances with it at the cost of marginalizing the political parties, who are in opposition to the military rule. In simple words, the politicians in Pakistan have to stop legitimizing the military rule by agreeing to share power with the military.

Hence, the question becomes one of whether the civilian politicians, despite all their claims of democracy and the supremacy of the civilian rule in Pakistani politics, are capable of deeds, which their rhetoric promises? This question prompts another question, which asks whether the politicians in Pakistan are capable of looking beyond their self-interests and realize the value of a larger self-interest, one of a political necessity, of getting rid of the military from Pakistani politics? The answer to this question lies in the question, which very bluntly asks if the politicians in Pakistan are capable of resisting the politics of divide and conquer as practiced by the military and are able to resist the seduction which political power promises. If the politicians of Pakistan can over come this flaw in their characters and are able to ignore the charms of political power and they can unite, they will be able to convince the military of the errors of its owns ways and make the military leave Pakistani politics on its own accord.

The final answer lies, with the civilian politicians of Pakistan and it is up to them to decide, how much they value what they preach.