Sharif’s gambit against military-judiciary

Lt-Gen Bhopinder Singh (retd)

The recurring maxim ‘States have armies, but the Pakistani Army has a State’ has led to a cloak-and-dagger game between the civilian politicians in Islamabad and the burly military generals, 20 km down the road in Rawalpindi. Since 1958, when the Pakistani military under General Ayub Khan initiated the first coup d'état, martial law has been officially in place for 34 years and for the balance 36 years, the generals have pulled the strings from behind public glare. The second official coup in 1977 by General Zia was perversely codenamed ‘Operation Fair Play’, and the third entailing a 'mid-air' drama culminated in General Musharraf anointing himself, first as ‘Chief Executive’ and then as a ‘President’ for over eight years. All official military interventions in Pakistan have had popular support initially, as the military has consistently projected itself as an effective alternative that is at odds to the civil-political culture, and its accompanying perceptions of ineptitude, corruption and kinship. 

Pakistan's greatest political survivor, Nawaz Sharif, has been booted out of the office of prime-ministership, all three times, by the military-judiciary and not by the opposition parties. Ironically, Nawaz was a political creation of General Zia in the 80s. However, he has had a tumultuous equation with all six Pakistani military chiefs who have tenured with him. The first time he was coerced into demitting the office by General Waheed Kakar in 1993, it made him paranoid about trying to get pliant generals by tinkering with the norm of seniority and, almost always, getting it wrong. Sharif's heightened sense of insecurity came to forth in dealing with one of Pakistan's most distinguished, apolitical and professional Chairmen of Joint Chief Staff, Gen Jehangir Karamat, after unwarranted paranoia emanating from a lecture made by the General suggesting the reestablishment of the National Security Council (something Sharif was forced into reviving, 15 years later in 2013). Sharif had bundled out General Karamat only to usher in an ostensibly 'safe'Mohajir, Gen Pervez Musharraf, after getting Musharraf to supersede two senior officers, only to have 'Tricky Mush' plan Kargil within six months and then exile Sharif in another eight months!

In Pakistan, the third leg of the establishment troika is the judiciary that has, more often than not, acquiesced to the military in providing legitimacy and legal cover in taking on the politicians. The quantum of rebuke to the ruling politicians depends on the perceived intransigence of the red-lines by the generals — even, political proxies like Imran Khan are nudged to muster street protests and wage legal battles against ruling dispensations. Generals also enforce pressure by sending unsubtle messages like sacking six military officers for corruption and then have the military chief preach, “Enduring peace and stability (will not be established) unless the menace of corruption is uprooted", deliberately coinciding with Sharif’s battle for survival owing to corruption charges on himself. The subsequent drama ensued in the courtrooms with a fairly insignificant charge of 'non-disclosure' slapped on Sharif for a petty amount that he was entitled to, but actually never received! Today, the judiciary has bent, nailed and completed the hatchet job of 'judicial coup' for the military by ruling that the disqualification on Sharif under Article 62 (1)(f) of the constitution is for life. 

One standard tactic of the comeback-whiz Sharif had been to selectively project the nefarious and vested role of the military in dim light, and especially harp on its insidious impact and agenda in Pakistan. Sharif has conceded about being in the dark on Kargil, he had later called it a 'misadventure' that was tantamount to 'stabbed in the back'. The quintessential politician in Sharif has made deliberate, calculated and successful attempts at delinking himself from the embarrassing decisions made by the Generals and connected with the electoral mainstream, whenever they have tired of the military bluster and bravado. 

Today, however, Sharif has been boxed into a tight corner by the military-judiciary combine and can only lament, “You can't run a country if you have two or three parallel governments. This has to stop. There can only be one government: the constitutional one” and tried to blame the military for its extra-constitutional role in the Afghan crisis by accusing, “We have isolated ourselves. Despite giving sacrifices, our narrative is not being accepted. Afghanistan’s narrative is being accepted, but ours is not” and further embarrassing the military by alluding to the patronised terror industry, “Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai?” Nawaz also roped in the judiciary-military nexus by pointing to the pace of Mumbai trial and wondering, “Why can’t we complete the trial.”

Besides the shaming of the military-judiciary combine, to whom Sharif attributes his recent fall, he has even contradicted the Pakistani sovereign position on several sensitive matters. This unprecedented gambit has met with expected backlash from the opposition parties and military and the judiciary reacting with indefensible accusations of ‘sovereign compromise’. 

By this high-risk, high-gain gamble, Sharif hopes to expose the constraints of the civilian-government-in-charge in Islamabad and galvanise his constituency by projecting himself as the martyr in service of democracy. This seemingly extreme track has been literally forced upon Sharif, with national elections due in a couple of months. Nawaz is punting on driving a deep wedge in the ‘moral position’appropriated by the Pakistani military and judiciary in its 70 years of stuttering democracy. 

However, prevailing perceptions of the endemic corruption associated with the Sharif family may finally be his undoing, with the military carefully orchestrating the optics of a constitutionally approved process in booting out Sharif, yet again.