Sharif faces army chief choice

Islamabad, September 28

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faces a key choice in the coming weeks about who should run Pakistan’s powerful military, one that will have a major influence on the country’s often strained relationships with the United States and nuclear rival India.

With Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif saying he will step down when his tenure ends in November, the top post is up for grabs, and the Prime Minister decides who gets it.

Overshadowing the process has been speculation that the General, no relation to the premier, may seek to hold on to some or all of his powers even after his term is finished. The General is immensely popular among ordinary Pakistanis, who see him as a bulwark against crime, corruption and Islamist militant violence.

He has also strengthened the military’s grip over aspects of government, including the judiciary and areas of security policy. Yet the military flatly rejects the possibility of an extension.

In a country prone to military coups, including one in which Nawaz Sharif himself was ousted from power in 1999, suspicions that the General will remain in his post persist, including among some of the PM’s senior aides.

“Army chiefs soon begin to think they are invincibles-in-chief,” said a close aide to Nawaz Sharif, requesting anonymity. The military high command has sent the PM the dossiers of four main contenders.

The premier’s favourite, the aides said, was Lt Gen Javed Iqbal Ramday, commander of XXXI Corps who led a 2009 operation to drive the Pakistani Taliban militant movement from Swat Valley near the Afghan border. The three other dossiers are for Lt Gen Zubair Hayat, Chief of General Staff; Lt Gen Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmad, commanding officer in the eastern city of Multan; and Lt Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, who heads the Training and Evaluation Wing.

Ramday is considered among the front-runners, in part because his family has been associated with Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) party for many years. If Nawaz Sharif appoints a new army chief, it could allow him to claw back some of the influence he has ceded since coming to power in 2013, analysts said.

In 2014, the PM emerged in charge but weakened after protests demanding his resignation, and that year the army also went against his wishes for a negotiated settlement with Taliban militants by sending troops into North Waziristan. “Nawaz has lost a lot of ground to the military during Raheel’s tenure,” Talat Masood, a retired general and political analyst said. — Reuters