Army, India, Al Qaeda and Zardari

[Neo]

Army, India, Al Qaeda and Zardari

Editorial: On the day President Asif Ali Zardari sat down at the Presidency and discussed national security and operational preparedness of the armed forces with the Services Chiefs, an AFP report noted that “A month after coming to power, President Asif Ali Zardari risks losing the support of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment with a string of foreign policy gaffes”. The assessment was attributed to both named “analysts” and unnamed “sources”.

There is reference in the report to President Zardari’s alleged or presumed description of the “Islamic militants” fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir as “terrorists”, as also his statement that India was never a threat to Pakistan. While the “sources” in the article did not say that Mr Zardari was wrong in his assessment, they thought that he “underestimated the extent to which India remains the number one obsession for the Pakistani military”.

These “analysts” described the “shadowy” ISI’s support, an adjective used by the report, for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1996-2001 and “alleged” organisation of cross-border insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir mainly as an effort “to achieve strategic depth against its bigger neighbour”. Interestingly, the analysts and unnamed sources went on to say things that sound tongue-in-cheek because they are less disapproving of President Zardari than they are of the Army. Take, for instance, the observation that “The entire structure of the army has one focus — to protect itself from India. It is the basic tenet of the army”. One named “analyst” disagreed with the opinion that the “entire army structure” may be offended with President Zardari and thought that the military “mind” at the upper echelons would agree with the president’s general change of policy which was foreshadowed by the Charter of Democracy that the PMLN and the PPP signed in 2006 in London.

What does one make of this report? Its approach is not value-neutral and it seems to weave a tapestry through broad generalisations without referring to the context of the happenings in the past. That context is important, not so much as justification for this and that policy but for understanding the compulsions of successive governments in pursuing them and their inability to change course when required. One reason there has been criticism of Mr Zardari’s statement referring to groups fighting in Kashmir as “terrorists” is because that statement, if indeed he made it, actually hurt the Kashmiri cause at this moment when the Kashmiri youth is up against India. It is a situation triggered by New Delhi’s myopic policies and has nothing to do with any outside stimulus, a fact acknowledged by analysts inside and outside India. Worse, the statement has allowed militant groups to push their agenda to the forefront at a time when events have passed them by and they have become irrelevant to the Kashmiri struggle.

Pakistan and the army have come a long way in reassessing the security threat from India. But while the dialogue framework has held on the positive side, old games, though with much less intensity, carry on with India alleging Pakistan’s involvement in the bombing of its embassy in Kabul and Islamabad accusing New Delhi of fishing in Balochistan and the tribal areas. In Balochistan, plausible deniability by India has been dented by statements from sub-nationalists like late Nawab Bugti’s son, Bramdagh Bugti, who has talked about getting funds and support from India.

At the UNGA, both Mr Zardari and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, stressed the need to move forward on the dialogue and Mr Singh conceded that India needed to resolve the Kashmir issue. The movement in Kashmir has taken on a different colour altogether and Pakistan would do itself and the Kashmiris much good if it avoided the mistakes of the nineties. Another opportunity has presented itself: the Indian government has survived the political storm created by the US-India nuclear deal and Pakistan has a new government in sync with the army. This is just the right time to carry the process forward.

Internally, a welcome development is the acceptance by the army that it needs to make the legislators privy to the situation and take them into confidence. Yesterday, it conducted the third in-camera briefing session on the various security threats faced by the country. This is the way of all developed democracies. Specialised committees of legislatures monitor the functioning, budgets and spending of the military. Given Pakistan’s chequered past, these developments have been slow in coming but now that we are moving in that direction, it should be commended.

[muse]

Specialised committees of legislatures monitor the functioning, budgets and spending of the military. Given Pakistan’s chequered past, these developments have been slow in coming but now that we are moving in that direction, it should be commended

Indeed, lets focus on process and not substance.

At the UNGA, both Mr Zardari and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, stressed the need to move forward on the dialogue and Mr Singh conceded that India needed to resolve the Kashmir issue. The movement in Kashmir has taken on a different colour altogether and Pakistan would do itself and the Kashmiris much good if it avoided the mistakes of the nineties. Another opportunity has presented itself: the Indian government has survived the political storm created by the US-India nuclear deal and Pakistan has a new government in sync with the army. This is just the right time to carry the process forward

.

Read - the indian govt has "conceded" reality that a problem exists in occupied kashmir - and that this "concession" by the Indian merits Pakistani "concessions" - the substance of which, is again, not important, it's the process.

[muse]

Welcome, but not enough
Ejaz Haider


The army has decided to make legislators privy to the internal security threat and how it has gone about addressing it. Three in-camera briefings have been held so far and the third, ongoing, promises to pan out into a week-long discussion and interaction of legislators with the army top brass.

A welcome development this, is it enough? No.

Specialised legislative committees dealing with intelligence and defence affairs are a norm in developed democracies where legislators monitor and oversee budgets, functioning, procurement needs and performance of the military.

The dealings offer a complex interplay between politicians and entrenched bureaucracies and there is a growing corpus of literature on the pluses and minuses of even highly evolved systems like the one practised in the United States, an outstanding recent work being Peter D Feaver’s Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight and Civil-Military Relations (2003).

Yet, leaving aside the minuses and the capacity of the military (like all bureaucracies) to develop workarounds to push through its agenda, it should be clear that an oversight/monitoring system is better than no system at all — or a situation, prevalent in Pakistan, where the military has traditionally shielded its activities from the civilian enclave.

Beginning with Samuel Huntington’s classic, The Soldier and the State (1956), scholars have determined that the central problem of civil-military relations is civilian control of the military. Later studies have shown that civilian control must be effective in order for the military to accept civilian supremacy.

This is where the rub lies. Consider a scenario.

Political parties are allowed through elections to come to power; the legislature begins to function; there are committees (as indeed there are) that deal with the armed forces; the army even gives briefings to legislators and the committees conduct hearings. Can this be called civilian control? Perhaps. Can this ensure effective civilian control? Certainly not.

What is missing here is the absence of a system of civilian control, the inability of legislators to reward or punish the armed forces and a lack of capacity among them to understand the issues the military brings to the table.

While the form of democracy may offer the trappings of civilian control, such control, if it can be called that, remains ineffective and therefore of no use.

There is a dilemma here, as Feaver points out.

A state needs a military powerful enough to defend itself, but it must also ensure that its coercive arm does not become a threat to it: “The civil-military challenge is to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorise.”

Huntington too had to deal with what Feaver calls the “cold war puzzle” and posited two types of “control”: subjective and objective. While the subjective definition of civilian control presupposes a conflict between civilian control and the need for military security, objective control, according to Huntington, denotes the “maximising of military professionalism”.

In the latter case, then, civilians, while dictating security policy would give the military the operational freedom to determine what could best secure policy objectives. Professional officers, experts in the management of violence, would remain subservient to civilian authority in return for professional autonomy.

Huntington’s idea was shaped and underpinned by three variables: external threat, the constitutional structure of the US, and liberalism. He argued that the Soviet threat necessitated that the US maintain a large military establishment for a long time.

However, the other two variables prevented the necessary allocation of resources for this purpose. He thought that without a change in the “ideological constant” of liberalism, the US would not be secure.

The paradox was: how to address the external threat without giving up civilian control? Objective control was the answer — it maximised military effectiveness while ensuring effective civilian control.

Feaver’s theory is more complex and deals with civil-military relations in the US in the backdrop of a system with entrenched objective control. Yet, as his work reveals — come out as it did when there was great friction within the Pentagon between the generals and civilian DoD functionaries — objective control is not a straightforward issue; neither is it a linear concept.

To be precise, none of the existing theories and models adequately explains the nature of civil-military relations in Pakistan. Also, as Huntington has argued elsewhere, it is incorrect to posit civil-military in such dichotomous terms, given that the civilian enclave is not a cohesive entity like the military.

The reason I mention these two works, a little less than five decades apart and dealing with the situation in the US, is to flag the point about the sheer inadequacy of the point at which we stand — while acknowledging, I must add, that the current trend is welcome. What is important is to put the ongoing exercise in Pakistan in a perspective to realise that there are miles to go still.

From this viewpoint, it is significant also that some legislators — with the possible exception of Khurram Dastagir Khan of the PMLN — who have been interviewed by some tv channels, notably Dawn News, have come up with observations that manifest a woeful lack of understanding of these issues. Mr Khan was the only one who considered the briefing inadequate and wanted to question and discuss the nature of the threat, its genesis and the means to address it.

But, and this is the plus, if we can get a few more legislators like Mr Khan who are prepared to apply their minds and the mandate to quiz the army on what is happening, this process could begin to become more useful. That ostensibly is, or should be, the rationale behind it.

What is amusing is the fact that there is newness in this exercise both for the army, still grappling with its old mindset, and the legislators, acting wide-eyed like kindergarten children being pulled into the world of grown-ups. Both will learn on the job. But the politicians will have to learn faster.

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

[Jana]

Originally Posted by muse

What is amusing is the fact that there is newness in this exercise both for the army, still grappling with its old mindset, and the legislators, acting wide-eyed like kindergarten children being pulled into the world of grown-ups. Both will learn on the job. But the politicians will have to learn faster[/I][/B].

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

AS these PoVs are from Dailytimes hence one always can expect biasness in their remarks but lets debate even their above biased remarks.

So DT says that army is still grapping with old mindset ! But the paper has failed to explain why they are doing so what are the merits on the basis of which army has to explain things to these politicians who according to the newspaper were acting like small kids????

Isnt it the lack of vision by so-called politicians that they have no command over understanding the national and international issues pretaining to Pakistan specialy the internal and external threats linked togather working in harmoney against Pakistan.

Isnt it that these politicians have always behaved like an Ostrich to these threats not becuase they are du.mb but because they are willing to put national security for their petty issue, fights and personal political gains.

[Jana]

Zardari briefed on nuclear, missile programme



ISLAMABAD (October 10 2008): President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday visited the Joint staff Headquarters and National Command Authority in Rawalpindi where he was given detailed briefing on various dimensions of Pakistan's nuclear and missile programme. President Zardari was received by General Tariq Majeed, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and other high officials.

A smartly turned out contingent of the Armed Forces presented the guard of honour to the President. Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai (Retd), Director General, Strategic Plans Division (SPD) briefed the President about nuclear and missile programme.

The briefing was also attended by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and senior officers of the SPD and some relevant ministries. The President also had a meeting with the JCSC Chairman where he discussed with him matters pertaining to the Armed Forces.

Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily]

[batmannow]

Originally Posted by Jana

Zardari briefed on nuclear, missile programme



ISLAMABAD (October 10 2008): President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday visited the Joint staff Headquarters and National Command Authority in Rawalpindi where he was given detailed briefing on various dimensions of Pakistan's nuclear and missile programme. President Zardari was received by General Tariq Majeed, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and other high officials.

A smartly turned out contingent of the Armed Forces presented the guard of honour to the President. Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai (Retd), Director General, Strategic Plans Division (SPD) briefed the President about nuclear and missile programme.

The briefing was also attended by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and senior officers of the SPD and some relevant ministries. The President also had a meeting with the JCSC Chairman where he discussed with him matters pertaining to the Armed Forces.

Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily]

Sory to say, but he is right on target, i mean! it would be his main interst to get knowledge about the Strategic Plans Division , so he can inlist his priorties & can mark the future targets of his future courption.

by the way, a nice thread !good work.

[muse]

Jana

Exactly - it is not the Army nor any element of the Armed Forces that is the problem, the problem has been and continues to the Politicians. You will have noted that far from understanding the issues at play, they choose to blame the DG ISI for not providing more answers, of course they think we did not follow that they did nt ask questions, and you did not miss that a particular political party and it's billionaire boss, he of "Amir ul momineen" fame, wanted another lynching of Musharraf instead of focusing on terrorists and terrorism.

In Pakistan it is all the rage that anyone ought to be a "legislator" - as if you would allow your postman or banker to perform surgery - in other words, if we train for many years and specialize, should "legislators" not be those who train in that specialty??

That is why it is so important that we begin devising a Pakistani political system and allow the Westminster style to go into the trash bin and challene anew the notion of democracy certain socialists elements want us to swallow.

[muse]

Jana

The response of the Politicians to this will be interesting:

Editorial:

The message of the blasts!

As the in-camera session of the parliament was listening to a briefing from the Army, the anti-terrorist squad headquarters was suicide-bombed with a car, leaving six wounded. Elsewhere, eleven people were killed in Dir when a vehicle meant to carry prisoners was blown up with a device fixed under it. Both incidents owed more to negligence and general illiteracy among the police personnel than to any terrorist expertise. In Landi Kotal an attempt was made to blow up oil tankers through a suicide-bomber who missed the target.

The effect of course was psychological and once again demonstrated how Al Qaeda was underpinning its actions with psy-war techniques. What it managed to do successfully was to show its outreach to those present in parliament through a message left at the anti-terrorism squad headquarters. The message was: if you fight America’s war this is what will happen to you. The unspoken message was: if you give up then you will be all right. The question however is: will Al Qaeda return our territory and leave Pakistan if we give up all contacts with America? Or will Al Qaeda separate us from the international community and then have us at its mercy? Those who say this is not our war have not been able to answer this question satisfactorily
.

And this is simply incredible but show the confusion among our politician, they do not understand that there can be no moral equation between the patriotic FAuj and Terrorists:

also want to brief MPs

ISLAMABAD: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Friday called an in-camera briefing for parliamentarians by security officials one-sided, and asked the government for an opportunity to brief parliamentarians about the Taliban stance. TTP Swat spokesman Haji Muslim Khan told BBC that the Taliban were a party to the so-called war on terror and should be given an opportunity of being heard. “The Taliban reject all the statements – published in the media – given by security officials to the elected representatives in the in-camera session of parliament,” he said. Khan said that security officials showed footage to parliamentarians in which Taliban were killing people, but did not show footage of airstrikes on civilians and bombing of madrassas that killed children. He said that he could brief parliament on the phone. “If (that is) not possible, our like-minded people are present in parliament, who can express our views,” he said, but refused to identify them


We need a Pakistani political system, to save Pakistan, Pakistanis and to ensure that we are not left at the mercy of these charlatans, these crooks, these treacherous self serving politicians.