The Message Behind Raheel Sharif Raking up Kashmir

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

In a speech on the occasion of Martyrs Day, the Pakistan Army chief, Gen Raheel Sharif, parroted a nearly seven decade old, and by now tired and worn out cliché that Kashmir was Pakistan’s ‘jugular vein’ and demanded a resolution to the issue in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and ‘aspirations of the Kashmiri people’, adding for good measure that there can be no ‘durable peace’ in the region if the Kashmir issue is not resolved, presumably according to Islamabad's wishes.

Coming as it does in the midst of India’s General Election, Gen Sharif’s speech was bound to raise hackles in India and it was quite natural for the main political parties to close ranks and attack these remarks. The reaction in India was a lot stronger this time as compared to what happened just a couple of months back when Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had said the same thing in his address to the UN General Assembly. Although there is neither anything new nor anything novel in what Raheel Sharif or for that matter Nawaz Sharif have said on Kashmir, this sort of statement is offensive to the Indian ears. More importantly, India cannot and should not remain blasé about the signals that are coming out of both Islamabad and Rawalpindi because, if nothing else, Pakistan’s position has once again significantly regressed from the ‘out of the box’ thinking during the Musharraf years. In other words, the Kashmir solution that was being worked out on the back channel is now history.

The rhetoric of ‘jugular vein’ is in itself quite empty and illogical: if Pakistan could survive for seven decades without what it imagines to be its ‘jugular vein’, then Kashmir clearly is not its jugular vein. That aside, the timing and the occasion of the reference to Kashmir by Gen Raheel Sharif is important in terms of the message that is being sent. The speech has been made in the backdrop of rising tensions between the civilian government and the military over the trial of the former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf, the government’s efforts to normalise relations with India by pushing ahead on the trade front, and the differences between the government and the Army on the issue of talks with the Taliban. Adding to the tensions is the stand-off between the army and Pakistan's largest media network, Jang/Geo Group, after the botched assassination attempt on journalist Hamid Mir which has been blamed on the ISI. With the government caught in a bind on this issue, Gen Sharif’s speech was the army asserting itself and drawing red-lines for the civilian government on Kashmir, media freedom and Taliban talks.

The occasion too is important. This is the first time that in a ceremony to mark Martyrs Day, an army chief has thought it fit to talk about Kashmir. It is one thing for a military dictator to talk about political and diplomatic issues on such an occasion and quite another for a ‘professional’ army chief to do so. In no other democracy does an army chief make a statement that pretty much draws a line in the sand for the civilian government like Gen Raheel Sharif has done. What this has done is bust the myth of civilian supremacy in Pakistan. Even though Gen Sharif paid lip service to democracy, constitution and the rule of law in his speech, he has sent out a clear message that the Pakistan Army continues to retain the veto on issues traditionally handled by it– relations with India (Kashmir included), Afghanistan, US and nuclear programme. This should serve as a wake-up call for those in India who harboured the illusion that Nawaz Sharif would use his mandate to push ahead on normalising relations with India and the Pakistan Army would have no choice but to follow his lead. Quite aside, the fact that there are serious doubts in India about Nawaz Sharif’s own intentions, recent events, including the scuttling of the trade agreement by the Pakistan Army, prove that when it comes to India, the civilian government is subservient to the army.

For quite some time, Track-II seminarists have been trying hard to sell the line in India that the focus of the Pakistan Army has shifted from India to its internal troubles and its western borders. India is being told that the Islamist terror groups have now replaced India as enemy no. 1 and that both the civilian government and the military is on the same page as far as normalisation of relations with India is concerned. But Gen Sharif’s speech makes it clear that while the page may be the same, the understanding of the civilians and the military appears to be poles apart over what’s on that proverbial page. If anything, the Pakistan Army remains ideologically unreconstructed and unreformed when it comes to its irredentist claims over the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. India was and remains the enemy no. 1 and the sooner Indians get over their tendency to deceive themselves on this issue, the better. This means that the apprehensions being expressed in India for some time now that the Pakistanis will once again ratchet up the export of terrorism into India, and particularly in Kashmir, are likely to unfold in the not too distant a future. Gen Sharif’s speech is also a warning that the next government in New Delhi will be tested by the Pakistani sponsored terrorists within weeks, if not days, of taking office.

The Pakistanis tend to be rather economical with the truth when they complain that unlike in India where Pakistan is an election issue (even if not a central one), in Pakistan there is a general consensus on improving relations with India. The fact is that India remains a convenient bogey that all sides in Pakistan use to target their rivals. In the recent civil-military scrap, the army has used its ‘assets’ in the media, ‘civil society’ and political parties and its jihadist auxiliaries to drum up public opinion in its favour and target people who refuse to toe the army line by insinuating and sometimes directly accusing them of being on the Indian payroll. The point is that if even the remotest association with India is seen as tarnishing someone’s patriotic credentials in Pakistan, then what does it say about all the talk of a consensus on improving relations with India. In order to browbeat and bludgeon those in Pakistan who speak in favour of good relations with India, banned terrorist organisations have been unleashed to hold street demonstrations to express their love and loyalty to the army and ISI. In the process, not only have the organic links between the ISI and these jihadist terror groups been exposed, but also an open threat has been hurled at those who demand civilised and constitutional behaviour from the army to either fall in line behind the state actors or lose their lives to bullets fired by the non-state actors acting at the behest and on the instructions of the state actors. So much for Pakistani democracy, freedom of expression, and civilian supremacy.

Some incorrigible optimists in India would argue that it is precisely for this reason that India must continue to engage Pakistan as it will strengthen those favouring normalised relations and, at the very minimum, deepen the cleavages within Pakistan. But what these people need to understand that it is better to prepare to confront a strong enemy than to depend upon a weak friend. Before India clasps that hand of those who advocate good relations with it, let them first prove their strength in their own country before they expect some concession from India to strengthen their hand. In this, India should take lead from the example of Bangladesh where Sheikh Hasina has proved her credentials as a reliable partner in solving problems and improving India-Bangladesh relations.

Like his other countrymen, Gen Raheel Sharif has also spoken about how there cannot be durable peace without a resolution of the Kashmir issue. There can be no two views about the desirability of peace. But the urgency of peace is more for Pakistan than for India. Ever since Pakistan started sponsoring large scale terrorism in India in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its economy has gone into a tailspin, in large part because Pakistan is seen by the international community as a net exporter of terrorism. India, on the other hand, has been the toast of the world in these years and, but for the interregnum of the Manmohan Singh years, would have had an economy far more vibrant and strong than what it is today. In other words, while India’s USP has been its manpower, market and economy, Pakistan’s USP has been that it is a country too dangerous to fail, ‘an international migraine’ to quote Madeleine Albright! As an international basket case and a country being torn apart by its self-created terrorist monsters, it is Pakistan which has a greater need for durable peace. People like Gen Raheel Sharif should, therefore, do their own country a favour and pipe down on their war-mongering, which neither impresses India nor does anything for Pakistan.

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Published Date: 5^th May 2014, Image source: http://www.nationalturk.com

New Pak Army Chief: Nawaz Sharif Gambles on Old Criteria

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

Out of all the names being tossed around as the possible replacement for Gen Ashfaq Kayani, it is the dark horse – Gen Raheel Sharif – who has finally been appointed as the Pakistan Army’s 15^th chief. Apparently, Gen Sharif’s name was on the panel of names forwarded by Kayani to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; but he was never the favourite. The grapevine was that Nawaz Sharif, who has had a run-in with all the army chiefs he has worked with in his previous two tenures as Prime Minister, would stick to the book and go by the seniority criteria. Nawaz Sharif had himself declared on more than one occasion that he would go by seniority in selecting the next army chief.

If indeed this was the course he had followed, then there were only two options: either he would appoint the two senior-most generals – Haroon Aslam and Rashad Mehmood – to the two positions that were available i.e. the ceremonial Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) and the substantive Chief of Army Staff (COAS); or else he would pick the Naval chief for the post of CJCSC and appoint Aslam as COAS. But the fact that Nawaz Sharif was taking his time in announcing the CJCSC, a position that has become vacant in early October, and was not disclosing the name of the next COAS led many to believe that he would once again break the chain of seniority and select an army chief he was comfortable with. This meant that apart from seniority, he would also go by other criteria – loyalty, background (both family as well as political ideology in terms of attitude towards army’s role in politics), affiliations or the lack of them with Nawaz Sharif’s detractors and enemies (for instance, closeness to the former dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf), and the person’s thinking on issue like relations with the US and how to tackle the tide of terrorism, among other things.

While there were three front-runners – Haroon Aslam, Rashad Mehmood and Raheel Sharif – there was another name that was often mentioned as a possible chief – Tariq Khan. The Mess gossip was that Aslam, a Jat and a commando to boot (bringing back bad memories of another commando who was made army chief by Nawaz Sharif – Pervez Musharraf), was a man with a mind of his own which would hardly be something that Nawaz Sharif would be comfortable with. The next in line was Rashad Mahmood. He was regarded as the favourite of the outgoing chief and almost an alter ego and mirror image of Kayani. This would have certainly spooked Nawaz Sharif. The fourth was Tariq Khan who was seen as the favourite of the soldiery and very popular within the army. He was also reputed as a no-nonsense kind of general who would take a hard line on the Taliban and not allow the politicians to play footsie with the Islamists. Worse, he was seen as someone who has little patience for the shenanigans of politicians and was not the kind of guy who would keep quiet and let the drift in the affairs of state continue endlessly.

Finally, there was Raheel Sharif, the third on the seniority list. He was regarded as a good officer, not exceptionally bright or professionally cutting edge, but reasonably competent. He has a good pedigree – younger brother of the man awarded Pakistan’s highest gallantry award. But more importantly, he is a Kashmiri. The biradari factor would certainly count with Nawaz Sharif, who is himself a Kashmiri. Much like the Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora in India, the Kashmiri Muslim Diaspora in Pakistan is very clannish – a look at the composition of Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet, which has a high proportion of Kashmiris, proves this point. In fact, Raheel Sharif is the second Kashmiri army chief appointed by Nawaz Sharif, the first being the ill-fated Ziauddin Butt who was imprisoned within hours of his appointment which has triggered the coup that ousted Nawaz Sharif 2.0 and brought in Musharraf.

The remarkable thing about the selection of the new army chief is not so much the man who has been picked as it is the manner in which Nawaz Sharif and his close coterie managed to keep this choice so close to their chest that hardly anyone was able to guess who he would appoint. That this happened in a place like Pakistan, where nothing remains secret for very long and where rumours are generally ‘premature facts’, is quite creditable. Practically all of the commentators who were wittingly or unwittingly lobbying for one or the other contenders will be eating crow today. For instance, there is a man by the name of Brian Cloughley who is regarded by many in Pakistan as a foreigner who is often used by the Pakistan army for hatchet jobs and writing nice things about them and projecting their views in the West. A highly opinionated but just as equally ill-informed Cloughley wrote some weeks ago: “Then there’s Lt-Gen Raheel Sharif, another competent and well-above-average officer – but a close associate of Musharraf. I think, perhaps, forget him, because Nawaz is an unforgiving man.” Whether Cloughley was misleading or misled is hardly the point. The fact is that Nawaz Sharif made his decision and didn’t let anyone get a whiff of what he was going to do.

It is difficult to say what sort of a chief Raheel Sharif will be. Commissioned in the Frontier Force regiment in 1976, he is the first Pakistan Army chief who hasn’t fought in a war against India. In terms of appointments, he has done all the necessary command and staff postings that would qualify him for the top job. As the Commandant of the Pakistan Military Academy, he is credited with introducing training modules to prepare the cadets for the new type of war that the army is facing. Until recently, asymmetric war was something that Pakistan unleashed on others; now however the shoe is on the other foot! Apart from commanding the Gujranwala corps, and serving as GOC Lahore, Raheel Sharif’s last appointment before becoming chief was Inspector General Training and Evaluation. This was quite obviously a sidelining position, but as IGT&E he has had the opportunity for interacting closely with the Afghan Army and was the point man for providing training and designing training courses for the Afghan Army. It is another matter that these courses have not found many takers in the Afghan Army. He is also believed to have been involved in preparing and evaluating plans to counter the Indian Army’s ‘cold start’ doctrine.

On a personal level, there isn’t a great deal of information in the public domain about Raheel Sharif. According to Pakistani press reports, he has a soldierly swagger and is a bit of a showman. This is something that makes for good TV as well as in regimental durbars, but is no substitute for taking tough decisions, and there are bound to be many new pressures and hard decisions that the next army chief will have to take. Of course, now that he has been appointed, we can rest assured that the Pakistani press will be labelling him as a ‘tough, professional soldier’. Asides of the obvious question of how a ‘non-professional’ soldier can ever rise to be a General officer in a professional army, this is really short-hand for saying that he is not involved in politics. But this is something that has also been said of other generals, including a certain Musharraf, who later usurped power by overthrowing civilian governments. The simple reality of life in Pakistan is that no army chief in Pakistan can ever completely divorce himself from politics. Even if he is totally apolitical, he will eventually be dragged into the political quagmire.

With Pakistan likely to face some decisions in the not too distant a future – how to handle drones and relations with the US, what to do about the Pakistani Taliban and whether to negotiate with them and how much space to cede to them, how to deal with India, the policy on Afghanistan post 2014, how to handle the civil-military relations – it is a long list of existential questions that the next army chief cannot just close his eyes to and let the civilian government call all the shots. Pundits in Pakistan and also some Western diplomats are predicting that the next army chief will be forced, partly by institutional pressure and partly by circumstances, to indulge in some tough talking with the civilian leadership. During Kayani’s tenure, there were rumblings in the army over his hands-off and non-interventionist approach. It seems unlikely that Raheel Sharif can adopt the same approach and resist pressure from rank and file to take up issues with the government that are agitating the Army. How the civil-military equation settles in this sort of a situation is something that will determine the future of Pakistani politics, and also Pakistan’s relations with rest of the world.

Given his profile, it is quite possible that Raheel Sharif won’t rock the boat too much on major strategic issues, even less so because he is not the sort of charismatic and inspirational figure who can affect any kind of paradigm change in the outlook, worldview and thinking of the Pakistan army, especially in relation to India. Even if he is subservient to the civilian government, a very heroic assumption if ever there was one, what he can do at best is only on the margins. At best he could try reorienting the army’s focus from the Eastern front to the Western and internal fronts.

Conversely, if he is one of those inveterate and incorrigible India baiters i.e. run of the mill kind or garden variety military officer in the Pakistan army, then there is every chance that he will use the dirty tricks department of the army to undermine and even sabotage any initiative that Nawaz Sharif might want to take.

It isn’t quite clear what sort of impact his brother’s death in the 1971 war has left on him; nor is it quite clear as yet what impact the Zia years, when he was a young officer, have had on him. It is possible that he might espouse moderate, even liberal values in personal life. But often enough these do not translate into the values he espouses as part of an institution because the latter could be diagrammatically opposite to personal values. Such schizophrenia is pretty common in the Pakistan army – for instance, Ayub and Musharraf were whisky swilling and generally progressive approach on a range of issues but when it came to India, the former was an undiluted communalist and the latter a confirmed Jihadist. Although the Pakistani media and government will try and project the appointment of Raheel Sharif as a sign that Nawaz Sharif is calling the shots, Indian policy makers would do well to remember the empty boast of Mushahid Husain, Nawaz Sharif’s Information Minister in his last term, who claimed that by demanding the resignation of Gen Jehangir Karamat and appointing Gen Pervez Musharraf as chief, Nawaz Sharif had shown the army who was the boss! The bottom-line is that the army chief is his own boss and anyone who has other ideas tests this truism at his own peril, something that Nawaz Sharif has learnt to his cost in both his previous terms – first, when his resignation was extracted by Gen Wahid Kakar and second, when Musharraf ousted him. What now remains to be seen is what Raheel Sharif does.