How Musharraf Has
Divided the Military in Pakistan?
By
Tarique Niazi
SINCE
THE DAWN of Pakistan, its military has never fired off missives
of protest to opposition leaders whom each government branded
as “enemies of Pakistan.” Fifty five years after,
the restive rank and file of Pakistan Army, disgusted by their
“warlord,” Gen. Pervez Musharraf, took a deep breath
and decided to cross that taboo.
This
year they began a letter-writing campaign, enlisting the support
of the country’s largest-ever movement for democracy, the
Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), to rid the country
of Gen. Musharraf. The letter-writers made two-fold demands: First,
a thorough probe should be conducted into the 1999 Kargil war
between Pakistan and India, whose ultimate outcome was five more
years in power for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India and
its fired prime minister, AB Vajpayee; while Pakistan Army was
paraded around the world as a “bunch of rogues,” and
Pakistan itself was since condemned to live under dictatorship.
Second,
the cabal of army generals who committed the lethal violation
of the Constitution of Pakistan should be unmasked by an investigation
into the October 12, 1999 coup.
Interestingly,
the letter-writers did not address the democratic opposition as
“opposition.” They instead addressed it with the honorific
of “Qaumi Qiadat” (National Leadership), which is
represented by Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif,
and their respective parties – Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML).
These
leaders and their parties present a sharp contrast to Gen. Musharraf’s
cabinet of water-carriers, dressed up as ministers and prime minister
to front his military dictatorship. None of his cabinet members,
who are slave to their personal and parochial interests, has any
stake in Pakistan.
Over
the past four years, Gen. Musharraf has systematically undertaken
the destruction of national politics and national leadership by
promoting personalism and parochialism all across the country.
As a result, “Pakistan” is today left for only two
parties to own it: “Pakistan” People’s Party
(PPP) and “Pakistan” Muslim League (PML). There is
no other mentionable political outfit in any of the country’s
four provinces to prefix or suffix the word “Pakistan”
to its name. Not an unremarkable feat just in four years!
This
rapid decline in national integration has raised the red flags
for the military that turned to the national leadership to help
reverse it. The letter-writers used Pakistan Army’s stationery,
embossed with the General Headquarters’ (GHQ) monogram,
for their letters to lend due authenticity to their contents.
Having
received these letters for months, it finally fell to the bravest
of the brave Javed Hashmi, who presides over the ARD, to make
these letters and their contents public. As soon as he did that,
Gen. Musharraf let loose his hounds to have him kidnapped on October
29 from his official residence in Islamabad. He had since been
kept incommunicado.
Mr.
Hashmi’s guilt is not yet firm in the mind of his captors.
Now it is sedition; now it is treason. Sedition implies to “divide
the military” (against Gen. Musharraf!); while treason means
to bring physical harm to Pakistan. Does “division in the
military” make news? I would suspect the patriotism of the
military if it is not divided against its abuser-in-chief, Gen.
Musharraf, and his treacherous ways to build himself up and build
Pakistan down. How could not the military divide against him when
he used its raw force to dismantle one institution of the country
after another to keep him in power? Bureaucracy. Constitution.
Judiciary. Police. Parliament. And now military.
In
January 2001 he had the Chief Justice of Pakistan house-arrested?
Then, he went on to fire five of his brother judges on the bench,
who were suspected of standing up to him for defense of the Constitution.
Undeterred still, he again shouldered himself onto the military
to invent the farce of April 2002 referendum to elect himself
president? He kick started his fraudulent election campaign in
military uniform (wearing a look of clown) with his corps commanders
in attendance (no past military dictator in Pakistan went that
far in his perverse ambitions to prostitute the military for political
gains).
All
across the country, his rallies were swelled with troops bused
in from nearby military encampments. In August 2002, he disemboweled
the Constitution with a knife of 29 self-serving amendments, a.k.a.,
Legal Framework Order (LFO). Yet he stopped the members of the
superior judiciary from pledging allegiance to Pakistan and its
constitution. Instead, he bribed his way to the judges with a
three-year extension in their service on the bench in flagrant
violation of the constitution.
He
did not limit bribery to the judiciary alone, however; he extended
it to the military also. He used bribe and corruption as the glue
to firm up what he calls the “unity of command” (read:
Pakistan Army). Tens of thousands of military personnel were bought
off with lucrative civilian sector employment to quieten down
the rumblings in their ranks.
Until
December 2001, as many as 20,000 military personnel were posted
all across Pakistan to serve as the eyes and ears of Gen. Musharraf’s
dictatorship by “monitoring” civil bureaucrats in
their respective district headquarters. According to press reports
in Pakistan, many of the “monitors” minted millions
from their earful and eye-filling work. They would have been making
hay to this day, had India not mobilized in December 2001 hundreds
of thousands of its troops to amass along the Line of Control
(LOC) in Kashmir.
The
20,000 monitors were then called up to do what they were paid
for: Defend Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf’s attempts to corrupt
the military had since stirred deep resentment that seeped down
to the ranks. It was no coincidence that he was target of an assassination
plot thought up and executed exclusively by non-commissioned officers
(NCOs), a first-ever example of its kind in the military history
of Pakistan!
It
doesn’t mean that general officers (brigadiers and above)
were hesitant in venting their grumbles and growls at the daily
abuse of their institution by a power-mad dictator. They were
repulsed, too, and their repulsion was forcefully expressed by
the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Abdul Aziz,
who publicly rebuffed Gen. Musharraf for his insistence to double
as Army chief and president. Within days, Gen. Musharraf had to
face even worse humiliation at the hands of his corps commanders
who ruthlessly grilled him for his “patriotic failings.”
He
emerged so deeply scarred from that grilling that he let out a
public scream of self-pity: “I shall be traitor to Pakistan
if I compromise Pakistan’s interests.” Traitor! Exactly,
it was the “T” word with which his commanders shot
him in their supersecret sessions held in the depths of their
GHQ.
The
rank and file of the military has since been kept solidly behind
Gen. Musharraf by the force of media-manufactured fibs: That the
nation has unwavering faith in their super patriotism, and is
willing to swallow “anything in uniform” (including
Gen. Musharraf). The bubble of these fibs popped up on three occasions
to bare the contrary ugly reality: First, when 20,000 military
monitors left their civilian posts to face down Indian troops
in December 2001, their civilian victims were widely reported
in Pakistan to have breathed a collective sigh of relief with
their heartfelt thanks reserved for the terrorists that shot up
Indian Parliament and enraged enough India’s prime minister
to cast the attack into an “Indian 9/11” (as if it
was a badge of honor to show off!).
Second,
the farce of April 2002 referendum disgusted the nation so much
that the “giants” of the Pakistani press stood on
the shoulders of the “gnats” of Pakistani politics
to anticipate a “war” between Pakistan and India as
“the only way out of Gen. Musharraf’s dictatorship.”
If these signals were garbled for the military to read, a police
constable’s daring in Lahore to flag a general officer’s
car for its tinted windows was too unmistakable a sign of the
nation’s loss of faith in the military to miss. The incident
painfully showed that Pakistan has run out of patience with its
military dictator. Popular outrage impaled the military as an
institution across the windscreen of the errant general’s
car and in the blood-soaked face of the constable, who was beaten
to the pulp. The groundswell of mass support for the constable
that flooded from every nook and corner of Pakistan was, however,
a “false positive:” It was the pretend hurrah for
the constable that masked the tearful outrage against every member
of the armed forces.
The masses’ resentment against
the military, as evidenced in the above incidents, broke through
the lies spun by the media, and had every patriotic soldier thinking
hard and long. The letter-writers who have kept their identity
secret are the newly awakened members of the armed forces. Mr.
Hashmi took upon himself to warn the nation of their concerns
and the divisions that run along such concerns. If ignored, these
concerns can set off the bloodiest-ever civil war. The guilty
party here is not the one who is warning the nation of the danger
of divisions in the military, or the divisions themselves, but
the Divider-in-Chief – Gen. Musharraf, whose day in court
is not far off, if he had not fled the country.
The
second charge against Javed Hashmi is that of treason! Gen. Musharraf
had all his front men badmouthed Mr Hashmi for “playing
into the hands of RAW” (Indian military’s Research
and Analysis Wing). I do not suspect Gen. Musharraf’s or
his cronies’ “intentions” on Pakistan. It is
their “actions” that make me suspect their patriotism.
If Gen. Musharraf continues down the path he has followed for
the past four years, Pakistan will not need India or RAW to finish
it.
Gen.
Musharraf already has done to Pakistan what India could not have
done in the past 55 years. The only reason for Pakistan to continue
to exist is Mr. Hashmi and the millions of its daughters and sons
like Mr. Hashmi. A hundred million Musharrafs (that will be 20
billion pounds of garbage) are not worth the ground that Mr Hashmi
walks. He is a stake in the heart of the dictator and his dictatorship,
which makes him so “dangerous.” But when it comes
to patriotism, Mr. Hashmi is the North Star of it to which every
member of the armed forces and every citizen of Pakistan looks
to soak up its light. Patriotism is defined by his courage and
a tale of his endless sacrifices for Pakistan. The difference
between Mr Hashmi and Gen. Musharraf is that Mr Hashmi bled for
Pakistan, while Gen. Musharraf bled Pakistan for himself.
This
contrast brings me to my long overdue advice to the democratic
opposition. First, stop second-guessing the divisions in the military.
They are real, and do something about them before they begin to
be acted out in blood (i.e., get rid of Gen. Musharraf). Second,
keep your outrage directed at the Divider-in-Chief, Gen. Musharraf
who, like autotroph, is now cutting into the bough he is nesting
on – military.
Do
not play into his hands by quibbling over Hudood Ordinance, which
could be settled after Pakistan is rid of dictatorship, the supremacy
of the constitution is upheld, and a democratically elected government
is put in place. Third, craft a unified demand for Gen. Musharraf
to step down in a given timeline, and call for free and fair elections
under a caretaker government. Fourth, if he refuses to step down,
resign from national and provincial legislatures and give a nation-wide
call to overthrow the dictator and his dictatorship. Anything
less than that will be a lease on life for Gen. Musharraf and
death knell for the democratic opposition.
