Daily News Pakistan

Memo to the Pakistan Army: don’t wait for the revolution in military affairs to get a high-speed Internet connection. Actually, the army could have spared the country a fresh political crisis with even a dial-up connection.
Here’s what it had to do to give the government its ‘formal input’ — the ISPR’s terminology — on the Kerry-Lugar bill: run a search online, download the various iterations of the Biden-Lugar bill, study them and then forward its ‘formal input’ to the government.
If that sounds elementary and facetious, it is. Step back from the howling pack of critics for a minute and ask yourself, is it possible that the Pakistan Army was unaware of the broad contours, if not the specifics, of the Kerry-Lugar bill for all the months it wended its way through Congress?
To believe the army did not, or could not, know is to accuse the army of a staggering level of incompetence. Wednesday’s prickly ISPR statement also has this gem: ‘COAS reiterated that Pakistan is a sovereign state and has all the rights to analyse and respond to the threat in accordance with her own national interests.’ Given that the Kerry-Lugar bill has already been passed by Congress, the army’s interpretation of our ‘rights to analyse and respond’ would appear to be less a diagnosis and more a post-mortem.
Logic, then, suggests that the army was at least aware of what was unfolding in the US Congress. Which leads to the obvious question: what was the signal the army was sending on Wednesday and to whom?
Was it sending a signal to Zardari that it was putting him on notice, that he better shape up and pay obeisance to the army’s pre-eminence or else would be shipped out soon? By now, it’s clear the army doesn’t like Zardari’s way of doing business.
It quickly reversed his bid to put the ISI under civilian control, it slapped down his suggestion of a no-first-strike nuclear posture, it forced him to back off from precipitating a possibly bloody clash during the long march to restore the deposed judges in March — and now it has publicly contradicted the government and suggested the Kerry-Lugar bill impinges on national security. That’s already a long, ignominious list of reversals for a president who has been in office only 13 months. And those are only the differences that we know about publicly.
But like him or not, four factors limit the army’s ability to precipitate change in the civilian set-up headed by Zardari. One, the disastrous end to the Musharraf era has meant that the army’s political credentials are yet to recover. Two, the army has to stay focused on fighting the counter-insurgency. Three, there may be a pro-Gilani/anti-Zardari camp within the PPP, but historically the party has resisted following the dictates of the army. Four, the only other viable political alternative is Nawaz Sharif, but the army continues to eye him with mistrust.
So expect the status quo to hold for now. Indeed, Wednesday’s ISPR statement hints at this: ‘However, in the considered view of the forum, it is the parliament, that represents the will of the people of Pakistan, which would deliberate on the issue, enabling the government to develop a national response.’ Translation: we aren’t happy, but we’re not going to wind up the democratic project — for now. The emphasis still is on ‘shape up’ rather than ‘ship out.’
But the danger hasn’t passed yet. If there’s one thing that is clear from the country’s tattered, tawdry political history, it is that public jousting leaves fatal scars on the psyche of the players involved. A wounded ego can cause all sorts of rash decisions, and both Zardari and the army may yet try and slip a knife in the other’s back.
Other than Zardari, the army is also likely to have been sending a signal to the Americans. Roughly translated, it would read something like this: we’ve got business to do together, but don’t push us; we’re going to get it done as partners, not as clients.
Quetta, Muridke, the nuclear programme, civilian control over the army — there are enough red rags to the army in the Kerry-Lugar bill to make it very angry. But there are bigger issues at stake than just the bill in relations between the US and Pakistan at the moment, and the army’s response has to be seen in that context.
In all the debate and controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s re-evaluation of its own strategy on Afghanistan announced in March, little attention has been paid to the signals that the Pakistan Army has been quietly sending.
While opposing an American troop build-up in Afghanistan, the army is also not calling for a troop withdrawal. In fact, it has been pushing the ‘stability’ line with the Americans: shore up the Afghan government; give more space to our favourites, the Pakhtuns; negotiate with the amenable among the Afghan Taliban; neutralise, or reduce, the interests of players like India; and start thinking about an exit time frame.
In addition to this, it is quite clear that at the operational level, intelligence cooperation to capture or eliminate the Al Qaeda types as well as the Pakistani militants attacking the state from their bases in Fata is continuing.
So the army clearly realises the importance of working with the Americans to secure the state’s interests. But it also knows that there is a limited convergence of interests. From the Pakistani perspective, the Americans suffer from two chronic problems: one, they are clumsy and often create a bigger mess; and two, some of their interests in the region are at cross-purposes with Pakistan’s.
Enter the Kerry-Lugar bill into that wary, mutually suspicious relationship. On the one side, you have American officials like Vice President Joseph Biden, partner in the creation of the Kerry-Lugar bill, with his ‘Pakistan first’ theory that essentially portrays the country as a danger to the world and itself.
On the other side, you have the Pakistan Army, which realises the need to work with the Americans on certain issues but also suspects them of trying to undermine Pakistan’s genuine interests and pooh-poohing its security threat perceptions.
The likely result: those here in Pakistan demanding that we slam the door on the Americans after kicking them out will be disappointed; however, we will continue to carp and complain publicly while privately continuing a tightly calibrated, limited security-based alliance.
A method in the madness, then? Perhaps. But the army’s signalling won’t seem so clever if the brinkmanship on the domestic front ends in the collapse of the transition to democracy.
cyril.a@gmail.com