Pakistan’s army breaks step with its government
Army chief General Sharif is spearheading the response to the Taliban’s Peshawar school attack, reports Farhan Bokhari
When children who survived the Taliban’s 16 December 2014 attack on a school in Pakistan’s northern city of Peshawar returned to class on 12 January, they were formally received by Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif.
However, his high-profile presence, widely reported by Pakistani media, provided a sharp contrast with the conspicuous absence of Pakistan’s key political leaders, notably Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (unrelated to Gen Sharif) and President Mamnoon Hussain. From Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – of which Peshawar is the capital – neither Governor Mehtab Ahmed Khan nor Chief Minister Pervez Khattak attended.
A soft coup?
In the days following the 16 December attack – which killed 150 people, mostly teenage students of the army-run school – political analysts have viewed the army’s fast-rising profile as a guarantor of stability across the country. The Pakistan Army’s growing footprint has even sparked suggestions of a ‘soft coup’ under way in a country ruled by the army for almost half its life as an independent state.
For the moment, senior army officers who spoke to IHS Jane’s deny the army is positioning itself for a takeover. Nonetheless, that commitment has not stopped Gen Sharif from clearly demonstrating the army’s determination to influence Pakistan’s security-related policies beyond its already significant clout in this area.
The day after the Peshawar attack, Gen Sharif, accompanied by Lieutenant General Rizwan Akhtar, director general of the army-run Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) counter-espionage agency, travelled to Kabul to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other senior officials. During the visit Gen Sharif handed over evidence from radio intercepts of communications between the Taliban involved in the Peshawar attack and their handlers across the border.
“The intercepts clearly showed that the militants were being guided by handlers in Afghanistan,” one senior Pakistani intelligence officer told IHS Jane’s.
“General Sharif clearly demanded from the Afghans that they [the Afghans] had to take steps immediately to target the handlers.”
His account highlights the Pakistan Army chief’s personal involvement directly after the attack in an issue where many say Prime Minister Sharif should have acted first.
Special courts
Then, on 6 January, Pakistan’s lower house of parliament adopted a constitutional amendment for setting up special courts to be presided over by army officers for the next two years to prosecute individuals accused of terrorism: a move the army is widely speculated to have pressed the prime minister to support.
“It [the establishment of military courts] was presented [by the army] to the prime minister as a fait accompli,” said a senior government official working closely with Prime Minister Sharif.
Analysts point out that the Pakistan Army’s growing involvement with security policies since the Peshawar attack reflects poorly on Prime Minister Sharif’s increasingly unpopular government. Despite a plunge in global oil prices, the regime has failed to curb electricity shortages. Pakistan’s media reported on 1 January that the government has slapped a 5% indirect tax on petroleum products after failing to meet targets for revenue collection agreed with the International Monetary Fund for a loan.
‘The saviour’
Then, from mid-January onwards, Pakistan suffered severe petrol shortages. According to officials, the crisis, which added to Prime Minister Sharif’s unpopularity, was caused by the government’s failure to import adequate petrol stocks to meet domestic demand.
“In the eyes of our public, it’s the army that is holding Pakistan together,” Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani commentator on defence and security affairs, told IHS Jane’s. “While the civilian government is seen to be ineffective and unable to meet the challenge, the army is popularly seen as the saviour.”
Meanwhile, Gen Sharif, in meetings with US officials in November 2014 and UK officials in January, gave the impression of clearly understanding the country’s security-related challenges.
“The general is demonstrating not only a clarity that people have not seen from any Pakistani politician, he also has the means to deal with the challenge,” said an Islamabad-based Western ambassador, referring to Pakistan’s 500,000-strong force with a capacity to launch ground offensives and aerial attacks.
In the past, the army has been accused by Western officials of supporting Islamic militant groups involved in attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan as well as on Indian Army troops in India’s predominantly Muslim Kashmir province.
However, army officers close to Gen Sharif told IHS Jane’s that since becoming chief of army staff (COAS) in late 2013 the general has decided any group involved in attacks inside Pakistan will be targeted, including those with past ties to the army.
Yet many critics argue that the failure of Prime Minister Sharif’s government to revamp policies in key areas could leave the job of fighting militancy half done. Although the government has promised to begin blocking financial support to militant groups, critics find the commitment unconvincing in a country where almost 99% of the population pays no income tax.
“There is a large black economy in Pakistan that no one wants to touch as [the authorities try to] make life difficult for terrorists,” concluded the Western ambassador.
“We feel frustrated with [Prime Minister] Sharif, who says all the right things but hasn’t demonstrated how the job will be done,” he said. “That’s why there is so much interest in talking to the other [General] Sharif.”
Farhan Bokhari is a JDW Correspondent based in Islamabad