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Day of the Sharifs
Wajahat S. Khan Islamabad, Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif (left) and Army Chief Raheel Sharif in Islamabad
A story of semi-dubious lineage has been doing the rounds in Islamabad in the past few months. It has Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother and heir apparent, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, meeting army chief General Raheel Sharif and Lt General Rizwan Akhtar, director general Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the PM House. No aides are present. The PM rings the cordless electronic bell several times to call for tea, but nothing happens. Shahbaz, storms into the ante-room and is faced by a section of knee-padded, maroon-bereted Special Service Group personnel slinging Colt Commando carbines. Here, Shahbaz is politely advised by a young officer that nobody will be allowed inside till the meeting is over.
This is when the business of the state begins, as one of the brass clears the air and announces the purpose of this unannounced demonstration: that it takes less time than a tea break for a military takeover of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Some people link this story to the heady days of Imran Khan's 'dharna' of late 2014, which was the former cricketer's localised experiment to produce a Tahrir Squaresque upheaval in Islamabad that ultimately failed but damaged the PM's regime enough to continue to be seen today as a civil-military battle of attrition (the clear majority government of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) is now forced to work like a hammered coalition from Monday to Friday, such was the damage caused by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) vicious ground attack of 126 consecutive days of a massive sit-in, an electoral protest so politicised even after the fact that a senior Muslim League senator who alleged it to be a military-backed conspiracy a year later to the BBC, was forced to resign immediately by Nawaz). Meanwhile, other folks link our story to some or the other controversial aspect of foreign policy where Nawaz was forced to give more than he could to the General Headquarters (GHQ). Still, others say it was merely a random check, a fauji fire drill, to balance the inherently imperious Sharif brothers.
What's crucially important is that it's irrelevant whether our story is true or not. In Pakistan, it doesn't matter who is in control. What matters is who seems to be in control.
Third-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is supposed to be in control. First-time army chief Raheel Sharif, handpicked by the former over other brass favorites, is seen to be in control. And even though Nawaz has quietly and efficiently emerged as the most popular leader in a recent national poll, with a 73 per cent approval rating, only followed by his brother, the man on the street is projected to want to elect Raheel as president, surgeon general, chief justice, martial law administrator and Test cricket captain for Life. Raheel has the natural swagger and style to match the popular appeal. But Nawaz, pudgy and paya-centric, is not a spent force, either, and has devised some stealth manoeuvres in tandem with the brass that are not just letting him survive, but also gear-up for Round 2, the general elections in 2018.
However, the optical polarisation is not getting old: while TV anchors dedicate entire slots to running commentaries by drivers, dentists and ex-generals about how Raheel should get an extension beyond his designated three years when he retires in November 2016, Nawaz gets scoffed at for mumbling, fumbling and coughing his way through the UN General Assembly speech, or the Barack Obama huddle, or the new solar power plant opening. His daughter, Maryam Nawaz, runs a neat social media counter-battle, but she's outperformed by the more organised cyber warrior command. Brand Nawaz is jaded, old world, maybe even as compromised as a flaccid lover. Brand Raheel is platinum, metro, bristling for action.
Thus, the chattering classes go to work. There will be an anti-corruption investigation against Mian Mansha, Pakistan's richest man and Nawaz's spiritual financier, they say. That will be a yardstick of things to come. After having controlled threats and narratives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Karachi, the 'soft coup' is coming to the Punjab, Nawaz's home turf, they say. Nobody, not even PML(N) insiders dispel these rumours, and speak in hushed tones about how they are not "allowed" to do anything in this new "Kabbadi Coup", where burly men cross the line menacingly, come and hit you remorselessly, but return back to the other side appropriately, leaving you with the unenviable options of getting hit and not doing anything or getting hit and then trying to stop them before they return to their side of the divide. Only a couple of gallant cabinet ministers end up defending the non-pact on prime time, pushing for democracy to thrive. And so Pakistan sinks neck deep in a civil versus military, 'Sharif versus Sharif' funk, every other week.
But there are those who see through this smoke screen. Who think 'Sharif versus Sharif' may actually be 'Sharif plus Sharif'. Who know that Raheel's military establishment and Nawaz's Punjab establishment are intermarried cousins of power parity, if not best pals. Who get it that after the army, no other political entity has enjoyed more years in influence and the gravitas of support from the bureaucracy than the Muslim League's Sharif project. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) doesn't count, having rusted away under the turpitude of Asif Ali Zardari, blunted everywhere except in interior Sindh. Meanwhile, the capricious PTI is, for now, a charismatic night watchman if not a dramatic cameo in this long innings of what seems to be a genuine effort from within 'Fortress Punjab'-the constituency-heavy, fatefully populated superstructure which runs from Lahore to Islamabad, via Rawalpindi, the Fauji Belt and the GT Road to be the political heartland of the realm-to bring some administrative stability to Pakistan.
The signs are evident, even as the pretend-war between GHQ and Raiwind is actually a win-win for both sides: The PML(N) looks anti-establishment, and the establishment looks anti-monarchy. Below the surface, it's more nuanced. Nawaz is not anti-India, not yet, but he is proactively pushing the nationalist ticket on Kashmir, as he did in New York and even Washington. He hasn't taken sides in the recent spat between one of his pro-military and anti-military ministers, nor has his party machine. His information minister sounds like he's been reading up on the great Islamic wars at the military academy's library, and his state television, the dumpy PTV, has developed laser sights overnight, sniping away at 'target India' even more effectively than private media, thanks to the recent self-inflicted boo-boos of the bungling Shiv Sena-BJP-RSS combine.
On other fronts, the business of the state is being conducted beyond usual pace. As the Chinese are bankrolling airports in Gwadar, the government is matching them with six lane highways in southern Punjab. A metro bus service in Karachi is peppered by power plants everywhere else along with and investor conferences in Islamabad and bullish bond subscriptions on Wall Street. Yes, Sharif has been criticised for not solving the country's chronic energy issues, but smug PML(N) planners admit the timing of the bijli victory will be electric and sublime: just in time for the 2018 election. And if you're thinking that Nawaz's US trip didn't bring much meat to the kitchen table for Pakistan, consider the fact that thanks to Washington's romance with New Delhi, he and Pindi have partnered up elsewhere: The Russians are now signing weapons, gunships and pipeline deals with the same country that claims it broke their back in the last battle of the Cold War that was the Afghan Jihad of the 1980s.
Meanwhile, a diplomatically disinterested Nawaz who told journalists at the UN that he's always in bed by 10, whether at the Waldorf or Raiwind, is quietly and intensely focused on riding these international waves into and beyond 2018, if not creating them (that's GHQ's job). Less is more for him, and he knows it. Thus, he spends more and more time on the go, either opening the innings for the brass (as he did in the US in October, where Raheel is expected to head in November to tie things up), or showing up to cut the ribbon for them (as was done recently with Russia after deals were finalised by a flurry of defence and intel visits). This is Nawaz's "tandem state tourism" to match, if not outperform, what Raheel himself calls "aggressive military diplomacy". The Americans have a good analogy for it: Nawaz is a good wingman to Raheel's bombing missions.
As for his kitchen cabinet, everyone is mostly stoic and knows their place, and no major scandals have erupted this year. 'Brother-in-Chief' Shahbaz is handling the China Project, personally, and is at all-systems go, as usual. Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan is a 'made' man from a military family. Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz has been a system man for over half a century. Defence Minister Khwaja Asif may actually be the minister of self-defence because of the order of things that come with that portfolio, but his real job is water and power, and that keeps him mostly busy timing the energy windfall to hit the election sweet spot for 2017/18. If any slippage comes, it will come from Finance Minister Ishaq Dar (who is also related to Sharif by marriage), but the man is a jargon-ready mumbo jumbo pick-up artist who has crafted wily presentations with numbers so fudged that they sell as easily in a New York board room as they do in the GHQ billiards room.
Further proof of this understated civ-mil combine is the recent appointment of Lt General (retired) Nasser Khan Janjua. To shore up the above listed roster of cabinet heavyweights who seem to be working for both Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Nawaz has recently picked-or has been told to pick, we are made to believe-as his new National Security Adviser, the recently retired commander of Quetta's politically and kinetically sensitive Southern Command (Aziz was holding both titles of foreign affairs and national security till recently, but the octogenarian was criticised widely for not effectively dealing with the latter).
Janjua is a wise choice. A counterinsurgency specialist who helped stabilise Swat in the late 2000s, he has made his public policy bones by changing the game that is Balochistan. With a tribally correct, optically sound, politically dynamic and militarily stealthy carrot-and-stick approach, he has brought relative calm to the country's geographical Achilles heel and largest province. The mongers say Janjua was pushed through the Raiwind gullet by the 'Khaki Bakery'. The thinkers know that Nawaz has attended at least six briefings in Balochistan by Janjua since he's taken office, the most attention any prime minister has given that destitute southwest corner of the country since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto set up camp there to battle an insurgency in the early '70s.
Reportedly, Nawaz also gets along with the easy-going Janjua, who is both a painter and a poet. He doesn't like tough talkers. They remind him of 1999. The army knows this, and so they send him his new NSA, who only recently (while in uniform) famously announced at an Independence Day function in Quetta something that Sharif has long been known to believe: "As for India, if we can't be friends, then lets not be enemies, either." Thus, as objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are, civil-military ties in Pakistan are more civilised than they seem to be. Of course, Mohammad Nawaz Sharif carries the Kabbadi bruises to prove it.
@Hyperion. @Irfan Baloch. @vsdoc. @Oscar. @Slav Defence @Akheilos @Web Master. @Manticore
Wajahat S. Khan Islamabad, Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif (left) and Army Chief Raheel Sharif in Islamabad
A story of semi-dubious lineage has been doing the rounds in Islamabad in the past few months. It has Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother and heir apparent, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, meeting army chief General Raheel Sharif and Lt General Rizwan Akhtar, director general Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the PM House. No aides are present. The PM rings the cordless electronic bell several times to call for tea, but nothing happens. Shahbaz, storms into the ante-room and is faced by a section of knee-padded, maroon-bereted Special Service Group personnel slinging Colt Commando carbines. Here, Shahbaz is politely advised by a young officer that nobody will be allowed inside till the meeting is over.
This is when the business of the state begins, as one of the brass clears the air and announces the purpose of this unannounced demonstration: that it takes less time than a tea break for a military takeover of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Some people link this story to the heady days of Imran Khan's 'dharna' of late 2014, which was the former cricketer's localised experiment to produce a Tahrir Squaresque upheaval in Islamabad that ultimately failed but damaged the PM's regime enough to continue to be seen today as a civil-military battle of attrition (the clear majority government of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) is now forced to work like a hammered coalition from Monday to Friday, such was the damage caused by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) vicious ground attack of 126 consecutive days of a massive sit-in, an electoral protest so politicised even after the fact that a senior Muslim League senator who alleged it to be a military-backed conspiracy a year later to the BBC, was forced to resign immediately by Nawaz). Meanwhile, other folks link our story to some or the other controversial aspect of foreign policy where Nawaz was forced to give more than he could to the General Headquarters (GHQ). Still, others say it was merely a random check, a fauji fire drill, to balance the inherently imperious Sharif brothers.
What's crucially important is that it's irrelevant whether our story is true or not. In Pakistan, it doesn't matter who is in control. What matters is who seems to be in control.
Third-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is supposed to be in control. First-time army chief Raheel Sharif, handpicked by the former over other brass favorites, is seen to be in control. And even though Nawaz has quietly and efficiently emerged as the most popular leader in a recent national poll, with a 73 per cent approval rating, only followed by his brother, the man on the street is projected to want to elect Raheel as president, surgeon general, chief justice, martial law administrator and Test cricket captain for Life. Raheel has the natural swagger and style to match the popular appeal. But Nawaz, pudgy and paya-centric, is not a spent force, either, and has devised some stealth manoeuvres in tandem with the brass that are not just letting him survive, but also gear-up for Round 2, the general elections in 2018.
However, the optical polarisation is not getting old: while TV anchors dedicate entire slots to running commentaries by drivers, dentists and ex-generals about how Raheel should get an extension beyond his designated three years when he retires in November 2016, Nawaz gets scoffed at for mumbling, fumbling and coughing his way through the UN General Assembly speech, or the Barack Obama huddle, or the new solar power plant opening. His daughter, Maryam Nawaz, runs a neat social media counter-battle, but she's outperformed by the more organised cyber warrior command. Brand Nawaz is jaded, old world, maybe even as compromised as a flaccid lover. Brand Raheel is platinum, metro, bristling for action.
Thus, the chattering classes go to work. There will be an anti-corruption investigation against Mian Mansha, Pakistan's richest man and Nawaz's spiritual financier, they say. That will be a yardstick of things to come. After having controlled threats and narratives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Karachi, the 'soft coup' is coming to the Punjab, Nawaz's home turf, they say. Nobody, not even PML(N) insiders dispel these rumours, and speak in hushed tones about how they are not "allowed" to do anything in this new "Kabbadi Coup", where burly men cross the line menacingly, come and hit you remorselessly, but return back to the other side appropriately, leaving you with the unenviable options of getting hit and not doing anything or getting hit and then trying to stop them before they return to their side of the divide. Only a couple of gallant cabinet ministers end up defending the non-pact on prime time, pushing for democracy to thrive. And so Pakistan sinks neck deep in a civil versus military, 'Sharif versus Sharif' funk, every other week.
But there are those who see through this smoke screen. Who think 'Sharif versus Sharif' may actually be 'Sharif plus Sharif'. Who know that Raheel's military establishment and Nawaz's Punjab establishment are intermarried cousins of power parity, if not best pals. Who get it that after the army, no other political entity has enjoyed more years in influence and the gravitas of support from the bureaucracy than the Muslim League's Sharif project. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) doesn't count, having rusted away under the turpitude of Asif Ali Zardari, blunted everywhere except in interior Sindh. Meanwhile, the capricious PTI is, for now, a charismatic night watchman if not a dramatic cameo in this long innings of what seems to be a genuine effort from within 'Fortress Punjab'-the constituency-heavy, fatefully populated superstructure which runs from Lahore to Islamabad, via Rawalpindi, the Fauji Belt and the GT Road to be the political heartland of the realm-to bring some administrative stability to Pakistan.
The signs are evident, even as the pretend-war between GHQ and Raiwind is actually a win-win for both sides: The PML(N) looks anti-establishment, and the establishment looks anti-monarchy. Below the surface, it's more nuanced. Nawaz is not anti-India, not yet, but he is proactively pushing the nationalist ticket on Kashmir, as he did in New York and even Washington. He hasn't taken sides in the recent spat between one of his pro-military and anti-military ministers, nor has his party machine. His information minister sounds like he's been reading up on the great Islamic wars at the military academy's library, and his state television, the dumpy PTV, has developed laser sights overnight, sniping away at 'target India' even more effectively than private media, thanks to the recent self-inflicted boo-boos of the bungling Shiv Sena-BJP-RSS combine.
On other fronts, the business of the state is being conducted beyond usual pace. As the Chinese are bankrolling airports in Gwadar, the government is matching them with six lane highways in southern Punjab. A metro bus service in Karachi is peppered by power plants everywhere else along with and investor conferences in Islamabad and bullish bond subscriptions on Wall Street. Yes, Sharif has been criticised for not solving the country's chronic energy issues, but smug PML(N) planners admit the timing of the bijli victory will be electric and sublime: just in time for the 2018 election. And if you're thinking that Nawaz's US trip didn't bring much meat to the kitchen table for Pakistan, consider the fact that thanks to Washington's romance with New Delhi, he and Pindi have partnered up elsewhere: The Russians are now signing weapons, gunships and pipeline deals with the same country that claims it broke their back in the last battle of the Cold War that was the Afghan Jihad of the 1980s.
Meanwhile, a diplomatically disinterested Nawaz who told journalists at the UN that he's always in bed by 10, whether at the Waldorf or Raiwind, is quietly and intensely focused on riding these international waves into and beyond 2018, if not creating them (that's GHQ's job). Less is more for him, and he knows it. Thus, he spends more and more time on the go, either opening the innings for the brass (as he did in the US in October, where Raheel is expected to head in November to tie things up), or showing up to cut the ribbon for them (as was done recently with Russia after deals were finalised by a flurry of defence and intel visits). This is Nawaz's "tandem state tourism" to match, if not outperform, what Raheel himself calls "aggressive military diplomacy". The Americans have a good analogy for it: Nawaz is a good wingman to Raheel's bombing missions.
As for his kitchen cabinet, everyone is mostly stoic and knows their place, and no major scandals have erupted this year. 'Brother-in-Chief' Shahbaz is handling the China Project, personally, and is at all-systems go, as usual. Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan is a 'made' man from a military family. Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz has been a system man for over half a century. Defence Minister Khwaja Asif may actually be the minister of self-defence because of the order of things that come with that portfolio, but his real job is water and power, and that keeps him mostly busy timing the energy windfall to hit the election sweet spot for 2017/18. If any slippage comes, it will come from Finance Minister Ishaq Dar (who is also related to Sharif by marriage), but the man is a jargon-ready mumbo jumbo pick-up artist who has crafted wily presentations with numbers so fudged that they sell as easily in a New York board room as they do in the GHQ billiards room.
Further proof of this understated civ-mil combine is the recent appointment of Lt General (retired) Nasser Khan Janjua. To shore up the above listed roster of cabinet heavyweights who seem to be working for both Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Nawaz has recently picked-or has been told to pick, we are made to believe-as his new National Security Adviser, the recently retired commander of Quetta's politically and kinetically sensitive Southern Command (Aziz was holding both titles of foreign affairs and national security till recently, but the octogenarian was criticised widely for not effectively dealing with the latter).
Janjua is a wise choice. A counterinsurgency specialist who helped stabilise Swat in the late 2000s, he has made his public policy bones by changing the game that is Balochistan. With a tribally correct, optically sound, politically dynamic and militarily stealthy carrot-and-stick approach, he has brought relative calm to the country's geographical Achilles heel and largest province. The mongers say Janjua was pushed through the Raiwind gullet by the 'Khaki Bakery'. The thinkers know that Nawaz has attended at least six briefings in Balochistan by Janjua since he's taken office, the most attention any prime minister has given that destitute southwest corner of the country since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto set up camp there to battle an insurgency in the early '70s.
Reportedly, Nawaz also gets along with the easy-going Janjua, who is both a painter and a poet. He doesn't like tough talkers. They remind him of 1999. The army knows this, and so they send him his new NSA, who only recently (while in uniform) famously announced at an Independence Day function in Quetta something that Sharif has long been known to believe: "As for India, if we can't be friends, then lets not be enemies, either." Thus, as objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are, civil-military ties in Pakistan are more civilised than they seem to be. Of course, Mohammad Nawaz Sharif carries the Kabbadi bruises to prove it.
@Hyperion. @Irfan Baloch. @vsdoc. @Oscar. @Slav Defence @Akheilos @Web Master. @Manticore
