The initial attempt to dislodge the elected government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) through street protests orchestrated by elements of the security establishment via their political proxies has fizzled out. Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif owes his and the democratic dispensation’s survival in large part to timely intervention by parliament, especially the opposition parties. Professor Aqil Shah’s latest book, The Army and Democracy, notes that the elected government of Muslim League Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin was not that lucky in 1953. The then army chief, General Ayub Khan, hobnobbed with Governor General Ghulam Mohammad to dislodge PM Nazimuddin, who, like the current incumbent, had a majority in parliament. Shah notes: “In defence of the viceregal coup, Ayub deployed his troops at key points in the country and the threat of military action was used to preempt the legislative assembly from convening an emergency session.”
The author uses the term “civil-military coalition” for the civilian collaborators working with their uniformed masters to exercise “tutelage over the cabinet and parliament”. There would not be a better time to read Professor Shah’s wonderfully nuanced, well-referenced and yet fast-paced book than after the recent almost two-month-long “civil-military coalition” attempt to impose its will on an elected PM and parliament. Professor Shah notes that the Nazimuddin cabinet was “considering a no-war declaration offer by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru” that would have reduced military expenditure and was also contemplating conceding majority to East Pakistan in the national legislature, to the chagrin of the military. The eventual 1954 dismissal of the Nazimuddin government pushed the “constituent assembly — especially its majority Bengali members — to curtail the extraordinary powers of the viceregal executive”. The constituent assembly replaced and reduced the governor general with a figurehead president in a draft constitutional bill as well as accepted Bengali as a national language alongside Urdu. The assembly was dissolved by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad at the behest of the military before the constitution could be approved.
The half-paralysed Ghulam Muhammad, propped up by the army, installed a “cabinet of talents” — the subsequently favoured term being technocrats — that included Major General Iskander Mirza and General Ayub Khan, as interior and defence ministers, respectively. This oligarchy then coercively imposed the notorious One Unit Scheme, establishing the hegemony of Punjab over the other provinces. A new constituent assembly was indirectly elected in 1955 and produced the first Pakistani constitution in 1956, but that further curtailed presidential powers including the power to dissolve parliament, recognised Urdu and Bengali as the national languages and provided for parliamentary parity between East and West Pakistan. Professor Shah notes that General Ayub Khan called the 1956 constitution “a document of despair…which by distributing powers between the president, prime minister and his cabinet, and the provinces had destroyed the focal point of power and left no one in a position of control.” General Ayub Khan decided to appropriate power in a direct coup d’état two and a half years later.
Fast-forward to the 2008-2014 period and not a thing seems to have changed in the military mindset. The tensions brewing between the military and PM Nawaz Sharif, including the trial of General Pervez Musharraf, are palpable but the security establishment has actually been getting increasingly annoyed at the civilians chipping away at its monopoly since the return to democracy in 2008. Comparing the events of the 1950s and the causes the civilian leadership took up with the recent two civilian dispensations makes it clear that the military is miffed not just at events, but the process. The former president, Asif Ali Zardari, divesting his office of the infamous power to dissolve parliament, the 18th constitutional amendment, abolishing the concurrent list, devolution of powers to the provinces and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) ultimately handing on the prime ministerial baton to the current incumbents have all rubbed the security establishment the wrong way. PM Nawaz Sharif talking peace with India and somewhat reticently with Afghanistan, holding Musharraf’s feet to the legal fire and finally saying a flat out “no”, any minus-one formula then really got under the junta’s skin.
Professor Aqil Shah has excelled in showing that, since the fateful invasion of Kashmir in October 1947, the military has become increasingly politicised and distant, unlike the Indian army, from the professional apolitical ethos both had inherited from the British army. He has noted that under the ruse of correcting “political distortions the military institution has moved from a position of political tutelage to that of political control” and oscillated back. The interventions, including coup d’états, were dismissed as individual acts but have been the result of a consistent institutional thinking that anointed itself as the sole arbiter of what the national interest is and how to go about defending it. The institution has always stood behind coup makers, indicating that subversive action perhaps was in line with institutional aspirations. Judicial and political collaborators notwithstanding, the appetite to overthrow democracy remains a direct function of the military keeping its corporate interests first and foremost. Professor Shah accurately writes that “as a corporate organisation, the military seeks to enhance internal control and limit external interference”, which it does with virtual impunity, something that “clearly limits the scope for establishment of civilian supremacy over the armed forces”.
In conclusion to his seven chapter, impeccably worded and information packed book, Professor Aqil Shah reiterates his original question: who will guard the guardians in a transitional democracy like current Pakistan, and how? Professor Shah, a forceful proponent of civilian supremacy, believes that the Pakistani military has not internalised democratic norms and, in fact, harbours disdain for constitutional democracy to the extent that “its acceptance of democracy (in the post Ziaul Haq phase) was tactical rather than the result of any commitment to democratic norms.” He writes that, during the Musharraf era, “the higher officer corps’ professional socialisation, spearheaded by the National Defence University, stressed an activist, governing role for the military” to establish a “true democracy”. The author is leery of the army’s “authoritarian inclinations, including the right to veto the policies and initiatives of the democratically elected governments.” He is on the dot to say that “the military has gone from governorship back to guardianship”, but I am afraid that the push for a swing back to a governorship role has not quite died down. Professor Aqil Shah gives a series of very timely policy prescriptions to balance the civil-military equation in favour of the former, making his work urgent reading for Pakistan watchers and Pakistani politicians alike.
The reviewer can be reached at [email protected] and he tweets @mazdaki