The first signs of a seething resentment against Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's Chief
Executive, have appeared in the civilian bureaucracy and the political class. The
resentment in the civilian bureaucracy should be of greater immediate concern to him
The Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
have to ultimately depend on the civilian security bureaucracy constituted by the
Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Police for the assessment of likely threats to the
stability of the regime and to internal security and the security arrangements required
for neutralising possible threats. The police officers are still in a preponderance in the
IB, but there has been growing resentment in recent years over serving or retired army
officers being foisted on the IB as its chief (Director-General).
This resentment, hitherto confined to the IB, is now spreading to
the executive police officers from the level of the Police Stations upwards because of the
action of Gen.Musharraf in appointing military officers as monitors of the performance of
the civilian bureaucracy and removing the upper limit of 10 per cent of the total strength
imposed by the previous governments on the induction of serving and retired military
officers into civilian departments, including the police.
Thus, police officers of the rank of Inspectors-General of
Police, who were protocol-wise equivalent to a Lt.Gen, have now been asked to get their
decisions on promotions, transfers etc approved by military monitors of the rank of a
Lt.Col or Col. In the Foreign Office, a Brigadier has been appointed as the monitor of the
performance of the Foreign Secretary with regard to the administration.
This resentment in the police has led to undeclared
non-cooperation with the military, resulting in an increase in the number of terrorist
incidents all over the country and, more worryingly, their subsequent non-detection, with
the result the military regime is clueless as to who is responsible.
Since the General seized power on October 12,1999, there have
been 14 explosions in Larkana, Hyderabad and Karachi in Sindh, in Muridke, Lahore and
Sialkot in Punjab, in Mirpur in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and in Islamabad itself on
the eve of the imposition of the UN sanctions against the Taliban in November.
The Police have not been able to make a break-through even in the
case of the Islamabad explosions, which were directed at US/UN buildings. It is widely
believed in Pakistan that the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which was declared by the US as
an international terrorist organisation in October, 1997, and which was a signatory of
Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1998 against the US and Israel, was responsible for the blasts,
but the pro-HUM elements in the Police as well as in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
have avoided any hard questioning of the HUM leaders.
The result has been that, concerned over the lack of progress in
the investigation, the US has reportedly announced handsome rewards for clues to an
offence committed in Pakistani territory. Not a good certificate for the efficiency of the
security bureaucracy.
Instead of trying to remove the causes for resentment in the
non-military security bureaucracy, Gen. Musharraf has made it worse by inducting retired
military officers at senior levels to co-ordinate the working of the police. In
anticipation of a possible decision by the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, to make a
transit stop-over in the Lahore airport to meet the General without driving into the town,
a former Division-head of the ISI, Brig. Ejaz Shah, has been appointed Punjab's Home
Secretary so that he can keep a tight control over the police and ensure that the
resentment in the police doesn't affect the security arrangements if Mr.Clinton did visit
Lahore.
All the previous military dictators of Pakistan had taken care to
avoid hurting the ego of the civilian bureaucracy and keep it on their side, but
Gen.Musharraf has, within four months of his taking over, rubbed it on the wrong side,
creating demoralisation and hostility.
The "Nation" wrote on February 4: "All transfers
and postings (in Punjab) are carried out only after validation by the monitors. Even
routine departmental transfers are not made without the prior clearance of concerned
military officials. People have no idea whom to approach now. Army officials or civil
authorities. This has created a crisis of authority....Rumours of massive induction of
armymen into the civil services is causing tremors among the bureaucrats."
The political class is also becoming restive and is demanding an
early announcement of what Ms. Benazir Bhutto has described as an exit strategy for the
military to leave the corridors of power and go back to the barracks. If the political
parties are not yet united on this demand, it is because of differences over what
next--restoration of the suspended National Assembly and the Pakistan Muslim League
Government minus Mr. Nawaz Sharif or the dissolution of the Assembly and fresh elections
within three months?
Many more observers than in the past now agree with the
perception of Gen. Musharraf as an untrustworthy individual after hearing the accounts,
circulating in Islamabad, as to what made Mr.Sharif dismiss the General, which triggered
off the latter's coup and the devious manner in which the General made the Judges take a
new oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), which excludes all legal
challenges to the Chief Executive's orders, instead of under the Constitution as in the
past.
According to these accounts, Mr.Sharif decided to remove the
General after realising during his visit to Beijing in the last week of June, 1999, that
the COAS, who had preceded him to Beijing in the last week of May, had submitted a
blatantly false report on his discussions with his Chinese counterparts.Gen.Musharraf was
reported to have told Mr.Sharif that senior Chinese military officers supported the
Pakistani army's actions in Kargil and complimented him for teaching the Indian army a
bloody lesson.
It was this claim of Chinese support for the Kargil action, which
had initially made Mr.Sharif resist US pressure for the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops
from Kargil. However, when Mr.Sharif himself went to Beijing, he found to his surprise
that the General's claim was false and that, like the US, the Chinese too wanted Islamabad
to withdraw its troops.
Completely taken by surprise by this, Mr.Sharif cut short his
stay in China and, even while in Beijing, made arrangements for his visit to Washington to
get a face-saving from Mr.Clinton before ordering the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops.
Even past supporters of Gen.Musharraf have been shocked by the
account given by Mrs. Ashraf Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, the wife of the recently-dismissed
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for refusing to take the new oath, in an interview to
the "News" (February 5) of the devious manner in which the General got rid of
her husband.
According to her account, the Chief Executive sent the
Directors-General of the ISI and the Military Intelligence and the Interior Minister to
their residence to pressurise her husband to take the new oath. When he refused, they kept
him incommunicado with the other Judges till they had taken the new oath. She claimed that
some of these Judges later told her husband that they agreed to take the oath only because
the General had falsely told them that the Chief Justice had agreed to take the new oath.
Gen. Musharraf is since reported to have issued orders debarring
the sacked Chief Justice from practising as a lawyer and initiating an investigation into
his financial assets.
In the meanwhile, the Corps Commanders' are reported to have
discussed whether the Chief Executive should accept any proposal from Washington for a
severely curtailed visit by Mr.Clinton to Pakistan, which would be of even a shorter
duration than his visit to Bangladesh.
Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, former Director-General of the ISI,
Lt.Gen. Mohammed Aziz, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), and Lt.Gen.Zaffar Usmani, CO
of the 5 Corps at Karachi, all the three of whom are members of the fundamentalist
Tablighi Jamaat of Pakistan, are reported to be pressing the Chief Executive to reject any
US proposal for just a transit visit by Mr.Clinton and to insist on a full-fledged State
visit.
They seem to have pointed out as to how Zia-ul-Haq, during the
Afghan war, had rejected a US proposal for limited assistance as "peanuts",
which made Washington increase the assistance and brought in public support for him. They
feel a strong line against Washington on this issue and with reference to its demands for
action against the HUM would shore up the sagging public support for his regime. The
General, who is keen on a show of US support for him, has thus far rejected their advice.
B.RAMAN
(27-2-00)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical
Studies,Chennai. E-Mail corde@vsnl.com)
