Bhutto’s Legacy

Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination highlights the fears about Pakistan that she voiced over the last several months. Years of dictatorship and sponsorship of Islamist extremism have made this nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million people a safe haven for terrorists that threaten the world. Bhutto had the courage and vision to challenge both the terrorism and the authoritarian culture that nurtured it. Her assassination has already exacerbated Pakistan’s instability and uncertainty.
Riots have been reported from several parts of the country as grief has fanned anger against a government that is deeply unpopular. As Pakistanis mourn the death of a popular democratic leader, the United States must review its policy of trusting the military-dominated regime led by Pervez Musharraf to secure, stabilize and democratize Pakistan.

The U.S. should use its influence, acquired with more than $10 billion in economic and military aid, to persuade Pakistan’s military to loosen its grip on power and negotiate with politicians with popular support, most prominently Bhutto’s successors in her Pakistan People’s Party. Instead of calibrating terrorism, as Mr. Musharraf appears to have done, Pakistan must work towards eliminating terrorism, as Bhutto demanded.

The immediate consequence of the assassination will likely be postponement of the legislative elections scheduled for Jan. 8. Bhutto’s party led in opinion polls, followed by the opposition faction of the conservative Pakistan Muslim League (PML), led by Nawaz Sharif. Immediately after Bhutto’s assassination, Mr. Sharif announced that he is now joining the boycott of the polls called by several smaller political parties. If Mr. Musharraf goes ahead with elections, it is unlikely that it would have much credibility.

In her death, as in her life, Benazir Bhutto has drawn attention to the need for building a moderate Muslim democracy in Pakistan that cares for its people and allows them to elect its leaders. The war against terrorism, she repeatedly argued, cannot be won without mobilizing the people of Pakistan against Islamist extremists, and bringing Pakistan’s security services under civilian control.

Unfortunately, at the moment Bhutto’s homeland (and mine) remains a dictatorship controlled through secret police machinations. Mr. Musharraf’s regime has squandered its energies fighting civilian democrats instead of confronting the menace of terrorism that has now claimed the life of one of the nation’s most popular political figures. His administration will have to answer many tough questions in the next few days about its failure to provide adequate security to Bhutto, particularly after an earlier assassination attempt against her on Oct. 18.

The suicide bombing on that day, marking her homecoming after eight years in exile, claimed the lives of 160 people, mainly Bhutto supporters. But the government refused to accept Bhutto’s requests for an investigation assisted by the FBI or Scotland Yard, both of which have greater competence in analyzing forensic evidence than Pakistan’s notoriously corrupt and incompetent law enforcement.

The circumstances of the first assassination attempt remain mired in mystery and a complete investigation has yet to take place. Television images soon after Bhutto’s assassination showed fire engines hosing down the crime scene, in what can only be considered a calculated washing away of forensic evidence.

Bhutto had publicly expressed fears that pro-extremist elements within Pakistan’s security services were complicit in plans to eliminate her. She personally asked me to communicate her concerns to U.S. officials, which I did. But instead of addressing those fears, Mr. Musharraf cynically rejected Bhutto’s request for international security consultants to be hired at her own expense. This cynicism on the part of the Pakistani authorities is now causing most of Bhutto’s supporters to blame the Musharraf regime for her tragic death.

In her two terms as prime minister — both cut short by military-backed dismissals on charges that were subsequently never proven — Bhutto outlined the vision of a modern and pluralistic Muslim state. Her courage was legendary. She stepped into the shoes of her populist father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, without much training or inclination for politics, after he was executed by an earlier military ruler, Gen. Zia ul-Haq.

She was demonized by the civil-military oligarchy that has virtually run Pakistan since 1958, the year of Pakistan’s first military coup. But she retained a hard core of popular support, and her social-democratic Pakistan People’s Party is widely regarded as Pakistan’s largest political party.

In 1988, at the age of 35, Bhutto became the youngest prime minister in Pakistan’s troubled history, and the first woman to lead a Muslim nation in the modern age. For her supporters, she stood for women’s empowerment, human rights and mass education. Her detractors accused her of many things, from corruption to being too close to the U.S.

During her second tenure as prime minister, Pakistan became one of the 10 emerging capital markets of the world. The World Health Organization praised government efforts in the field of health. Rampant narcotics problems were tackled and several drug barons arrested. Bhutto increased government spending on education and 46,000 new schools were built.

Thousands of teachers were recruited with the understanding that a secular education, covering multiple study areas (particularly technical and scientific education), would improve the lives of Pakistanis and create job opportunities critical to self-empowerment. But Pakistan’s political turbulence, and her constant battle with the country’s security establishment, never allowed her to take credit for these achievements.

For years, her image was tarnished by critics who alleged that she did not deliver on her promise. During the early days after Mr. Musharraf’s decision to support the U.S.-led war against terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11, conventional wisdom in Washington wrote her off. But Pakistan’s constant drift into extremism, and Mr. Musharraf’s inability to win Pakistani hearts and minds, changed that.

Earlier this year, the United States and the United Kingdom supported efforts for a transition to democracy in Pakistan based on a negotiated settlement between Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf. She was to be allowed to return to Pakistan and the many corruption charges filed against her and her husband, Asif Zardari, were to be dropped.

Mr. Musharraf promised free and fair elections, and promised to end a bar imposed by him against Bhutto running for a third term as prime minister. But on Nov. 3, his imposition of a state of emergency, suspension of Pakistan’s constitution, and arbitrary reshuffling of the country’s judiciary brought that arrangement to an end. He went back on his promises to Bhutto, and as elections approached, recrimination between the two was at its height.

Benazir Bhutto had the combination of political brilliance, charisma, popular support and international recognition that made her a credible democratic alternative to Mr. Musharraf. Her elimination from the scene is not only a personal loss to millions of Pakistanis who loved and admired her. It exposes her nation’s vulnerability, and the urgent need to deal with it.

Mr. Haqqani, a professor at Boston University and co-chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy, is the author of “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He has served as adviser to several Pakistani prime ministers, including Benazir Bhutto.

Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2007

The Two Have the Same Problems

Thailand’s parliamentary elections on December 23 provided fresh evidence (if evidence is still needed) of the futility of military intervention as a means of changing the fundamental political trends of a nation.

Thai voters gave the largest number of seats in parliament to the Peoples Power Party (PPP) which comprises supporters of exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was overthrown in a September 2006 coup.

The Thai military barred Thaksin and 110 of his closest associates from contesting the polls. His Thai Rak Thai party (TRT) was also disbanded by the generals on grounds of “corruption”.

But the PPP, which campaigned on a platform of ending Thaksin’s exile and exclusion from politics, won convincingly despite the military’s opposition. Quite clearly, Thai officials did not go beyond skewing the election rules against Thailand’s PPP and the actual balloting was not significantly rigged.

Thailand has witnessed 18 military coups since 1932. The Economist recently referred to Thailand as “Southeast Asia’s Pakistan”.

The fundamental problem in both countries is the same. It has an overbearing military, which often receives support from the urban elite and professional middle class, and argues that the poor peasants simply do not elect the right people.

Thailand’s civilian politicians, including Thaksin, are obviously not perfect. But isn’t the point of democracy to let people choose whomever they like and then vote them out of power upon discovering that their chosen leaders did not fulfil the people’s aspirations?

The problem is that the populist politicians such as Thaksin (and in Pakistan’s case the Bhutto family or even Nawaz Sharif), whom the army and the professional elite dislikes, do not necessarily disappoint their voters.

As The Economist explains, “Middle-class Bangkokians, who are as snooty about their country cousins as any metropolitan elite anywhere, often say that ‘uneducated’ rural voters… were bribed and tricked into voting for Thaksin.

“But rural voters were quite rational in handing him landslide victories in 2001 and 2005. He was Thailand’s first party leader to promise and deliver a comprehensive set of policies aimed at the mass of voters.

“The allegations of corruption, conflicts of interest and vote-buying that surround him are serious but hardly unusual: such practices are endemic in Thai politics.”

In other words, the poor who vote for populist leaders actually benefit from their policies even though these might not impress army generals or World Bank economists.

Successful third world democracies are born out of cooperation between politicians with vote banks and middle class professionals with ideas about good governance. In countries such as Pakistan and Thailand, however, such cooperation is scant.

Middle class

The middle class dismisses politicians with refrains like “They are all the same” but is unable to create an alternative political leadership because vote banks are not easy to create or destroy.

“During the 1960s Pakistan’s urban middle class preferred Ayoub Khan and his top-down Convention Muslim League only to find that the party had no roots by the time of the 1970 general elections.

After the peasantry had voted the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto into office, during the 1970s, the middle class preferred Air Marshal Asghar Khan and his Tehrik-e-Istiqlal (TI).

The 1977 Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) campaign revealed that the anti-PPP vote bank was mobilised not by TI or Asghar Khan but by the Islamist religious parties.

After the end of Ziaul Haq’s military dictatorship in 1988, and a concerted decade-long effort by the military-intelligence combine to break the back of the PPP, Benazir Bhutto still commanded more votes than the middle class’s new choice, Nawaz Sharif.

By the time Sharif created his own vote bank, the urban professionals had turned on him and preferred Imran Khan and his Tehrik-e-Insaf.

Even now, it appears that the educated elite that supported Pervez Musharraf right after the 1999 coup has now shifted its loyalty to the anti-politician politicians rather than putting their support where the majority of voters seem inclined.

Popular politicians may not rise to the “high” standards of the educated elite but they have a way of connecting with the people. Instead of constantly judging politicians with an unrealistic yardstick, urban professionals should embrace the political process.

They can act as pressure groups within the major popular parties rather than a loose grouping that helps discredit popular leaders only to pave the way for further military intervention in politics.

Gulf News, December 26, 2007

Musharraf’s Dipping Popularity Says it All

Gulf News, December 19, 2007

A politician usually knows when his support has worn out. A general, however, must wait for intelligence reports or the siege of his command post to realise that he has lost a battle.

Even after declaring himself civilian president of Pakistan and getting an endorsement from India’s National Security Adviser to the effect that New Delhi considers him Pakistan’s “elected” leader, Pervez Musharraf remains a general at heart. Since his command post is intact and his intelligence machinery has not reported his rout to him, Musharraf continues to insist that he faces no political crisis.

If only the Western media would stop reporting bad things, he told Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth last week, things in Pakistan would be as stable as they have been since Musharraf took power in the 1999 military coup.

An opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in November showed that Musharraf’s approval ratings in Pakistan have sunk lower than those of US President George W. Bush.

Sixty seven per cent of Pakistanis want Musharraf to resign immediately whereas 70 per cent believe his King’s party (the Pakistan Muslim League-Q) does not deserve re-election. Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), with 30 per cent support, emerges as the single largest party in Pakistan’s multi-party system.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) is in second position with 25 per cent support. Most people would prefer a Bhutto-Sharif coalition to rule the country rather then the Musharraf-Bhutto alliance favoured until recently in Washington.

Instead of facing the facts, Musharraf’s spokesman has turned around and made the absurd argument that a poll of a few thousand people cannot represent the views of 160 million Pakistanis. Until a year ago, the IRI polls showed Musharraf as quite popular in the country and at that time none of his supporters questioned the validity of opinion polling methodology.

Withdrawal

The unavoidable truth is that Musharraf’s political support in Pakistan has almost evaporated. Even after the official withdrawal of the state of emergency, Pakistan’s ruler is virtually ruling by the strength of the State, not on the basis of his personal credibility.

There is bad news even for Pakistan’s permanent institutions of State in the latest IRI poll. The Pakistan Army has long been the most respected institution in the country and it enjoyed a favourable rating of 80 per cent in IRI’s polls over the last several years. In the most recent polls, the Army’s rating first dropped 10 points to 70 per cent and now stands at 55 per cent.

The media and the judiciary, from whom Musharraf says he is now trying to save Pakistan, are now the most favourably rated institutions in the country. The media’s 78 per cent approval shows how out of touch Musharraf and his sycophants are with the current reality of Pakistan.

The Bush administration wants Musharraf to survive and has been willing to let him retrace some of his missteps. The withdrawal of the emergency was another occasion for the State Deptartment to speak of “positive” developments in Pakistan. But just as American officials called upon Musharraf to “do more” in fighting terrorism, they are now calling upon him to “do more” to restore democracy in the country.

Whether Musharraf does more in reversing his authoritarian course will depend largely on the domestic and international pressures building up against him. The legitimacy and credibility of the January 8 election is going to be a major test in this respect.

The government’s hopes of holding a partially credible election with results that change little in the power structure are unlikely to be fulfilled. Either Musharraf would have to take the risk of allowing opposition success at the polls to secure the election’s acceptability or he would ensure massive rigging to keep his party in power at the cost of all credibility.

It is bad enough to have little support at home. It will be worse when the lack of support at home is accompanied by a total absence of credibility abroad.

Mr Hosni Musharraf

Indian Express , December 13, 2007

Musharraf’s language and demeanour are the same as that of Egypt’s ruler Hosni Mubarak at the time of the 1987 elections for the Egyptian parliament. Twenty years later, Mubarak is still in power and the Egyptian people still have no real choice between leaders.

Egypt is a nation of a thousand NGOs and several political parties but there is no serious political challenge to Mubarak’s authority. Mubarak marginalised the real opposition, allowed western funded NGOs to work within pre-defined spheres, and has regularly held elections without allowing alternation in power.

Musharraf’s guns are trained on Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif for a reason. Having served as prime ministers, the two are visible reminders that Pakistan can be ruled by someone other than Musharraf. Once they are out of the way, Musharraf can follow Mubarak in holding election after election, changing rules and judges as often as he likes, and control the country with the help of the security services and large amounts of US aid.

Incidentally, Mubarak (who started out as an air force general) has been a civilian and out of uniform for the last 25 years but that has not eased the grip of the military and the intelligence services on Egypt’s polity. Musharraf’s decision to continue to live in ‘army house’ after ostensibly handing over command to General Ashfaq Kayani reflects his desire to be Pakistan’s Mubarak.

The holding of free and fair elections is not a technical issue; it is a matter of intent. A ruler or government that has no intention of sharing or transferring power is unlikely to hold free and fair elections.

Most of the fix for the coming elections is already in — manipulated voters’ lists, gerrymandering, intimidation of opposition candidates and arm-twisting of local influentials to support the king’s party. The rigging will be selective on election day, outside of the view of foreigners and the media as far as possible.

The primary purpose of the regime would be to influence the outcome both in terms of who gets elected and how many seats each party gets. Thus, the opposition might get a significant number of seats but individuals with an independent mind could be made to lose.

After the elections, a second round of manipulation will take place to create factions within each party and to manage a pliant coalition. This would be similar to what happened in 2002. A coalition cobbled together in the same manner as 2002 after a fraudulent election euphemistically described as ‘flawed but acceptable’ by the US government will not advance democracy in Pakistan.

If the ban on a twice-elected prime minister running for a third term is not lifted, there will be no real choice for Pakistanis because then Musharraf would be able to appoint anyone he likes as prime minister.

Musharraf’s desire to exclude Bhutto and Sharif and thereby pave the way for choosing a prime minister himself is another sign that he is following the Hosni Mubarak role model. But while Musharraf may want to emulate the Egyptian model, Pakistani civilians will not roll over and play dead.

Prolonged unrest might follow a rigged poll in Pakistan.

By failing to understand the differences between the political history and aspirations of Egypt and Pakistan, Musharraf might be risking considerable and prolonged unrest in trying to emulate Mubarak.

Alone in his Labyrinth

Indian Express , December 13, 2007

A politician usually knows when his support has worn out. A general, however, must wait for intelligence reports or the siege of his command post to realise that he has lost the battle.

Even after declaring himself civilian president of Pakistan and getting an endorsement from India’s national security adviser to the effect that New Delhi considers him Pakistan’s ‘elected’ leader, Pervez Musharraf remains a general at heart. Since his command post is intact and his intelligence machinery has not reported his rout to him, Musharraf continues to insist that he faces no political crisis.

If only the western media would stop reporting bad things, he told Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth last week, things in Pakistan would be as stable as they have been since he took power in the 1999 military coup.

An opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in November showed that Musharraf’s approval ratings in Pakistan have sunk lower than those of President Bush in the United States. Sixty-seven per cent of Pakistanis want Musharraf to resign immediately whereas 70 per cent believe his King’s Party (the Pakistan Muslim League-Q) does not deserve re-election. Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), with 30 per cent support, emerges as the single largest party in Pakistan’s multi-party system.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) is in second position with 25 per cent support. Most people would prefer a Bhutto-Sharif coalition to rule the country rather then the Musharraf-Bhutto alliance favoured until recently in Washington.

Instead of facing the facts, Musharraf’s spokesman has turned around and made the absurd argument that a poll of a few thousand people cannot represent the views of 160 million Pakistanis. Until a year ago, the IRI polls showed Musharraf as quite popular in the country and at that time none of his supporters questioned the validity of opinion polling methodology.

The unavoidable truth is that Musharraf’s political support in Pakistan has almost evaporated. Even after the official withdrawal of the state of emergency, Pakistan’s ruler is virtually ruling by the strength of the state, not on the basis of his personal credibility.

There is bad news even for Pakistan’s permanent institutions of state in the latest IRI poll. The Pakistan Army has long been the most respected institution in the country and it enjoyed a favourable rating of 80 per cent in IRI’s polls over the last several years. In the most recent polls, the army’s rating first dropped 10 points to 70 per cent and now stands at 55 per cent — a further slippage of 15 percentage points.

The media and the judiciary, from whom Musharraf says he is now trying to save Pakistan, are now the most favourably rated institutions in the country. The media’s 78 per cent approval shows how out of touch Musharraf and his sycophants are with the current reality of Pakistan.

According to the IRI, “The drop in the Army’s prestige is likely due to the unpopularity of Musharraf. When Pakistanis were asked if the performance of Musharraf affected their opinion of the Army, 31 per cent said that they now had a higher opinion due to his actions and 20 per cent said that their opinion had not changed, while a plurality of 41 per cent said that Musharraf’s performance caused them to now have a lower opinion of the Army.”

The Bush administration wants Musharraf to survive and has been willing to let him retrace some of his missteps. The withdrawal of the emergency was another occasion for the State Department to speak of ‘positive’ developments in Pakistan. But just as American officials called upon Musharraf to ‘do more’ in fighting terrorism, they are now calling upon him to ‘do more’ to restore democracy in the country.

Whether Musharraf does more in reversing his authoritarian course will depend largely on the domestic and international pressures building up against him. The legitimacy and credibility of the January 8 election is going to be a major test in this respect.

International perception of the election process being unlawfully and unethically tilted in favour of the King’s Party is growing. As the Washington Post reported, “With less than a month to go before parliamentary elections in Pakistan, independent experts say that there is little chance the polls will be either free or fair — and that the result could be renewed tumult across the country.”

The government’s hopes of holding a partially credible election with results that change little in the power structure are unlikely to be fulfilled. Either Musharraf would have to take the risk of allowing opposition success at the polls to secure the election’s acceptability or he would ensure massive rigging to keep his party in power at the cost of all credibility.

It is bad enough to have little support at home. It will be worse when the lack of support at home is accompanied by a total absence of credibility abroad.

Pakistan’s Civilians Are Not the Army’s Enemies

Gulf News , December 5, 2007

On November 28, 2007, General Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, handing over a ceremonial baton to his successor, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani.
For several days now, beginning well before the change of command, Pakistani and international media have speculated about Kiyani’s personality and perceived opinions.
No such personality analysis took place when the United States swore in General George W. Casey, Jr as the 36th Chief of Staff of the US Army on April 10. Nor was there much speculation when on September 30, when the Indian army got its new chief, General Deepak Kapoor.
The US military is considered the world’s most powerful and the Indian army is ranked as the world’s second largest fighting force. But their outgoing chiefs received quiet farewells and their new commanders assumed command without commentary by political analysts and international affairs pundits.
Indeed, it is quite likely that most Americans and Indians probably do not even know the names of the incoming generals, or for that matter of their predecessors.
Soldiering is a noble profession and its practitioners around the world distinguish themselves on battlefields, away from controversy and the limelight usually attached to politicians.
In Pakistan, the army has been dragged into politics and that has hurt both Pakistan and its army. Field Marshal Ayoub Khan first introduced the notion that the army must save Pakistan from its own people with the help of ambitious civilians who were incapable of securing popular support but were good at palace intrigue.
Initially, he called for saving Pakistan from its politicians. Gradually, politically ambitious generals such as Yahya Khan, Zia ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf added to the list of categories of Pakistanis from whom the army had an obligation to save the country.
Soldiers have been called upon at different times to save Pakistan from “corrupt civil servants” to “secular and irreligious journalists and professors” and now “irresponsible Supreme Court Judges”.
Under Zia, secularism was the enemy and the soldiers’ guns were turned in the direction of anyone who was perceived as unorthodox in their religious beliefs. Under Musharraf, Islamist extremism cultivated by Zia has been described as the enemy and, once again, the army has been called upon to deal with the problem.
Not a substitute
The truth is that training as a soldier and promotion to the rank of general does not train an individual to run every aspect of life of a nation. As Kiyani settles in, he should shun civilians who tell him how the army is the only stabilizing institution in Pakistan.
The army is important, no doubt, but it is not a substitute for political parties, the judiciary, academia, civil society and the media. The army must protect national interest but it should be willing to recognise that civilians have an equal right to ponder what is, or is not, in the national interest.
Just as the solution to having a bad surgeon is not to invite an engineer to perform surgery, a nation must replace bad politicians with good ones if and when they are available.
Making politicians out of generals only breeds division within society and undermines the professionalism of the army while preventing the other institutions from becoming stronger through experience and over time.
Just as Ayoub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia and Musharraf soiled the army’s professional stature by involving it in politics; many other Pakistani army chiefs understood the need for respecting the different spheres of civilian and the military.
Since Ayoub Khan, politicised military officers have bred contempt among their fellow officers for the country’s civilians. There may be reasonable grounds for criticism of the country’s traditional political class. But the solution to the problems of alleged political corruption and incompetence is not a military coup d’etat.
After every military intervention, Pakistan’s leadership crisis has deepened. Each military government has started out with perception of popular support and declarations of goods intentions. Each one has left office facing public resentment and little institutional change.
In the process, Pakistan political parties have been weakened and the judiciary emasculated. The reason for the army’s political intervention is not that other institutions are weak. It is the army’s intervention that has prevented any institution from gaining any strength.

It is time for Pakistan’s military officers to stop thinking of Pakistan’s own people as the enemy.

Field Theory

Indian Express , December 5, 2007

On November 28, 2007, General Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s chief of army staff, handing over a ceremonial baton to his successor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. For several days now, beginning well before the change of command, Pakistani and international media have speculated about General Kayani’s personality and perceived opinions.

No such personality analysis took place when the United States swore in General George W. Casey, Jr. as the 36th chief of staff of the US army on April 10. Nor was there much speculation when on September 30, the Indian army got its new chief, General Deepak Kapoor.

The US and India’s outgoing chiefs received quiet farewells and their new commanders assumed command without commentary by political analysts and international affairs pundits. Indeed, it is quite likely that most Americans and Indians probably do not even know the names of the incoming generals, or for that matter of their predecessors. Soldiering is a noble profession and its practitioners around the world distinguish themselves on battlefields, away from controversy and the limelight usually attached to politicians.

In Pakistan, the army has been dragged into politics and that has hurt both Pakistan and its army. Field Marshal Ayub Khan first introduced the notion that the army must save Pakistan from its own people with the help of ambitious civilians who were incapable of securing popular support but were good at palace intrigue.

Initially, Ayub Khan called for saving Pakistan from its politicians. Gradually, politically ambitious generals such as Yahya Khan, Zia ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf added to the list of categories of Pakistanis from whom the army had an obligation to save the country. Soldiers have been called upon at different times to save Pakistan from “corrupt civil servants” to “secular and irreligious journalists and professors” and now “irresponsible Supreme Court judges”.

Under Zia, secularism was the enemy and the soldiers’ guns were turned in the direction of anyone who was perceived as unorthodox in their religious beliefs. Under Musharraf, Islamist extremism cultivated by Zia has been described as the enemy and, once again, the army has been called upon to deal with the problem.

The truth is that training as a soldier and promotion to the rank of general does not train an individual to run every aspect of life of a nation. As General Kayani settles in, he should shun civilians who tell him how the army is the only stabilising institution in Pakistan.

Making politicians out of generals only breeds division within society and undermines the professionalism of the army while preventing the other institutions from becoming stronger through experience and over time.

Just as Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf soiled the army’s professional stature by involving it in politics; many other Pakistani army chiefs understood the need for respecting the different spheres of civilian and the military.

Since Ayub Khan, politicised military officers have bred contempt among their fellow officers for the country’s civilians. There may be reasonable grounds for criticism of the country’s traditional political class. But the solution to the problems of alleged political corruption and incompetence —common to virtually every country, by the way — is not a military coup d’etat.

After every military intervention, Pakistan’s leadership crisis has deepened. Each military government has started out with a perception of popular support and declarations of goods intentions. Each one has left office facing public resentment and little institutional change.

In the process, Pakistan political parties have been weakened and the judiciary emasculated. The reason for the army’s political intervention is not that other institutions are weak. It is the army’s intervention that has prevented any institution from gaining any strength.

It is time for Pakistan’s military officers to stop thinking of Pakistan’s own people as the enemy.