Civil-military relations in Pakistan

The civil-military relations form an essential strand of national security strategy. In

peace, they affect the internal stability of a nation state; in war, they influence the
outcome. In the developed countries the military is mostly busy in participation of
formulation of national security policy. However, in the developing countries,
particularly those with a colonial past, the military have long maintained a
substantive role in domestic politics. That is, the military have either overthrown
the legally constituted governments, or overly influenced decision-making at
national levels. Same is the case in Pakistan.

Historical context
The evolution of the civil-military relations in Pakistan was affected by many factors
that were unique to the developing world. The political and administration
infrastructures of Pakistan have to be built from the scratch is one these factors.
Like Indian Army, Pakistan army originated from the British Indian army. However,
unlike India, the civil military relations in Pakistan evolved along the deadly
different path. That is why Pakistan witness frequent military interventions; at least
three of them were overt. Thus, Since independence in 1947, Pakistan has
experienced 30 years of military rule (1958 to 1971, 1977 to 1988 and 1999 to
2008); even when not in government the military has constantly sought to
centralise and consolidate political power, and the military (notably military
intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)) exerts significant overt and covert
control over the civilian authorities in both domestic and foreign affairs. Given
Pakistan’s volatile relationship with India, centred on the decades-long conflict for
control of Kashmir, Pakistan has always been a ‘security state’, and the national
military has historically been a key player in the geopolitical arena. However,
information on Pakistan’s armed forces is very limited, and interaction with Western
civilian and military institutions is heavily controlled. The climate of secrecy within
the Pakistan military and its associated security services directly and indirectly
affects civil–military coordination and presents humanitarian actors with a highly
complicated operational environment.

The role of the military in Pakistani society

Pakistan’s military has multiple roles: preparing for and responding to natural
disasters, contributing military personnel to UN missions (Pakistan has a long
history of contributing troops and police to UN peacekeeping operations and has
consistently been in the top three of contributor nations.), under special
circumstances maintaining law and order and defending Pakistan’s borders and
conducting security operations, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism operations.
Pakistan’s volatile relationship with India has ensured that the military has been
well-resourced.
The armed forces consist of the Army (550,000), Navy (22,000) and Air Force
(70,000), totalling 642,000 military personnel in active service. Paramilitary forces
number 304,000, and there is a reserve force complement of 500,000.

The Army is structured using the traditional British two-tier hierarchy of officers and
enlisted ranks, a legacy of colonial rule. Officer ranks follow British military naming
conventions, the lowest being Second Lieutenant and the highest Field Marshal. In
addition, there are three ranks of Junior Commissioned Officer: Naib Subedar,
Subedar and Subedar-Major. Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) ranks range from
Solider at the lowest echelon to Battalion Havildar Major at the highest. Officers are
predominantly drawn from Pakistan’s middle classes; indeed, employment as an
officer is the predominant profession of the middle and, increasingly, lower-middle
classes. Selection is highly competitive, but once recruited members of the military
and their families enjoy extensive support, including medical care at well-equipped
facilities and a patronage network. According to Lieven (2011), the military forms a
separate ‘giant kinship group’ that ‘sees itself as a breed apart, and devotes great
effort to inculcating in new recruits the feeling that they belong to a military family
different from (and vastly superior to) Pakistani civilian society’. Regionally, the
northwest Punjab and KP and Punjabi and Pashtun/Pathan ethnicities respectively
have provided the majority of military recruits, particularly for the Army (Lieven,
2011). Moves are being made to make the military a more national institution;
recruitment initiatives have focused on Sindhi, Mohajir and Baloch in an effort to
increase their numbers in the forces, and new cantonments have been built in
Sindh and Balochistan. What effect this is having on the ethnic make-up of the
forces is impossible to say as statistics are not made available.
Preparing for disaster response has long been part of military training. When called
on to support civil authorities, military assistance has predominantly been
channelled into less secure areas, with civilian actors responding in the more
accessible locations. The military provides relief and rescue, logistical support,
engineering expertise, emergency health provision and basic reconstruction of
infrastructure. The armed forces also have a disaster preparedness role, for
example by coordinating with the civil authorities in maintaining water channels, in
joint inspections of flood defences and participation in pre-monsoon coordination
meetings. In relation to complex emergencies, the Army feels that it has a
legitimate interest not only in responding to terrorism but also in rebuilding after
security operations. Given Pakistan’s longstanding commitment and experience as
one of the principal contributors of troops and police to UN peacekeeping
operations, it is conceivable that the security services consider themselves to be the
best organisation to address both disaster and conflict. The experience and
expertise the Pakistan military brings is recognized by the humanitarian
community, and the Army is considered to be a significant player, with the ability to
provide personnel, logistics and key skills in response to disasters. A cross-section
of respondents were either comfortable with the military role in disaster response,
or felt that the armed forces were obliged to act due to the high level of state funds
and government resources they received.

The Army’s counter-insurgency operations against Taliban militants began in the

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2001, and continue today at various
points along the Afghan–Pakistan border (the Durand Line). Pakistan’s counter-
insurgency strategy has been described as ‘engage, destroy, and negotiate’, the
inverse of the ‘clear, hold, build’ strategies of the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF)/NATO military forces in Afghanistan (Zaidi, 2010). Local populations
are evacuated before overwhelming force and heavy firepower is used to attack
militants headon; this is followed by the negotiation of a ceasefire.
Collateral damage, mass internal displacement and the destruction of infrastructure
have been the result.
A lack of reconciliation and reconstruction initiatives following these offensives has
exacerbated the conflict and generated increasingly negative opinions of military
activities among local populations.
Western governments, especially the US, have been supportive of Pakistan’s
counter-insurgency operations. Foreign aid for disaster response operations, most
notably from the US, has been used to promote stability and gain local and national
support for international counter-terrorism and stabilisation objectives. This has
had an impact on the provision of humanitarian aid, with the Pakistan military
controlling and in some cases blocking aid flows. As discussed in the sections that
follow, the response to the 2005 earthquake was seen as a large-scale ‘hearts and
minds’ opportunity by national and international military forces, to improve local
perceptions of military forces and their respective governments.2 An essential
objective from the national military perspective was to decrease local opposition to
security operations in the mountainous region of South Waziristan on the Afghan–
Pakistan border. For the US, the response was seen as a way to reduce vitriolic
anti-American sentiment amongst local populations, which had been compounded
by drone attacks against Taliban militants. With the international drawdown
from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014, Pakistan is facing increasing pressure to
reform its security strategy. In an attempt to stem insurgency and unrest during
the transition, it is likely that Pakistan will step up counter-insurgency operations
along the border, with significant implications for the humanitarian response in this
highly troubled region.

Why Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan have Always been on a Bumpy

Road?
The most basic precondition of a true democratic setup is a healthy civil-military
relationship. In all democratic countries, an elected civilian government enjoys full
control over the military. However, in Pakistan, control over governance has
oscillated between the two; a decade of civilian supremacy followed by a decade of
military rule. The reasons for this periodic shuffling are incompetent political
leadership, weak political parties and institutions, rising power of civil-military
bureaucracy, serious security threats to the country and frequent use of military in
aid of civil power.

In the early days of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam clearly articulated the role of the
military in the following words: “Do not forget that the armed forces are the
servants of the people. You do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who
decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are
entrusted.”

Leadership Void
Soon after independence, in 1948, the Father of the Nation and the first Governor-
General, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, passed away. Thus, a leadership void
was created after just one year of the country's establishment. The first Prime
Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was Quaid's right hand lieutenant, was
also assassinated in 1951. About the rest of the leadership lot, the Quaid had
ruefully remarked that “he had false coins in his pocket.”

Delayed Finalisation of Constitution

Similarly, in 1954, there were nine members of the Prime Minister's cabinet, who
were not members of the Parliament, including Commander-in-Chief General
Muhammad Ayub Khan. Moreover, Pakistan took nine long years to finalise its first
constitution that was enforced on 23 March 1956. This inordinate delay allowed the
Governor-General to continue with his authoritarian rule. This all was happening at
a time when the country direly needed healthy democratic traditions. In addition,
the first general elections in the country, which were due in 1951, were held after a
lapse of almost quarter of a century, in 1970. This further strengthened the non-
democratic and authoritarian tendencies providing space to civil and military
bureaucracies to assume a dominant position in governance.

Weak Political Parties

For any healthy constitutional and political system to function smoothly, strong and
well-entrenched political parties are essential. Unfortunately, political parties in
Pakistan have failed to develop into strong vehicles of national political will. The
main reason is that most of our leaders belonged to feudal and capitalist classes
and were thus, by their very nature, inimical to a democratic polity. Their
incompetence and constant wrangling for power led to ceaseless infighting. For
instance, as early as 1953, a clash between the leadership of the Punjab and the
central government led to the imposition of Martial Law in Lahore, the provincial
capital.

Weak Institutions
After independence, Pakistan had to start from scratch. There was no established
parliament, no civil secretariat, no supreme court, no central bank and no organised
armed forces. There was a paucity of competent parliamentarians. The proportion
of the Indian Civil Service officers who opted for Pakistan was small. The same was
true of the higher judiciary. Unlike other institutions, the proportion of Muslims in
the Indian Army was comparatively substantial, i.e., 33 per cent. This is also one of
the reasons why the armed forces of Pakistan assumed greater importance right in
the beginning and were better established than other institutions of the state.
Rising Power of Civil-Military Bureaucracy
Due to lack of basic infrastructure, Pakistan had to make new beginning in all
spheres. But the low level of literacy made this task very difficult. The country
needed competent and a determined leadership to build and nurture democratic
institutions. But such a leadership was hard to come by in a rural society in which
the political, social and economic life was dominated by the landed aristocracy. The
feudal leadership of political parties was not capable of dealing with the multifarious
problems faced by the country. It depended heavily on the civil and military
bureaucracy. The result was the bureaucratic elite became disproportionately
assertive, steadily increasing their power at the expense of the political elite. For
instance, a civil bureaucrat Governor-General of Pakistan, Ghulam Muhammad
(1951-55), dissolved the National Assembly in 1954 and the Federal Court justified
and validated his unconstitutional act on the basis of the “law of necessity.”

Wrangling for Power

The first President of Pakistan, Iskander Mirza, relied on the military to ensure
state's integrity when the PML President, Qayyum Khan, threatened direct action
and the Khan of Kalat declared his secession from Pakistan. In order to deal with
the disturbed situation, Mirza took extreme step; he abrogated the Constitution,
dissolved the legislative assemblies, dismissed the central and provincial
governments, banned all political parties and postponed general elections
indefinitely. He also declared Martial Law and appointed General Ayub as the Chief
Martial Law Administrator (CMLA), who in turn removed Iskander Mirza on October
27, 1958 and himself became the President. Thus began the era of military-
dominated governance.

Military's Sway over Political Setup

After seven years of instability (1951-58), in which as many as seven prime
ministers rose and fell, the military regime put the country on the path of economic
and political stability. Hamid Khan, a renowned lawyer, writes in “Constitutional and
Political History of Pakistan”, “Ayub's term of office [1958-69] was the golden era
for the bureaucracy, which exercised its powers, unbridled by any political
interference.”
Again, after the restoration of democratic governance during 1988-99, four
governments were dissolved by the President of Pakistan invoking Article 58 (2)(b).
On 12 October, 1999, the military once again ousted the elected government and
Pakistan was again under their despotic rule.

Civil Dependence on Army

From the very beginning, the Army remained involved in civil administration. In
1947, it was the Army that was asked to establish civil secretariat in Karachi. They
vacated their barracks, renovated them to house the secretariat and the staff
coming from Delhi. It was the Army which largely contributed to safeguarding the
movement of several refugee convoys carrying millions of refugees from East
Punjab as well as establishing their camps at Lahore. In short, the army was
frequently called in aid of civil authorities in all natural disasters, emergencies and
other civil functions.

Present Situation
Presently, however, the situation is different. Pakistan's political leadership is more
mature and political parties are better established. The country has developed a
middle class, an active civil society, a vibrant media and an independent judiciary.
Whenever required, Parliament is getting briefing on security matters from the
Services Chiefs and decisions are taken through consensus. Although military
enjoys autonomy in its internal affairs, somewhat healthy civil-military relations
exist. The Army is more deeply involved now than a decade ago in support of
activities for the civilian government: law-and-order tasks; relief and rescue
operations after natural disasters; the use of its organisational and technological
resources for public welfare projects; greater induction of its personnel in civilian
institutions; anti-terrorist activities; and containing narcotics trafficking.
A National Action Plan (NAP) was jointly formulated by the political parties and the
armed forces to win the war in the cities. Speaking to Russian magazine Sputnik,
DG ISPR conceded that only a part of the plan has so far been implemented while
the rest remains stalled due to ‘political challenges’. There is a need to correctly
define the political challenges. The major challenge is the pressure from the religio-
political parties which are strongly opposed to any government regulation or
external oversight of the madrassas. They also reject any revision of the
mainstream educational curricula to remove hate material and introduce tolerance.
The army has to support the government in blocking the two major sources of the
spread of extremist ideas.
There has to be full cooperation between the army and the civilian governments at
the centre and the provinces. Similarly, Rangers and Police, and military and civilian
intelligence agencies have to work together rather than work at cross purposes.
Terrorists will have a field day if a tug of war was to ensue between governments
led by the mainstream parties and the establishment or if there is disregard for
civilian institutions by the military-controlled intelligence and law enforcement
agencies.
The civilian institutions have to play a major role in the war against urban
terrorism. What one sees happening vis-a-vis the delay in setting up of NACTA
indicates a trend which is not healthy. The arrest of a policeman by Rangers after
raiding a police station and his subsequent release is also an indication of the
malaise. One also does not expect military commanders to issue statements with
political implications.
The Way Forward
Presently, civil-military relations do not seem as healthy and cordial as they should
be. There are apprehensions on both sides. The government's tacit support to Geo
in ISI bashing case has increased the tensions between the two pillars of the state.
Apparently, army and the government are poles apart on the issue of operation
against Taliban.
It is imperative that in the larger interest of the country both these institutions join
hands to save Pakistan from the monster of terrorism and steer the country out of
multifaceted crises which are adversely affecting Pakistan and its citizens. It is often
said that Pakistan is in a state of war and no war can be won when there is disunity
among the state institutions.
1. Laws and clear constitutional provisions should be put in place that define the
chain of command and civilian authority over the military. Although apparently a
piece of paper, this provision establishes the legitimacy for any action to resist any
encroachment by the military.
2. Bring a change in culture, values and acceptability among the masses that
civilian rule is possible and should be put in place. This enculturation would be
possible through a committed media and impartial press.
3. Structures and processes should be put in place, detailing who will command.
Fourth, openness and transparency or freedom of information is vital so that
everything is open to the public and civilian leadership.
4. Let the military budgets or expenditures be controlled by civilian authorities. No
doubt the civilians linked to this process should be thoroughly scrutinised for their
integrity.