General Kayani - A Musharraf in the making?

General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, is much in the news these days. Senior foreign diplomatic officials make it a point to consult with him when in Islamabad. He has just renewed the term of the ISI chief, Shuja Pasha, and he has recently commented at length on Pakistan’s role and interests in Afghanistan. His presence in the political limelight is nothing short of intriguing. After all, Pakistan has a legitimately elected government and is ostensibly a functioning democracy. More to the point, barely a year ago, a host of commentators had blithely argued that he would prove to be the model for an apolitical general.  Alas, those hopes and expectations have been sadly belied. Even as early as December 2008, his clout was evident. In the wake of the horrific Lashkar-e-Taiba spearheaded attack on Mumbai, President Asif Ali Zardari had offered to send the ISI chief to New Delhi for discussions about the attack. Within hours, however, Army Headquarters countermanded Zardari and the trip was called off. Since then the putatively apolitical general has become steadily more visible in the political arena. To any informed observer of Pakistan his increasingly public role in the country’s politics should come as no surprise. Since the first coup under self-styled Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan, the country has established a rather lopsided pattern of civil-military relations. Even when civilian governments assumed power they lived under the long shadow of the military. Only in the aftermath of the disastrous 1971 war when the military establishment was justly discredited, thanks to their ineptitude and brutality in East Pakistan, did they recede to the barracks to briefly lick their wounds. Such an interregnum, of course, was shortlived . Thanks to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s feckless ways the military again reasserted itself under General Zia-ul-Haq , and Bhutto was sent to the gallows.  During Zia’s regime the accretion of military power was nothing short of breathtaking. Thanks to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan assumed the status of a "front-line" state and played a pivotal role in supplying the mujahideen with American military and logistical assistance. Sadly, the Ronald Reagan administration in its relentless and justifiable quest to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan ignored the many unsavoury aspects of Zia’s regime. Lavished with American economic and military largesse and free of any external pressures for domestic restraint, Zia expanded the reach and scope of the military across Pakistan’s state and society. The military’s tentacles spread from running municipal functions to heading up educational institutions.  Even when Zia died in a mysterious plane crash and democracy was restored, the military did not relinquish its political role altogether. Along with a very powerful presidency it remained one of the key pillars of power in Pakistan. The end of the Nawaz Sharif regime and General Pervez Musharraf’s ascent to power saw a further diminution of civilian authority in the country and the commensurate expansion of military power. Once again, as during the Afghan war years, the Bush administration proved to be quite indulgent of the Pakistani military’s expansion of its domestic role. The exigencies of relying on Pakistan to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and to pursue al-Qaida in the region proved to be of far greater significance than nudging Musharraf to cede political authority.  Is the Pakistani state then doomed to this tragic and desultory cycle of periodic transitions to democracy and then a return to military rule? The forces of path dependence, as institutional economists have explained, will probably rule the day. The early choice of institutional pathways set states on particular courses which are extremely difficult to radically alter. Consequently, in the absence of concerted and sustained external pressures for fundamental and structural reforms, there is little reason to believe that the bloated military establishment will, of its own accord, shrink its role in Pakistan’s politics and society.  Given this infelicitous past, General Kayani’s increasing assertiveness is entirely unsurprising. In the wake of the London conference which gave Pakistan a disproportionate role in shaping Afghanistan’s future, the Pakistani military apparatus believes that it enjoys the imprimatur of the international community to play a more overt role in shaping Pakistan’s critical foreign and security policy choices. Quite frankly, all that has really changed is that it no longer feels it must quietly manipulate its civilian marionettes from the shadows. Now General Kayani and his associates can stand tall and determine the moves of their pliant charges with the skill of master ventriloquists and puppeteers.