I am a bit late in commenting on the news that Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Kayani will stay in his position until 2013. Even so, I wanted to highlight an article on the subject by widely-respected Indian strategic analyst K Subrahmanyam. He points to something I hadn’t realized, namely that:
This extension of tenure for an army chief by a civilian government is happening for the first time since 1955 when the government headed by Iskander Mirza gave an extension to General Ayub Khan, the country’s first army chief.
That is pretty remarkable, and highlights how tenuous civilian control over the military in Pakistan has been. Subrahmanyam continues:
General Kayani is not just the chief of the army. He is also the first Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to become the army chief. In that sense, he may not be the originator but truly the sustainer of the Pakistan strategy of using the various terrorist organisations as “strategic assets”. He is in direct control and charge of the “crown jewels” of Pakistan — its nuclear weapons.
This strikes me as not being entirely fair. Any one individual, even a dictator, can only shape the basic institutions of his or her country to a limited extent. A high-achieving member of the Pakistani military in a leadership role will inevitably end up continuing most of the policies of his predecessor. The use of militants against India has been going on for a long time, and will probably not stop unless the strategic environment changes substantially. The same thing goes for the nuclear program. While Kayani is responsible for what he does, labeling him the true sustainer of Pakistani strategy obscures more than it clarifies. Subrahmanyam goes on to give some advice to Indian leaders:
All this highlights that India cannot have effective communication with the real power centre of Pakistan by talking to the foreign minister, the prime minister or the now powerless president. For meaningful communication, India should be in a position to talk to the Pakistan Army chief. This cannot be done by our strictly apolitical army chief trying to talk to his counterpart. Here too, General Kayani has an advantage. He can let loose Mr Gillani on Manmohan Singh, Mr Qureshi on S M Krishna while keeping the ultimate veto power with himself.
Therefore, the Indian prime minister has to think through an innovative solution. That has to be an empowered personal envoy like the one he nominated to talk to the Chinese premier. He has to be knowledgeable to deal with terrorism, counter-terrorism, conventional military balance, nuclear deterrence, Afghanistan, China, evolving strategic balance in the area and bilateral Indo-Pakistan issues. Such missions have to be undertaken without publicity as was done with the “back channel” discussions during President Musharraf’s tenure.
This echoes something said by Raja Mohan in a talk at the Asia Society back in February, to the effect that the Pakistan COAS would never meet with the head of the Indian military, because the Indian would not actually be his counterpart.
The tone of this article differs from most western coverage of Pakistan, which portrays the Pakistan Army as powerful but not completely dominant in politics and foreign policy. Subrahmanyam, on the other hand, describes Kayani as “all-powerful,” which is somewhat unsurprising given that the Indians certainly have reasons to avoid underestimating the Pakistan Army.
Although Subrahmanyam’s suggestion is reasonable, and it makes sense to deal with the actual decision-makers in any situation, it seems that there is a danger that his approach would further strengthen the Pakistan Army at the expense of the President and Prime Minister. The distribution of influence in Pakistan is somewhat fluid, and it is in the interest of both India and the United States that the Pakistan Army not accrue too much of it.
http://americanfootprints.com/wp/2010/07/engaging-pakistan-is-kayani-all-powerful/
Mohammed Abbasi 