At Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s
palatial offices in Islamabad this week, the army chief sat down to
deliver the head of government a message he did not want to hear: The
time for talks with the troublesome Pakistani Taliban was over.
Sharif
came to power a year ago promising to find a peaceful settlement with
the Islamist militant group, but as round after round of talks failed,
the powerful armed forces favoured a military solution.
Their
patience finally ran out and, late on Tuesday afternoon, during a tense
meeting, the army effectively declared it would override a crucial
plank of the government’s strategy and take matters into its own hands.
“The
army chief and other military officers in the room were clear on the
military’s policy: the last man, the last bullet,” a government insider
with first-hand knowledge of the meeting told a foreign news agency.
Asked to sum up the message General Raheel Sharif wanted to convey at the gathering, he added: “The time for talk is over.”
The
next day, Pakistani forces launched rare air strikes against militants
holed up in the remote, lawless tribal belt near the Afghan border. It
is not clear whether Sharif authorized the operation.
On
Thursday, they backed that up with the first major ground offensive
against the Taliban there, undermining Sharif’s year-long attempt to end
a bloody insurgency across his country through peaceful means.
Disagreement
over the militant threat is the latest row to flare up between the
government and military, and relations between the two branches of power
are at their lowest ebb for years, according to government officials.
The government did say talks with the Taliban would go on.
“We
will talk with those who are ready for it and the (military) operation
is being launched against those who are not ready to come to the
negotiating table,” spokesman Pervez Rashid told local media on
Thursday.
But the operations put the military, which has
a long record of intervening in civilian rule through plots and coups,
firmly back at the centre of Pakistan’s security policy.
The
balance of power is shifting at a time when foreign troops are
preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan, and arch-rival India has just
elected a Hindu nationalist leader promising to be more assertive on the
international stage.
“This is the clearest signal yet that the army will dictate its terms now,” a member of Sharif’s cabinet said.
TALIBAN ON THE OFFENSIVE
The
Pakistani Taliban, as distinct from the Afghan Taliban which is
actively targeting NATO forces in Afghanistan, is believed to be behind
attacks on Pakistani soldiers and civilians that have killed thousands
in recent years.
The Pakistan army has distinguished
between “good” Taliban like the feared Haqqani network – who do not
attack Pakistani security forces but fight in Afghanistan – and “bad”
Taliban, indigenous Pakistani militants who are seeking to create an
Islamic state.
While Pakistan’s military wants to go
after the “bad” Taliban, it has, despite pressure from Washington,
largely avoided taking on groups who launch attacks against coalition
forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.
Prompting
the latest intervention, the Pakistani Taliban have become increasingly
bold, striking the army in tribal areas including a recent battle in
which an army major died. Earlier this month, nine soldiers were killed
in an explosion near the Afghan border.
“We will avenge
the blood of every last soldier. Talks or no talks, the army will
retaliate,” said one military official, who, like most others
interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity due to the
sensitivity of the subject.
The army has ruled Pakistan
for more than half of its history. Sharif himself was toppled by the
army in 1999 during his previous tenure as prime minister.
But,
humiliated after a secret 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on
Pakistani soil, the army stood back from politics and supported last
year’s first democratic transition of power which brought Sharif back to
office.
Sharif manoeuvred carefully, hand picking a new
army chief and trying to forge a partnership with the military in the
early days of his tenure, but the overtures had little lasting impact.
TRADE, DIPLOMACY
There are other signs of civil-military discord.
Sharif
came to power promising to rebuild relations with India, but has been
under pressure to toughen his stance from hardliners at home,
particularly within the army.
The nuclear-armed
neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in
1947, two of them over the still-disputed Himalayan territory of
Kashmir.
Sharif’s policies towards India have been
heavily scrutinized; some in the army justify its hefty budget by
pointing to – and, critics say, playing up – the potential threat from
India.
And despite signs the military has become more
amenable to overtures from its old foe than in the past, a trade deal
pushed by the prime minister and aimed at improving ties with India was
cancelled at the last minute after pressure from the army, top
government officials said.
Sharif now faces a dilemma
over whether to accept an invitation by Indian Prime Minister-designate
Narendra Modi to attend his inauguration next week.
The
army is also bitter about the trial of former military ruler Pervez
Musharraf, who ousted Sharif from power in 1999 and was arrested after
he returned to Pakistan to take part in last year’s election.
Ties
with Afghanistan have never been easy, but some officials believe the
army wants to torpedo the government’s relationship with a future Kabul
administration, risking deterioration in regional security as NATO
troops prepare to leave this year.
Generals have
jealously guarded the right to dictate policy on Afghanistan, seeing
friendly guerrilla groups as “assets” to blunt the influence of India
there.
TENSIONS COME TO SURFACE
Though
simmering under the surface, tensions between the government and the
army spilled into the open last month when a popular journalist was shot
by unknown gunmen, and his channel, Geo News, blamed the army’s
powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI).
Public criticism of the shadowy ISI is almost
unheard of in Pakistan. In a rare public response, the army demanded
that Geo News, the country’s most-watched news channel, be shut down.
The
government’s media regulator has since resisted the army’s demands to
cancel the channel’s license, which the military sees as a direct sign
of defiance.
“Everyone was looking out to see how the
government would treat the army in this crisis — as a friend or foe?”
said a senior military official. “But the government allowed this to
become a free-for-all, army-hunting season.”
For Sharif,
buckling under military pressure is a major risk. “This is not about
one TV channel but about freedom of expression and about living in a
democracy,” Rashid said. “We should live and let live.”
But despite putting on a brave front, officials say the government is feeling under siege.
“Never
in the last year has the government felt weaker or more vulnerable,”
one of Sharif’s key economic advisers said. “Now every time we have to
take a major decision, on India, on Afghanistan, we will have to think
‘How will the army react?’”
A serving general said the
army chief would always pick the “institution over the constitution if
push comes to shove,” adding: “As a society and a state, we have to
avoid a context in which the army is pushed to do something it doesn’t
want to.”
(Pakistan Today)
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