The biggest takeaways from Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s Nov 23 farewell speech are a virtual admission of failure of GHQ experiment of imposing Imran Khan as its ‘proxy’ prime minister in 2018, and an announcement that the army would henceforth keep away from such political engineering.

It is open to doubt if the ‘catharsis’ that Bajwa said the army had begun and wanted the civilians also to follow would be taken seriously. He was not the first Chief to play the political games; he may neither be the last, despite his calling the army’s shenanigans over the last seven decades as ‘unconstitutional’.

Imran Khan was the first to attack Bajwa’s speech. Perhaps, with Bajwa’s catharsis remark, he has lost all hope of reinventing the wheel of his political fortunes.  Clearly, this is a setback for Khan, who has angered both the US and the Pak establishment with his “fake narrative”.

Imran rightly traces his troubles to the February decision of the Army brass to remain ‘neutral’ in political games. In less than two months that decision had led to the loss of his parliamentary majority that Bajwa had helped to cobble through Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, the ISI chief of the day.  

Frankly, the cricketer turned politician is not the first selected PM to turn against the Generals. There is a long list of such worthies on the Pakistan theatre.  He is certainly the first political appointee to train his guns publicly on the army. With frustration writ large on his face, he has been maligning the Khakis. Carried away by emotions, and by the response to his Long March to the capital, he has been committing the blasphemy of levelling accusations against Bajwa.

From the tone and tenor of Bajwa speech, it is clear that he is seething with anger. Observing a restraint that is unusual for a Pakistani General, he has spoken of red lines and set at rest any lingering doubts about his retirement.  Much behind the scenes activity preceded Bajwa speak, no doubt. Even President Dr Arif Alvi, who is a member of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, PTI, is understood to have chipped in though primarily to ensure his own survival.

A fall-out of these developments is that Shahbaz Sharif Government will hold out against Imran Khan – led high decibel movement for early elections. It may even proceed against him. The Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has already indicated such a possibility. Speaking in the National Assembly (Parliament) on Nov 22, he stated that the government would “deal with” Khan once the drill of appointing the new army chief is completed.

Undoubtedly, the Pakistan army has its ‘favourites’ in all political parties, many of whom have climbed the ladder to achieve political power, only to try to kick that ladder at some stage. The army cannot afford to wash its hands off a political class that it has nurtured and that is now abjectly dependent upon it. There is no force other than the army to quell and manage the dog fight this class engages in.

Even the Imran Khan government did not work to reduce the emphasis on the military and to shift the focus from geo-politics to geo-economics. If the army cannot do without running the “security state”, the political class also, would feel orphaned without it since it is used to props.

Since he spoke on the Day of Martyrs (Youm-e-Shuhada) General Bajwa made a valiant effort to downplay the loss of face in the 1971 war with India that had resulted in the Bengali-speaking East Pakistan becoming sovereign Bangladesh. The loss was a political failure but not because of the army, he said with a straight face ignoring the hard fact that Gen. A.A.K. Niazi had surrendered along with 93000 soldiers at the Dhaka parade ground to an Indian general. 

On retirement, Bajwa may find time to study the Justice Hamoodur Rahman Report that had recommended “a public trial of Pakistan Army generals on the charges that they had been responsible for the situation in the first place and that they had succumbed without a fight, but no actions were ever taken against those responsible except the dismissal of chiefs of the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Navy, and decommissioning of the Pakistan Marines.”

Bajwa may not be thrilled to read the expose of “many military failures, from the strategic to the tactical–intelligence levels.”  He may hopefully roll back his opinion when he realises that the War Commission had confirmed “the looting, rapes and the unnecessary killings by the Pakistan military and their local agents”, and had laid the blame squarely on Pakistan Army generals, accusing them of “debauchery, smuggling, war crimes and neglect of duty.”

Why Bajwa had touched upon the East Pakistan debacle in what is essentially his farewell address and tried to offer a fake narrative remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Under the guise of rescuing the former generals from the dust bin of history, he made a calibrated effort to save his own reputation that has been soiled by the ‘graft and nepotism’ charges against his family.  Bajwa’s catharsis speech may delight the liberals at home and outside but it cannot hide the flipside of his six-years at the helm of GHQ that had sent packing a democratically elected leader while hoisting a selected Prime Minister, who, on his own admission in the public, could do little without a nod from the General. 

Neither overnight nor over a period the record of three martial law governments and army’s predominant role in domestic and foreign affairs can be reversed. More so, as it is the army that controls decision-making on issues important to the US, like the nuclear programme, Pakistan’s relations with India, and counter-terrorism. The army has perpetuated what is no more than a ‘hybrid democracy’ in Pakistan, as some American experts like Lisa Curtis aver.   Politically toothless army is a pipedream even in the near term. Because the successors of Gen Bajwa in the Islamised Army may dump his catharsis! (POREG)

— The writer is a regular Poreg contributor