By Vivek Katju
There is no doubt that there was substantial support for Imran Khan especially in the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces. It is also true that there was some disenchantment against the army. This is shown by the very fact that PTI sympathisers targeted army installations in many cities and desecrated martyrs memorials. However, it is one matter to undertake a single day of demonstrations and protests and quite another to do so in a sustained manner over a period of time so that the army comes under pressure. That clearly neither PTI leaders nor its supporters have been willing to do. There is also no evidence or even an indication that they wish to undertake such a process in the future.
There was a great deal of chatter among Pakistan watchers as well as among some political observers in Pakistan itself that Imran Khan had become popular with the soldiery and junior and sections of middle-level officers of the army. This well may be true for no army can ever be fully insulated from its social milieu. Besides, there is groupism in the Pakistan Army as in other institutions. This too is not a phenomenon which is unique to Pakistan and its army.
The question which requires scrutiny when the health and functioning of an institution is being considered is this: has groupism in the senior levels of an institution reached a stage in which, ultimately, loyalty to the group takes precedence over loyalty to the institution. If the answer is that loyalty to the group will prevail and the institution will be allowed to decay then obviously the institution suffers, often fatally. In the Pakistan Army, as yet, while there may be grave differences of opinion in its top echelons and groups and even coteries may form, the loyalty to the army, as an institution, has finally always prevailed over that for groups. Further, if one or two of the generals show recalcitrance then the others gather around the army chief and ensure that the ‘offending’ generals are sidelined.
These traditions of the army were once again made clear to all in the manner in which the institution dealt with Lt Gen Salman Fayyaz Ghanni who was the Lahore Corps Commander on 9 May. Along with his family he was present in his official residence, which once belonged to the country’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah and therefore is a place of reverence for the army. Ghanni allowed the demonstrators to come into the residence and ransack it. It is also rumoured that he had in advance shown dissent on some issues towards the Army Headquarters, which in effect, meant the army chief. Hence, while the army, in my view, wanted a degree of violent protests to occur to turn some sections of public opinion which was in favour of Imran Khan against him it did not want them to go to the extent of ransacking Jinnah House. Ghanni was obviously found guilty of mishandling the situation and immediately transferred and stripped of his command.
In any event army chief General Asim Munir is in full control of his institution. There are reports of many officers being court martialed for showing dissent but the army has put a cloak over it. Contrary to precedent it also did not announce Lt Gen Ghanni’s transfer and the appointment of a successor. Thus, clearly there was some groupism but when the army was challenged as an institution it rallied, as it always does, around the chief. This was publicly and decisively demonstrated on 7 June when General Munir convened an army formation commanders conference. The army statement on the 9 May events which was issued after the conference deserves to be quoted in detail for it shows the generals’ intentions and has an obvious bearing on the country’s future.
Courtesy: First Post
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Coverpage’s editorial stance
