Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
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<strong>Frontline</strong> <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong><br />
command’s decision to rest content with dominance, rather than direct<br />
intervention, was based on a careful calculation of the advantages and<br />
disadvantages of playing arbiter in <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s highly polarized and<br />
conflict-ridden political scene.<br />
A hamstrung Benazir Bhutto found herself directly clashing with the<br />
army when she removed General Gul from the ISI. <strong>The</strong> General, who<br />
was the architect of the IDA, had never reconciled himself to even<br />
restricted civilian rule. Benazir was never trusted by the establishment<br />
and many generals made it a point not to salute her. It was in February<br />
1990 when I met General Gul in Multan, where he was posted as<br />
the commander of <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s main strike corps, after being sacked<br />
from the ISI. It was the period when the army had just concluded a<br />
major war exercise called ‘Zarb-i-Momin’. <strong>The</strong> General accused Prime<br />
Minister Benazir of trying to make peace with India and questioned her<br />
patriotism. ‘By conducting the exercise we have blocked her designs<br />
to undermine <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s defence,’ he said.<br />
It was apparent that the generals were looking for an opportune<br />
moment to remove Benazir from power. <strong>The</strong> clash came to a head<br />
when the Prime Minister tried to retire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs<br />
of Staff Committee, Admiral Iftikhar Ahmed Sarohi, and gave a year’s<br />
extension in service to Lt.-General Alam Jan Mehsud, a senior general<br />
believed to be close to her government. <strong>The</strong> army top brass saw this<br />
as blatant interference in the army’s internal affairs. Eventually, on 6<br />
August 1990, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her government<br />
on charges of corruption and dissolved the National Assembly.<br />
President Khan, a former top bureaucrat, was the central pillar of<br />
General Zia’s military rule and represented his legacy.<br />
Benazir’s party met a humiliating defeat in the following elections,<br />
losing the government even in her home province and political<br />
stronghold, Sindh. <strong>The</strong> military leadership did not want to take any<br />
chances that time. To ensure the IDA’s electoral victory, the ISI financed<br />
the election campaign of many top Alliance leaders. 25 <strong>The</strong> list, which<br />
was published in national newspapers, contained the names of some<br />
leading politicians, including Nawaz Sharif. Most of them later held<br />
important posts in the new government.<br />
In 1988, the long-simmering political discontent in Kashmir exploded<br />
into a popular uprising against Indian control. Thousands of young<br />
Kashmiris crossed over to the <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i side of the Line of Control<br />
to receive guerrilla training as the Indian authorities tried to crush<br />
the insurgency by brute force. Essentially an indigenous rebellion, it