T

he military-mullah nexus has become somewhat

of a political aphorism in Pakistan, especially
favoured by the countrys beleaguered liberals.
Every now and then, you hear the odd journalist or
politician claiming that this nexus is dented, fractured,
or may even be crumbling. But rarely has the militarys
liaison with the mullahs received any critical scrutiny.
Lately, however, some scholars have questioned its
theoretical and practical utility for making sense of
national security politics and policy in Pakistan. For
example, writing in this magazine, Humeira Iqtidar, an
England-based political scientist, has dismissed the
argument as a liberal clich because it overly
simplifies the complexity and contradictions of shifting
political alignments.
Her critique is based on at least three factors. Firstly,
the mullahs are a deeply divided lot. And even if some
Islamists parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI),
aligned with the military in the 1970s and 1980s, they
now seek autonomy and distance from the military
because of conflicting interests and goals. Driving this
rupture of old bonds is the militarys alignment with the
United States in the war on terror, including its
acquiescence in drone strikes in Pakistans Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Outgoing JI
President Munawar Hassans public statement in
November 2013 that military personnel killed in Fata
did not deserve the moniker of shaheed (martyr), and
the quick rebuke the statement elicited from the Inter-
Services Public Relations (ISPR) is cited as the latest
indication of this divorce.
Secondly, imputing unity to the Islamists overstates
the salience of the liberal-Islamist fault line. In fact,
the real divide in Pakistani politics is between the
haves and have-nots, not between secularism and
theocracy. In other words, economic deprivation and
inequality lie at the heart of the main political
problems facing Pakistan.
Thirdly, the military itself is subject to deep internal
fractures and power struggles between the generals
and the colonels, particularly over Pakistans
embroilment in the US war on terror. The high
command presumably welcomes the alliance with the
Americans because it means more dollars for them,
but the middle and lower level officers are in a state of
near revolt because they hate shooting at their own
people. An organisation with such deep splits can
hardly control the dizzying array of mullahs and
militants all with varying agendas.
All three of these assumptions are misguided.
Here is why:
First, while some journalists and authors may view
the military-mullah coalition as a constant in
Pakistans history, no self-respecting social scientist
would deny its contingent nature. In fact, many
scholars have acknowledged the contradictions and
friction between its two components (such as the JIs
open opposition to Field Marshall Ayub Khans
regime), as well as the ideological and political
divisions amongst the mullahs which have historically
hampered their ability to sustain electoral alliances,
such as, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) or the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). Concluding from the
militarys ties to some groups that all of them are in
bed with the generals makes for bad social analysis.
Complicating the nature and composition of the
military-mullah coalition, however, does not reduce its
importance as a heuristic device for interpreting the
blindingly obvious continuities that most of its critics
underestimate. These include the militarys continuing
patronage of the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani
Network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyars Hezb-e-Islami, the
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jesh-e-Muhammed
(JeM), all of which profoundly affect Pakistans
internal politics and regional security.
Besides, it is important not to ignore or
underestimate the durable power of the hostility
consensus against India that underwrites and drives
this alliance despite apparent breaches. A careful
analysis of military publications, such as the different
editions of the official Pakistan Army Green Book
(2000, 2008, 2011) and the National Defense
University (NDU)'s journal and annual strategy papers
(2000-2012), shows that the military still considers
militants as Pakistans first line of defence against India
as part of a strategy tripod, whose other two legs are
conventional force and nuclear deterrence. In fact,
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COLUMN
Axis of
national security
The alliance among the military,
the mullahs and the militants is
alive and kicking
By Aqil Shah
A JuD rally in support of the ISI, held in Karachi in April
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senior officers continue to take pride in the militarys
capability to conduct proxy wars against India to offset
its conventional superiority despite the disastrous
blowback of that policy on Pakistan in the form of
terrorism and international isolation.
Practical examples of interest convergence also
abound. For instance, in the wake of increased
tensions between Pakistan and India after the Mumbai
terrorist attacks in November 2008, officers of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) held a press
conference in Islamabad to tell the world that the
Pakistani Taliban were patriotic and that the military
had no big issues with them. Several commanders
of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) reciprocated
this friendly gesture by offering their services,
including suicide bombers, to the army for fighting
India. In fact, in a 2009 interview with German
magazine Der Spiegel, then-director general of the
ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, went all
liberal to defend the Talibans right to freedom of
speech and their obligation to wage jihad, even as the
military was busy forcefully denying this right to
secular Baloch nationalists.
Consider also: In February 1999, when then-prime
minister Nawaz Sharif invited his Indian counterpart
Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lahore for bilateral talks, the JI
took to the streets, calling it a national betrayal. The
JIs then-president, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, only evaded
police arrest because Military Intelligence (MI)
provided him sanctuary. In contrast, when General
(retd) Pervez Musharraf went to Agra in July 2001,
Ahmed as well as Maulana Fazlur Rehman appeared
on a state-run television channel to commend the
general for his bold peace initiative. Not to mention
the Musharraf governments manipulation of electoral
rules in the 2002 elections such as setting a
bachelors degree as the minimum educational
qualification for contesting parliamentary elections
which benefited the MMA. According to some
estimates, this provision disqualified about half the
previously elected parliamentarians of moderate
parties from competing. At the same time, graduation
from madrasas was allowed to count as a bachelors
degree, so virtually no MMA candidate was blocked.
Let us also not forget the MMAs backing of
Musharrafs far-reaching constitutional amendments in
2003, including the revival of Article 58(2)B. All of this
happened in the 2000s, not the 1970s or 1980s.
It did not stop there. In November 2011, Islamist
parties, such as the JI, and militant organisations,
such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Sipah-e-Sahaba
(renamed the Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat) and the
Ansar-ul-Umma (a reincarnation of the Harkatul
Mujahideen), formed the Difa-e-Pakistan Council
(DPC) in response to the killing of 24 Pakistani
soldiers by a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato)
aircraft in Salala. Headed by Maulana Samiul Haq and
comprising such militant luminaries as Hafiz Saeed
and Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the DPC had a clear anti-
India agenda shared by the military, including backing
jihad in Kashmir and opposing granting India the
status of Most Favoured Nation (MFN). Just last
month, many of the same groups carried out loud
countrywide protests to save the honour of their
khaki patrons after Geo Television aired Hamid Mirs
accusations that the ISI chief was involved in the
assassination attack on Mir. Bottom line: The military
continues to use these groups to maintain its
legitimacy and protect its interests against perceived
encroachment by the civilians, be they politicians or
journalists. Surely, viewing this relationship as
dynamic and intricate does not mean that we simply
dismiss it as a misguided banality no longer relevant
to state-society dynamics in Pakistan.
Secondly, the universalistic have versus have-not
binary propounded by Iqtidar and others is itself
devoid of context and history. Let us assume for a
moment that this economic deprivation thesis offers
the best framework to study politics in Pakistan. It,
therefore, ought to provide the most accurate
explanations for the countrys main political problems,
such as terrorism. However, applying this logic to
terrorism actually produces a dangerously simple
answer: Terrorist violence is a product of poverty.
Since have-nots cannot peacefully overturn the
exploitative socio-economic order, they have no other
option but to resort to violent means. In this view,
terrorism becomes almost heroic and revolutionary,
just another weapon of the poor against the powerful.
Not only has recent political science scholarship on
terrorism debunked the poverty thesis, such a
conclusion would make sense if terrorism were a
smart bomb, but it is not. Islamist militants are equal
opportunity murderers who have indiscriminately
slaughtered over 40,000 civilians in the last 10 years,
with the have-nots most likely bearing the brunt of
their brutalities.
A related problem in this apparently progressive
narrative is its contempt for bourgeois democracy,
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and especially the secular parties, such as the
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). In another
oversimplification, these parties are lampooned as
family fiefdoms devoid of the will or capacity to provide
good governance and social development. These
parties, therefore, use religious groups as bogeymen
to divert attention from their own incompetence and
avarice. The main evidence for this claim is that
Islamist parties have not been in power long enough,
so we could not possibly hold them responsible for
Pakistans underdevelopment. There are at least two
gaping holes in this argument. Firstly, the PPP, or even
the Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PMLN), have
hardly ever attacked the Islamist parties for creating
obstacles to economic reform. What liberal politicians,
mainly from the PPP, have done is to challenge the
Islamists obscurantist agenda, for instance, by
opposing Pakistans blasphemy laws at high personal
risk. Secondly, and even more importantly, by laying
most of the blame at the door of the non-Islamist
parties and counterfactually exonerating the Islamists,
this sanitised discourse obscures the fundamental
political problem of Pakistan: Military dominance over
civilian authorities. Since Pakistan gained
independence in 1947, only once has an elected
government completed its tenure and peacefully
transferred power to another elected
government. Even when they were not
directly in control of the government, the
armed forces maintained a firm grip on
national politics. At the outset of
statehood, various factors, including weak
national solidarity and the perceived
existential threat from India, helped
empower the military to take national
security and ultimately government into its
own hands. As the militarys habit of
disrupting the natural course of politics
gained strength over time, it arrested the development
of democratic institutions, including political parties and
the parliament; weakened state capacity by
substituting military skills with methods for civilian
problem solving; undermined economic development
by diverting scarce resources from national welfare to
the development and procurement of arms and and
fragmented civil society along ethno-regional and
religious lines through divide and rule politics. Yet, the
militarys deleterious effects on Pakistans political and
economic development barely appear as a footnote in
the left-inspired narrative of dysfunction.
Seen from the have versus have-not perspective,
military officers are shorn of their institutional identity
and become part of the predatory bourgeoisie
interested in keeping the have-nots down. Therefore,
even when analysts acknowledge the military
elephant in the room, they single out the generals. In
fact, commentators and authors like Tariq Ali
caricaturise them as greedy ogres who are remote-
controlled from Washington. These rich neo-Marxist
imaginings notwithstanding, geopolitics is rarely this
simple. Any credible scholar of international politics
and civil-military relations will tell you that the generals
in Pakistan are not simple extensions of Americas evil
agenda who intervene in politics to serve their foreign
masters interests. Of course, America has exercised
significant influence over Pakistans political
development and foreign policy, but that does not
make the Pakistan Armys General Headquarters
(GHQ) an outpost of the Pentagon. If that were true,
we would need to explain how these presumed khaki
puppets have managed to consistently cross their
Yankee bosses, for instance, by pursuing nuclear
weapons or supporting militant groups that have killed
American troops in Afghanistan. There may be
generals beholden to the US who are more interested
in lining their pockets than in anything else, but this
view misses the forest for the trees. It mistakes
personal greed for institutional policy choices borne
out of the militarys tradition of tutelage over civilian
governments and national security.
Third, like military organisations elsewhere, the
Pakistani military is not immune to disagreement in
its ranks. But having studied the organisation for
over a decade through a close analysis of its
training syllabi, doctrinal publications, professional
journals, strategy documents and extensive
interviews with officers, I can say with a good
degree of confidence that the military in Pakistan is
a relatively coherent organisation compared to other
politically meddlesome militaries in Asia, Africa and
Latin America. This is in part due to its clear and
present external combat mission against India,
which induces a rally-around-the-flag effect lacking
in most praetorian militaries fighting internal
enemies. Conceptualising the military as a unitary
actor is, thus, more than a matter of theoretical
convenience or selling the militarys snake oil; it is
borne by actual evidence.
Differences of opinion do exist among officers and
soldiers, between junior and senior officers, and even
across the general staff. These are regularly aired at
different levels from regimental darbars to the corps
commanders meetings. But there are also strong
normative pressures for conformity with institutional
thinking, including shared expectations about
appropriate behaviour. Taught identical curricula at
each stage of their careers, officers tend to hold fairly
predictable views about the armys proper institutional
role in state and society. Although these views may be
coloured by an officers ethnic origins, social ties,
political affiliations or even personal ambition, the
history of the Pakistani military in politics and the
Of course, America has exercised significant
influence over Pakistans political development
and foreign policy, but that does not make the
Pakistan Armys General Headquarters (GHQ)
an outpost of the Pentagon.
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uniformity of views expressed by officers show that the
sense of institutional unity, loyalty and purpose instilled
by professional indoctrination, especially against the
threat from India and the guardian role in which it casts
the army, can often be a more powerful indicator of
officers behaviour than other factors. Besides, there is
little room for dissent or disobedience once the army
chief or other senior officers make a decision. Those
who dare violate military discipline can incur heavy
personal and professional costs.
Of course, there is no denying that many Pakistani
officers would prefer not to fight what is called
Americas war on Pakistani soil but does this
presumed reluctance to kill other Pakistanis translate
into organised resistance to institutional decisions? We
have all heard rumours, insinuations and conspiracies
but the actual evidence of this alleged institutional
fragmentation is thin to non-existent. Barring isolated
incidents of insubordination, there have been no
reported mass desertions by junior officers or soldiers.
Aside from alarmist predictions of a coup led by
resentful junior officers after the US Special Forces
raid to kill Osama bin Laden, there have been no
colonels coups rampant in other divided militaries
such as Cold War-era Greece, Turkey and Thailand.
While the army faced some internal pushback
because of unexpectedly high casualties in the early
phases of military operations in Fata, there is no
credible evidence of any sustained internal
resistance to the high commands orders either. My
interviews with over two dozen retired and active
duty officers, including Pakhtuns who have fought
the Taliban, revealed that they see themselves first
and foremost as military men. And by the very
nature of the military profession as management of
organised violence against enemies of the state,
soldiers are nationalists and not ethnic loyalists.
Besides, the powerful effects of military
indoctrination mean that Pakistani officers view
everything through the lens of India. The NDUs
most recent strategy documents project India and
other assorted infidel international baddies, such as
the US and Israel, as the real sponsors of the TTP.
These external powers are presumably seeking to
implode the land of the pure to deprive it of its
prized nuclear weapons. Many officers also view
alleged Indian collusion with the Taliban as payback
for the armys backing of the Kashmiri insurgency.
The Taliban, therefore, become a proxy enemy and
fighting it forms an essential part of the militarys
larger professional mission. The presence of foreign
militants in Fata only lends credence to this
international conspiracy. Also, if the past is any
guide, the Pakistan Army has had no trouble killing
fellow citizens in East Pakistan or, for that matter, in
Balochistan. Why should it be any less willing to fire
away in the tribal areas especially if it thinks that it is
defending the motherland from foreign agents?
Iqtidar and others find it hard to believe that the
military can continue to support the mullahs and the
militants since, unlike during Ziaul Haqs time, there are
no Islamist generals in todays army. Again, making
sense of this apparent contradiction requires a focus on
military organisational dynamics. Whether an officer
has a beard or not is generally immaterial to his
professional conduct. A general does not need to be a
rabid fanatic like Hamid Gul to support the jihadi
enterprise. Apparently, secular generals such as
Jahangir Karamat, Musharraf and others, have been
equally committed to it for strategic reasons. Put simply,
what matters most is institutional policy.
Thus, the military disunity thesis does not stand up
to logic. You do not really need an entire 600,000
strong army to pursue jihad in the region or to aid
Islamists in domestic politics. What you do need are
coherent clandestine agencies, such as the ISI, which
enjoy a good degree of operational autonomy but
operate within the broad policy parameters set by the
military high command. Of course, the ISIs control
over disparate militant groups cannot possibly be
perfect or smooth but the agency has, in fact, proved
itself quite adept at organising and coordinating even
fractured insurgencies through its selective distribution
of patronage, as it did with the Peshawar-based seven
Afghan Mujahideen parties during the covert jihad
against the former Soviet Union, or as it is doing now
with the Afghan Taliban fighting the US-led coalition
forces. It can also dump a recalcitrant partner, like it
did with the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front
(JLKF) in the early 1990s, and switch support to other
more pliant proxy groups like the LeT.
Ultimately, the scholars advising others to focus on
disunity among the military and the mullahs to interpret
Pakistani politics need to apply the same method to the
other side of the divide. Why examine only the divisions
among the mullahs or the military while painting liberals
with a broad brush? After all, there are social liberals
who are political conservatives, and political liberals
who have socially conservative preferences. For
instance, many Pakistani liberals supported
Musharrafs military regime yet many also actively
opposed it. And, above all, there are those who support
military operations in Fata and those who do not.
Let us conclude with a thought experiment: Imagine
if former president Asif Ali Zardari or even Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif had ridiculed the martyr status
of Pakistani soldiers like Munawar Hassan did. Would
the military have then simply stopped at issuing a
public statement? Remember there was no apology
from the JI, nor even a half-hearted expression of
regret. Yet, the military never called the partys
patriotic credentials into question. In contrast, the
military has frequently labeled the more moderate
politicians as national security threats on mere
suspicion or even lesser charges. What explains this
selective policing of the national interest? You cannot
answer this fundamental question without
acknowledging the continued relevance of the military-
mullah coalition. Of course, this coalitional view is just
one of the many tools of political analysis, which
should obviously be used with due regard for context
and complexity. But simply discarding it on the basis
of unfounded assumptions is tantamount to throwing
the baby out with the bath water.