If Nawaz Sharif held any illusions about the extent of his powers as the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan he would have shed them the day he was sworn in. For, on that day, as he and some of his family members prepared to drive out from Punjab House to the Presidency, their convoy was halted by the shrill whistle of a soldier. As it would happen, at that very moment, the Pakistan Army Chief’s convoy was passing and the Sharifs had to wait for several minutes before they were allowed to proceed. Coincidence or not, the Prime Minister had been reminded of the order of precedence in Pakistan.
Karachi’s Dawn newspaper, reporting on the incident, wondered: “Who is the real power wielder in Pakistan? The Prime Minister or the Army Chief? Theoretically, the Army Chief is answerable to a grade-22 civil bureaucrat. Practically, he is mightier than any elected or non-elected individual in the country.”
If that is indeed the case, then Pakistan’s newly-elected President Mamnoon Hussain was merely being brave when he asserted soon after his election that it was the prerogative of the Prime Minister to appoint the next Army Chief.
The issue is of great consequence for Pakistan since the current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani retires on November 28, 2013 and a successor has to be chosen before that. The question is whether the next COAS will be Mr Sharif’s or Gen. Kayani’s choice.
When asked by Indian TV host Karan Thapar about whom he would appoint the next Army chief, Mr Sharif had said: “I will go by the book; I will go by the merit. Who so ever is the senior-most, will have to occupy this... the next one, the next in line”. The problem is that the next senior-most general does not appear to be the current Army Chief’s choice.
Gen. Kayani, according to some military analysts, has made his choice amply clear. He favours Lt. Gen. Rashad Mahmood, a fellow officer of the Baloch regiment, whom he posted this January to the key post of Chief of General Staff (CGS) at general headquarters in Rawalpindi. Prior to this posting, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was commander of the prestigious Lahore Corps. At one time, he had served directly under Gen. Kayani as deputy director in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate. Lt. Gen. Mahmood would also know the Sharif’s personally not just because of his stint as Lahore Corps commander but also as military secretary to former President Rafiq Tarar during the late 1990s.
Lt. Gen. Mahmood is second in line in a list of five Pakistan Army generals who could theoretically succeed the current Chief. The five generals, who will become the senior-most by November, are Lt. Gen. Muhammad Haroon Aslam, chief of logistics staff, Lt. Gen. Rashad Mahmood, chief of general staff, Lt. Gen. Raheel Sharif, inspector-general training and evaluation, Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan, commander I Corps, and Lt. Gen. Muhammad Zaheer ul Islam, DG ISI.
There are three other generals currently serving who are more senior than these five but they are all slated for retirement. Of these, Lieutenant General Khalid Nawaz Khan, the influential commander of the Rawalpindi Corps, was reported to have had a chance but this was ruled out recently with the Army announcing that he will retire as scheduled on August 13, 2013.
The other two senior-most generals, Gen. Khalid Shameem Wynne, chairman joint chiefs of staff committee, and Lt. Gen. Muhammad Alam Khattak, commander of the Quetta Corps, are due to retire in October this year or earlier.
This leaves the list of five. Although Lt. Gen. Haroon Aslam is the senior-most in this list his posting as chief of logistic staff indicates he has been sidelined by Gen. Kayani. Not only is the post more bureaucratic than anything else but it is also a place from where no one has ever made it to Army Chief.
Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan, who currently commands Pakistan’s strike Corps at Mangla, is considered to be the most professionally competent officer of the lot. He is a Sword of Honour winner from the Pakistan Military Academy and was inducted into the Armoured Corps. He has had considerable operational experience conducting difficult campaigns in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Unfortunate-ly, he has not been given any key staff appointment and this would stand against him.
Lt. Gen. Raheel Sharif is from the Frontier Force Regiment and has had operational as well as staff experience. He has commanded 11 Div at Lahore and the Gujranwala Corps. However, he is considered to have reached the peak of his abilities and is not chief material. Similarly, Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam, who is from the Punjab Regiment, despite having commanded the Karachi Corps and being a Kayani loyalist is said to have reached the limits of his career.
Theoretically, however, Prime Minister Sharif could ignore Gen. Kayani’s preference and appoint anyone from the list. But Mr Sharif has learnt caution the hard way. He has pondered long during his years of exile in Saudi Arabia and has returned to Pakistan a cautious man. He patiently sat out the previous government’s full term in office, not once trying to de-stabilise it. In the process, he gained stature and public respect in Pakistan. Today, he is back in office for the third time but in a far shrewder avatar. He will not want to blunder again.
Pakistan’s elected Prime Ministers have demonstrated an awful knack of appointing the absolutely wrong person as army chief. The late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto personally chose the low profile Zia ul Haq as Army Chief hoping that he would be well served. Instead, Zia ultimately sent him to the gallows. Nawaz Sharif picked Pervez Musharraf in 1998 by superseding two other senior generals. For all that he was overthrown and would have been hanged had the Saudi royal family not intervened. With the past weighing down so heavily on Mr Sharif, he would not be blamed if he chose to leave the entire matter to the outgoing Gen. Kayani.