Farooq Ganderbali
General Raheel Sharif is a worried man today. His counter terrorism campaign in the tribal areas floundered long back. His Afghan policy is about to collapse. His attempts to browbeat and force Nawaz Sharif to tow his diktat have not given him any extra mileage in terms of prestige or power. The Americans don’t believe him. The Chinese are not sure of his army either. So he is back to what every worried General does in Pakistan—bark at India, raise the Kashmir bogey and activate the jihadi brigade.
It was therefore not surprising that General Raheel, who had a short stint of glory at the cost of Nawaz Sharif and his people, was so belligerent in his recent speech about Kashmir an unfinished agenda of Partition. The General should have also reminded, not that it required a reminder, his soldiers and young officers that Partition took place 68 years ago and the fact that like all his predecessors, he too was whining about the “unfinished agenda“ betrays Pakistan Army’s colossal failure to make amends. Not that the Pakistan Army had not tried to take away Kashmir from India through all means. It has been doing so since 1948 but with utter failure. It would have been better for the General to ask his young officers and men to introspect on what the so-called “brave“ Pakistan Army had failed all these years. That would have been an objective, and telling, lesson for the soldiers.
But General Sharif could not have dared to be frank with his men; he had to rely, like his predecessors, on fabricated truth about Kashmir being the “unfinished agenda“. It was a clever ruse to deflect attention from his own staggering failures during his short span of command. Let us examine some of the key failures point by point.
First is about the war on terror. General Sharif made his mark by showing to his people that he was a man in command and not Nawaz Sharif the Prime Minister. So when terrorists killed over 170 children in Peshawar in December 2014, he flew to Kabul to take on the terrorists who had perpetrated the dastardly act. He seemed to be the man of hour, in command, willing to go all the way to defeat the terrorist group which had been killing civilians and security personnel for almost eight years now. He made the right noises, leaned heavily on his Afghan counter parts, spoke to his friends in Washington and Beijing—he seemed to be the uncrowned king of Pakistan. Others like Prime Minister Sharif cowered in the shadows of National Assembly issuing declarations and statements which had no value whatsoever. The people knew it was the General who was running the show. So the General was exultant.
But then failure followed quickly. It has been a year since he began the military offensive in the tribal areas. The result has been negligent. The terrorist groups are far from decimated. The army claims that several thousand terrorists were killed in the military offensive. If it were so there would have been no terrorist left in the area. But there are many left in the area; they have merely dispersed to seek a temporary reprieve before they would regroup and renew their attacks against Pakistan. Many of them shifted their alliances—from TTP , they have moved on to join al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and ISIS.
Along the way, the General also forgot conveniently that he had promised the people of Pakistan there would no more be any distinction between good and bad terrorists. But he did. Every one knows about it. The Haqqanis are alive, so are the Lashkar-e-Tayyebas and Lashkar-e-Jhangvis. There has been no attempt to shut down quami madrasas either. Hafiz Saeed is roaming free, so is Masood Azhar and scores of others who should have faced the gallows long ago in any civilised society. The failure of General Raheel Sharif is no longer a secret.
The speed at which Raheel Sharif’s Afghan plan unravelled is quite suprising. The General thought by grandstanding and bluster he could push his way through in Afghanistan. The new President was a novice and had his ears glued more to Washington than his own people. So when he flew into Pakistani, he made it a point to meet the good old General in GHQ, Raheel Sharif. The General, in turn, emboldened by all the attention he was getting in such a short span of his leadership decided to fly in and out Kabul as it was his neighbourhood golf course. He soon thought he had Afghanistan stitched up—the Taliban were the new drivers, the Indians were out, the Americans were content with him leading the way and the Chinese were happy to follow suit. Every thing was going well for him and then the bomb shell burst.
Ghani turned around and said Pakistan must first give up the Taliban leadership it was sheltering. It is no secret, and has never been one, that without Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban would have disappeared long ago. The Taliban leadership, including Mullah Omar, lived in the protective custody of Pakistan Army, like how al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden did in Abbottabad. In fact, the Taliban called their Central leadership council by the place of their hiding—the Quetta Shura. Even today, several Taliban leaders and their families live in different cities across Pakistan, all with the knowledge and patronage of Pakistan Army.
So when Ghani had decided to court the Generals in Rawalpindi, he had imagined them to honour their promise of reining in the insurgent groups. The Afghan President had sought and got the assurance from the Generals that the Taliban would not carry out any further attacks in Afghanistan and that they would be more amenable to a peaceful dialogue with the Government and other stakeholders. General Raheel Sharif was quick to promise President Ghani that the Taliban would be checked. Either Sharif was not true to his words or the Taliban were not too obliged to listen their patrons, the attacks against civilians in Afghanistan were not stopped. With the Taliban refusing to give up violence and take to dialogue, President Ghani had no other option but to express his disgust and anger at General Sharif’s treachery. There is a widespread belief among the Afghan leadership that the General was merely fooling them and had no intention whatsoever to keep a check on the Afghan Taliban.
This deception, seen through by all in Kabul and Washington, has rendered General Sharif’s Afghan plan a waste. In fact, in all probability, it is going to boomerang on him and his army. The Afghans are now more than ever convinced that the Pakistan Army would not give up on the Taliban which means that the Taliban are aiming to unseat the elected government in Kabul and take over power, much like what happened in 1996. The Afghans fear that Pakistan Army would rather trigger a civil war to enable the Taliban to return to Kabul than working out a peaceful settlement. They are not going to buy into General Sharif’s idea of forging a relationship between the two countries; in fact Pakistan, like in the past, would remain Afghanistan’s main enemy. Even President Ghani now believes so. This leaves General Sharif with less leverage in Kabul and allows his adversary India to gain back.
Likewise, General Raheel’s currency in Washington and Beijing also remains doubtful. The US is deeply sceptical of Pakistan’s intentions and capabilities. So does Beijing. Although he might have been given a rousing welcome when he first visited these capitals of the two most supporting countries of Pakistan, his next round of visits may turn out to be different. The Americans want a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, at least temporarily. So does the Chinese who see Afghanistan as a land bridge to West Asia and Europe. They don’t want Pakistan to vitiate the already tense situation in the region. But they know Pakistan, and more specifically General Sharif is not particularly interested in following that line of thinking.
Like most of the Pakistani Generals, Raheel Sharif might be devious in his planning but is smart enough to realise that his reputation is fast going south among the soldiers and officers. And people are also by and large disappointed with the wide gap between his promises and action. The only way he can redeem his honour is to target India, make India once again Enemy Number One, and make Kashmir as the rallying cry.
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