-
Military leadership seen to
be taking lead in critical domains of foreign and security policies while
Elected Government appearing as a junior partner
-
Federal Government appears unable
to institutionalize consultative decision-making process, whether civil-military
or civil-civil, on matters of national security, as fora for institutionalized
consultation such as the NSC and the Cabinet remain dormant
- In comparison to 29 meetings between the
PM and COAS for June 2015-July 2016, only two meetings of the NSC
held
- PMLN-led federal government fails to appoint
a full-time Defence Minister in the country for the last 3 years;
The person holding charge for Defence Ministry criticised military
in strong language in the past and thus raises question on government’s
judgment
- Prime Minister’s penchant for one-on-one
meetings with the COAS have not only undermined the NSC, but also
the offices of Federal Minister of Defence and the National Security
Advisor
-
Public disagreements between
the elected Government and Military leadership on implementation of National
Action Plan are an unfortunate dimension of civil-military relations
-
Federal and Provincial Cabinets,
Parliament and Provincial Assemblies have shied away from developing robust
and periodic oversight of implementation of NAP
-
Growing profile of the COAS,
especially in foreign-policy domains, both at home and internationally,
another dimension of civil-military relations
-
PML-N appears to have failed
in overcoming the bitterness of 1999 coup and statements of its officials
continue to reflect the continuing bitterness.
October 05; Looking at civil-military relations
in Pakistan as the Federal Government completes three years in office, it
appears as if the Military leadership has established itself as the final
arbiter on national security, with the Elected Government relegated to either
an auxiliary role, or a parallel national security regime. Although the mandate
for final decisions on national security resides with the elected government,
it is seen to be exercised by the Military, as Pakistan moves further away
from a constitutional equation on civil-military relations. This was remarked
by PILDAT in its Report titled State of Civil-Military Relations in
Pakistan, June 01, 2015-July 31, 2016, including the 3rd Year of
the current Government, which was released today.
Perhaps the PML-N-led Federal Government’s
biggest failure has been its inability to institutionalize a consultative
decision-making process on national security despite the creation of the National
Security Committee (NSC) in 2013 complete with a permanent secretariat. The
3rd year of the current Government shows that just the lack of institutionalisation
of national security decision making through the National Security Committee
has resulted in the following:
- Since its creation, the NSC has only met 6 times till
July 2016, with a dismal periodicity of six months, even though Pakistan
has had more than its fair share of security-related challenges. In countries
with far less serious national security crises, such as the United Kingdom,
Prime Minister chairs weekly meetings of the National Security Council,
before the Cabinet meeting.
- To further compound this aversion to institutionalization,
the Prime Minister has instead chosen to interact directly with the Chief
of Army Staff, which has not only undermined the entire process of institutionalised
consultation but also the office of the Federal Minister of Defence as
well as the National Security Advisors. The bitted reality is evident
in numbers:
- From June 01, 2015 to July 31, 2016, the Premier
met the COAS 29 times while only two meetings of the NSC were held;
10 of these meetings (i.e. 34% of the total times they met) were one-on-one
interactions
- Federal Minister incharge for Defence, Khawaja Muhammad
Asif, MNA, was present in only 6 of these meetings (21% of the total
times the Prime Minister and the COAS met)
- On the other hand, the National Security Advisor
to the Prime Minister (before October 22, 2015, Mr. Sartaj Aziz, and
then Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Nasser Khan Janjua) was present in 10 of these
meetings (34% of the total meetings held between the Prime Minister
and the COAS)
- Failure to formulate a comprehensive National Security
Policy in 3 years in office; the policy was to be drafted by the National
Security Division, under the guidance of the NSC
The NSC requires certain reforms as well:
- Pakistan’s National Security Committee, unlike
its equivalent institutions of National Security Councils the world over
which are only consultative in nature, is defined as per its
rules as the country’s ‘principal decision-making body
on matters of national security’. This, decion-making power,
as opposed to a consultative role, in our view, undercuts the authority
of the Federal Cabinet and must be revised. If, however, the Government
wishes to retain the decision-making status of the NSC, in our view, an
Act of Parliament is required to regulate the workings of the NSC. This
act should also set regular periodicity of NSC meetings to be at least
once a month if not weekly.
- Linked to the above is the membership of the NSC, which
has non-Federal Cabinet members as its full-time members, including Chairman
Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) and the three Services Chiefs.
This composition is an anomaly both nationally and internationally where
military commanders do not have membership positions but join NSC meetings
upon invitations. Labelling the forum as the National Security Committee
of the Cabinet, as the current Government has done so with membership
to non-cabinet members, is inappropriate in this respect.
- Perhaps another aspect requiring improvement is the infrequency
of NSC meetings. As shared above, the Prime Minister and COAS have apparently
preferred doing business through one-on-one meetings since Gen. Raheel
Sharif’s appointment in November 2013 till July 2016 (of a total
of 99 meetings, 37 were held as one-on-one interactions versus 6 meetings
of NSC in 3 years). It increasingly appears that official consultation
and institutionalised decision-making at the officially designated forum
is not a priority.
Pakistan continued without a full-time Defence
Minister even during the third year of the current government. Khawaja Asif,
the federal minister for water and power, was given the additional charge
for the Ministry of Defence in November 2013 and given the heavy agenda his
original ministry of water and power carries to solve the electric power shortage
crisis (commonly referred to as ‘Load Shedding’), it is hardly
plausible that he can devote a decent amount of time to Ministry of Defence.
Prime Minister should have appointed a full time Defence Minister soon after
assuming charge of the government. Despite Khawaja Asif’s loyalty to
PMLN and Mr. Nawaz Sharif personally and despite his other qualities, he carries
a baggage of criticising the military leadership and the institution of the
army. He is hardly the person to build bridges between the civilian government
and the armed forces. Khawaja Asif has been anything but effective as the
Defence Minister and the choice of his person may also have contributed to
this ineffectiveness.
Another major issue during the 3rd year has
been that of effective implementation, or lack thereof, of the National Action
Plan (NAP) and rather unfortunate open and repeated finger-pointing between
the civil and military leadership as on the question of its implementation.
The 20-point NAP, agreed upon in December
2014 is hailed, both by the civil and military leadership, as the most important
road map for the struggle against terrorism in the country. The NAP is also
significant because it has the rare consensus of otherwise bitterly opposed
political forces besides the civil-military agreement. The Military leadership
has shown an unfortunate inclination to sit publically in judgment of the
performance of the Elected Government. While the Military leadership was quick
to point out the Federal Government’s alleged lagging performance on
the NAP, it congratulated its own performance with regards to Operation Zarb-e-Azb,
an operation that also sees the elected Government shying away from the required
oversight based on targeted objectives and timeline of Zarb-e-Azb .
The Elected Government appears to be unable
to display the proactive leadership that is particularly required with regards
to the implementation of the NAP. For example, there is no clear indication
of the progress achieved by the various Committees formed by the Prime Minister
to implement the NAP. Additionally, the Federal Government has also not till
yet brought a comprehensive legal package to reform Pakistan’s justice
system, which necessitated the 21st Constitutional Amendment leading to the
formation of Military Courts. As the Constitutional Amendment is set to expire
on January 06, 2017, the Government may go back to the parliament and seek
extension of the Military Courts. None or negligible legislative periodic
oversight has been exercised by the Parliament and Provincial Assemblies on
the implementation of the NAP. For example, the Senate’s Committee on
Interior has convened only a single meeting on the issue, whereas the National
Assembly’s Standing Committee on Interior was unable to convene a meeting
on it even once during June 2015-July 2016. Provincial Assemblies standing
committees on home affairs also did not do any better.
More than anything, the biggest loss has been
of the public’s knowledge on the status of the implementation of the
NAP, as the Government has been unable to share regular updates in this regard.
The same is true of the national security institutional structures devised
after the NAP, including the Provincial Apex Committees, whose formation was
announced through an ISPR Press Release on January 03, 2015. PILDAT believes
that there is an urgent need to formalize the terms of reference of the Apex
Committees, including their membership, scope of work (Terms of Reference),
periodicity of meetings, etc.
As PILDAT has been noting in its monthly monitors,
another aspect of the lopsided civil-military equation has been the growing
profile of the COAS, both at home and internationally. His growing outreach
in certain domains of our foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Afghanistan,
China, United States of America, United Kingdom and the Middle East is reflected
in 74 in-country meetings with foreign civilian dignitaries and 30 visits
abroad where he also interacted with different heads of state since his appointment
in November 2013 till July 2016. The bulk of his in-country meetings, i.e.
40 (54% of his total in-country meetings with civilian foreign dignitaries)
and foreign visits, i.e., 17 (57% of the total of his foreign visits) have
come between June 2015-July 2016.
Another dimension of this unusual profile
is the untimely and inappropriate debate surrounding the possible extension
in the term of Gen. Raheel Sharif as COAS, which should have never even been
initiated but certainly should have been laid to rest with the COAS’
public announcement denying such rumours in January 2016.
The aforementioned trends are symptomatic
of a larger malaise facing civil-military relations in Pakistan, which PILDAT
believes can be primarily defined by two characteristics:
- The Civilian Elected Government at present, and similar
governments in the past, have failed to institutionalize national security
management by institutionalising a consultative process on vital national
strategic issues. This has strengthened the perception that elected governments
are neither serious nor methodical in making well-considered decisions
on vital national security issues.
- The Military leadership continues to feel that the final
onus of deciding ‘national interest’ is on them. As a result,
at times, instead of giving their input and then leaving the matter to
the elected leadership of the country, insist on their interpretation
of the national interest relating to issues such as relations with India,
Afghanistan, Iran and the US and the security policy.
It is difficult to assign these two aspects
the title of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ but both are closely
inter-related.
PILDAT believes that the Military needs to
recognize that the elected Government is the final arbiter on matters of national
interest. The people of Pakistan have mandated them to do so. Although the
Military leadership may have its views on national security, and it should
present its views as effectively as it can at all appropriate fora, the mandate
for the final decision resides exclusively with the elected Government. Even
if the elected government makes any mistakes in this regard, these should
be recognised as the risks associated with any decision-making. This is a
risk that both civil and military governments have faced and suffered from
in the past.
Similarly, PILDAT believes that the Elected
Government has not been elected as a monarchy and it should follow a consultative
system of decision-making especially on the questions relating to the national
security and supreme national interest. This decision-making should be done
through various institutional frameworks; instead, it appears that institutional
decision-making structures have been rendered almost dysfunctional.
Complete PILDAT Report on State of
Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan, June 01, 2015-July 31, 2016 can
be accessed here.
The Urdu version of the report may be accessed
here.
