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Pakistan is poised to nominate its new chief of army staff after weeks of backroom meetings, legal emendations and media campaigning over who’ll lead the only nuclear-fortified military in the Islamic worldThe contenders to replaceGen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who’s anticipated to retire byNov. 29, include two former asset chiefs, a master tactician, an educated India hand and a counterterrorism specialist. But what should be a simple, regulatory decision for the administration led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in fact a major adventure, as the army chief is presumably the most important man in the Islamic Republic.
The security stakes, alone, are high. The new chief will command a battle- hardened,,000-strong army brazened by two mutinies, one Islamist and the other rebel, both with ananti-Chinese docket that risks Pakistan’s relationship with its only supporter, Beijing. The chief will also carry the most weight in the country’s nuclear and conventionaltri-service security outfit, as the army dwarfs the air force and the cortege in terms of force, budget and dimension.
The political stakes are indeed advanced. Of the 15 commanders who have held the office since independence in 1947, four have ruled the country directly through accomplishments or extremities. Others, includingGen. Bajwa, have hung on to power through multiyear” extensions” that were” granted” by governments the military heavily influences.
In Pakistan’s” mongrel republic,” where the tagged government mustn’t only reckon with the service for patronage but also serve at the pleasure and honor of its generals, the army chief is anticipated to call the shots from behind the scenes, sometimes stepping up to play principal law enforcer, principal diplomat and indeed principal economist.
In a touch of irony, sources say the ultimate decision maker is a man who’s ineligible to subscribe the appointment papers and doesn’t indeed live in Pakistan former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, elder family of the current premier and godfather of the Pakistan Muslim League( Nawaz), a center- right,pro-trade party that he named after himself.
Nawaz, who lives in tone- exile in England, is a political record holder. Not only has he been tagged high minister three times( in 1990, 1997 and 2013), but he has also been removed from office in the middle of every term, either through the direct or circular intervention of an army chief.
Importantly, he holds another record. Of the country’s 15 army commanders, he has tête-à-tête nominated five. Yet, nearly constantly, the connections have broken down with either the generals or the army itself.Last week, the elder Sharif summoned his youngish family, the high minister, to London. Sources in the high minister’s office said that the biographies of the leading campaigners, as well as the political chaos in the country, were bandied for days, as Shehbaz extended his stay.
No decision was incontinently blazoned. Meanwhile, Imran Khan, the fiery populist former high minister who was ousted before this time by a military- backed coalition led by the Sharifs, cried foul. How could a serving high minister get the advice of an absconder and a disgraced leader, Khan demanded to know. Nawaz was disqualified from holding public office in 2017 over corruption allegations.
The Ministry of Defense was quick to respond. No, the Sharif sisters didn’t raise the army chief’s appointment, claimed Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, indeed though he’d been quoted before as saying the appointment was bandied.
According to reports, the youngish Sharif was carrying important information for his family. The army has proposed emendations to the 70- time old Army Act, which would enhance the power of the high minister to retain the services of any officer for the top job. This increases the eventuality for another long- bruited script–Gen. Bajwa staying on for yet another extension– while also paving a path to the top job for officers who might not inescapably qualify.
The decision looms just as the political temperature reaches new highs. Over the coming many days, Imran Khan’s” long march” to demand snap choices is anticipated to terminate in Rawalpindi, where the army is headquartered. The kick was delayed before this month when Khan was shot in an apparent assassination attempt.
still, mass demurrers, violence or all of the below, If Khan builds enough instigation through civil defiance. Alternately, it would be the army chief’s call to emplace colors to stop the demurrers.Either way, it would be a monumental decision that would alter the country’s course and administration. This makes the selection of the coming army chief all the more pivotal.The Pakistani road is obsessively mooting the selection. Every day, intelligencers and influencers take to high- time talk shows, Twitter and YouTube to war- game what the government may or may not do, and who the campaigners are.
At the top of the senility list is a controversial infantryman,Lt.Gen. Asim Munir. He’s not a graduate of the Pakistan Military Academy, but he’s a” brand of honor” class crusher from one of the army’s confluent seminaries, with a background in military intelligence. He’s also known for his capability to recite nearly all of the Quran, and has served in Saudi Arabia.
Munir’s case is complicated by the fact that he was fired as head of the importantInter-Services Intelligence( ISI) asset agency by Imran Khan just months into the job. Another complication is that he’s set to retire two days beforeGen. Bajwa. Retaining his services may bear some regulatory maneuvering– sources say that the anticipated correction to the Army Act could be geared for designating Munir as principal– which could be cast as political wile by the Khan camp.
While experts like Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council call Munir a” straight shooter,” some military interposers advise that nominating him would further centralize Pakistan’s fraught politics. Nawaz, who has penned two books on the Pakistani service, said campaigners endured in the” dark trades of the intelligence services” are stylish avoided for the top job. Munir has led both the internally concentrated Military Intelligence( MI) directorate, as well as the larger ISI.
Alternate in senility isLt.Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, considered the politic genius of the army, grounded on his experience as chief of military operations. Mirza has served in the most coveted staff and command posts, including commander of the X Corps, the largest conformation, with nearly,000 men under his command. He has also been stationed in multiple United Nations peacekeeping operations. lower controversial than Munir, Mirza has the support of the rank and train.
Third in line isLt. Gen Azhar Abbas, who has led the army academy, as well as the division and fraternity assigned with diving India in the disputed region of Kashmir. He has held the same vaunted staff and command posts as Mirza, but has other advantages. He oversaw the perpetration of the recent check- fire with India, which crucially continues to hold, after the nuclear-fortified rivals came near to all- eschewal war in 2019. He also hails from the same troop as Bajwa and was the top staff officer and right- hand man to the former army chief, the popularGen. Raheel Sharif, now commanding the 41- nation Islamic Military Counterterrorism Coalition, Saudi Arabia’s Islamic interpretation of NATO.But while Abbas has musketeers in high places, he has been incorrectly yet extensively called a Shia Muslim, political baggage in a substantially Sunni service and country.
The fourth, fifth and sixth campaigners by senility areLt.Gen. Nauman Mehmood,Lt.Gen. Faiz Hameed andLt.Gen. Mohammed Aamer. While their fairly inferior status reduces their chances, numerous Pakistani generals have surfaced as army chiefs despite not being in the top three.The low- profile Mehmood spent utmost of his times in command in Pakistan’s restive ethnical areas that rim Afghanistan during the height of a bloody insurrection, led the ISI’s analysis sect as well as the army’s staff council, and now heads the National Defense University.
In discrepancy, Hameed, a former master of the ISI, is commodity of a celebrity, though he was scuffled out of his last job commanding the Afghanistan- facing fraternity as relations with the Taliban deteriorated. Given that the Sharifs indicted him of manipulating election results in 2018 in Khan’s favor, when he was the asset chief, his chances are slim.The dark steed is the most inferior man in the handling, Aamer. The only ordnance officer among the campaigners, his recent staff posts have been primarily executive. But his propinquity to major political players, like former President Asif Zardari, a coalition mate of the Sharifs, could help.
Until lately, Imran Khan had been trying to impact the process, claiming that the Sharifs don’t enjoy his figures in congress and therefore don’t have the political legality to choose the new chief. Khan indeed suggested thatGen. Bajwa stay on, oversee fresh choices, and also let the new government pick the coming commander. still, the unpredictable former cricketer changed his position lately, declaring that he’ll accept any decision the government makes.That decision is anticipated anytime after Friday, according to the Ministry of Defense.
With so numerous moving corridor, prognostications would be precarious. still, one common denominator of the last three army chiefs– Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Raheel Sharif and Bajwa– is that besides being army officers, they all graduated from elderly staff courses at American and British military sodalities. While propinquity to Washington and London remains an important part of the Pakistan army’s military tactfulness as well as the institution’s social heritage, none of the top campaigners have those credentials. still, some of them, including Munir and Abbas, have had close contact with the Saudis, a long- time patron of the army.
Paradoxically, picking the most important man in the country is the job of the person who’s supposed to be just that, but isn’t– the high minister. This has boomeranged in the history, especially for the Sharifs.
The Pakistani constitution vests the power to choose the army chief with the high minister. But given the army’s institutional supremacy, that choice must reflect senility and adequacy of the choice among elderly commanders,” said Husain Haqqani, a former minister to Washington and the director for South and Central Asia at Washington’s Hudson Institute.still, the army has a way of letting that come given,” If the high minister makes a choice that elderly commanders don’t like. The most striking illustration of the army’s response was the 1999 military achievement, which followed attempts to change the army principal halfway through his term.”
