By IANS
Islamabad : The Pakistani Army is well entrenched in the country’s polity and this has resulted in an “inherently unstable system”, a new book says.
The army and the armed forces in general “remain a key element in Pakistan’s polity. They are well entrenched… (However,) unlike the Turkish Army, they do not have any constitutional role in the country’s polity”, says Shuja Nawaz, author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan Army and the Wars Within”.
Thus, the armed forces “have crafted a role for themselves and equipped themselves to tackle whatever problems they perceive, without an invitation from the government. This has created an inherently unstable system”, the Daily Times Sunday quoted Nawaz as saying during a lecture at the John Hopkins University at Baltimore in Maryland.
According to the author, the Pakistan Army of today reflects the increasingly urban origin of its soldiers in society, “which is a good thing”.
The army had also gradually expanded its ambit to include protection of the national ideology, “as defined by itself”.
“This ideology has changed from a loose definition of a Muslim state at birth to an Islamic polity under (late dictator) Zia-ul Haq, and now to the ‘enlightened moderation’ of President Pervez Musharraf, even as the growing urban population appears to prefer the conservative end of the social and political spectrum,” the author maintained.
Said Nawaz: “It is important for the army to help create a stable national polity by subjecting itself in practice to civilian oversight and control. On its side, the civilian government needs to ensure that it follows the constitution fully and does not involve the military in political disputes.”
He also maintained that while the army remained a conservative institution at heart, it was not a breeding ground for radical Islamists as many feared.
According to the author, Pakistan today was at the crossroads as a partner of the West in the global war on terror.
The army was operating in a changed and highly charged domestic political environment. After decades of conflicts with India, it was now waging a largely futile war against an unseen enemy: Islamist terrorists within its own borders.
At the same time, Nawaz was of the view that the army was ill-equipped and untrained for low-intensity conflict and had suffered heavily at the hands of well-trained guerrillas, whose major target is Musharraf.
“Shuja (also) pointed out that there is no hard financial scrutiny or supervision of the army’s commercial enterprises or even its overall defence spending, which distorts the allocation of scarce domestic resources and retards economic development,” the Daily Times said.