Civil-military Relations In Pakistan Research Articles

Navigating Hybrid Governance

The governing balance between civilian regime and military leadership has become an important aspect of governance in Pakistan. When military and civilian life are pragmatically in touch with each other, both become an asset, otherwise, they are an aggressor to each other. It is their integration that ensures the convergence of their goals and directions as well as values and ideologies, as both depend on each other. This not only leads to the consolidation of democracy but also fulfills the effective civilian oversight over the military. For this, an efficient governing structure can keep in check the state’s civil-military equation and ensure that the incidence of military intervention or influence is minimized. The theoretical and structural construction of this integration and ideological alignment is particularly relevant to civil-military interaction under the National Security Committee (NSC) in Pakistan. This paper analyzes the civil-military relations in Pakistan under two different models i.e., ‘control theory’ and ‘convergence theory’ to bring a new perspective to the analysis of the topic. The paper begins with a brief review of both theoretical frameworks, followed by the history of civil-military relations under military rule, civilian setup, and NSC governance in Pakistan. The paper then looks into the case of hybrid governance under the NSC in line with the tenets of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. It suggests that far-reaching national strategic concerns and governing balance issues can be addressed under NSC, which is currently not being utilized to its full potential; instead it should function as a regular forum of dialogue and consultation, and not as an irregular decision-making entity. A consistently functional consultative NSC can help diffuse the ideological differences between civil and military elements of governance, creating more prospects of integration and decreasing chances of outright interference , as postulated by Janowitz in the convergence theory.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and its Impacts on Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

The study is intended to describe the newly emerging wave of cyber security threats under the conception of Surveillance Capitalism, which was initially defined by a Harvard university professor, ShoshanaZuboff. The idea of Zuboff emphasizes the use of various formats of data collected from different android software applications that can help regulate the political, social, and economic orientations of the targeted nations. The relevance of Surveillance Capitalism in the nuclearized subcontinent portrays a different picture of the South Asian strategic environment in which New Delhi and Islamabad are the archival nations. The Indian offensive policies obsessed with AntiPakistani behavior have launched a massive campaign on the mainstream social media platforms generally, and Twitter particularly. The use of countless fake social media accounts containing inaccurately maintained material for propagating purposes has become a major offensive tool of New Delhiagainst Islamabad. The Indian strategic community, preoccupied with the critical elements of internal Pakistan issues, is trying to mislead social media users by spreading manipulating facts about the critical nature of civil-military relations in Pakistan. Therefore, the paper's central theme revolves around the strategic dimension of Zuboff’s concept of Surveillance Capitalism and its application to the decades-long Pakistan-India rivalry under the shadows of social media accounts generally and Twitter particularly.

Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: Quest for Power and the Role of National Security Council

The military has always played a dominant role in Pakistan for the last seventy years or so. From an administrative and political point of view, Pakistan has inherited a highly imbalanced institutional development. It was working with strong and organized civil and military bureaucracies and disorganized political parties led by self-seeker politicians. The main reason for this institutional imbalance was factional-ridden politics which weakened the political rule in Pakistan. The civilian control of the military is managed in Pakistan if the ruling political group is ready in sharing power and responsibility with the military elites. Since Pakistan is a developing country and the military cannot be an exit from the decision-making process. The sharing of power on particular subjects can take the military away from any direct intervention. The sharing of power and responsibilities can be managed with the application of the convergence theory of Morris Janowitz and the National Security Council is an ideal forum for the interconnectedness of the two main pillars: the civilian and military elites.

Civil Military Relations in Pakistan--Quest for an Ideal Balance

Civil Military Relations in Pakistan--Quest for an Ideal Balance

Analyzing Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan and Turkey (2002-2018

Pakistan and Turkey have shared many commonalties in their patterns of civil-military relationship till 2002. In the post-independent Pakistan and post-republican Turkey, the civil-military relations have often remained imbalanced. The military of both the republics have remained entrenched in the respective states politics and have exercised a hegemonic role in the internal and external politics of the republics. However, after 2002, Turkey has experienced a different trajectory of civil-military relationship while Pakistan is still passing through the same pattern of imbalanced civil-military interaction. This paper sheds light on these different patterns by comparing the trajectories of civil-military relationship of the two states. It demonstrates that Turkey has been successful in the application of democratic control over her armed forces in recent years while Pakistan besides having shared a similar pattern of civil-military relationship with Turkey (till 2002) is lagging behind in the commencement of democratic control over military. The paper shows that Justice and Development Party’ performance (AKP), European Union (EU) criteria, lesser internal and external threats, Erdogan’s charisma, continuity in political processes, and factionalism inside the army have been the factors which have contributed to the civilian supremacy in Turkey.

Analysis of Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: Evidence from Leading English Newspapers

Civil-military relations in Pakistan are always in search of common ground. Historically, military forces and civilian leadership in Pakistan struggle to find the right balance and the civilian leadership has hardly commanded the gun. This study is intended to analyze that how the two selected daily English newspapers of Pakistan, i.e. Dawn and The News covered the major developments in civil-military relations, particularly during the regime of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif, followed by the most sensitive event i.e., Zarb-e-Azb. The study employed the method of discourse analysis and has used the theoretical notion of agenda-setting and framing. The results of the study revealed that the slant, style, themes, and discourses used in the news stories of both the newspapers almost remained the same, appreciating the military institutions positively. Whereas condemning the civilian leadership for their lack of concern towards implementing the already approved Nation Action Plan.

The Kargil Adventure and Its Political Consequences

This paper studies the pre and post Kargil war events. It also elaborates the calculation and miscalculations of Kargil adventure from the top military brass and the Kargil clique. This paper also describes the question of civil military relations in Pakistan and actual corridor of the decision making. It also Provides Knowledge about the plan of Kargil war, doctrine of secrecy, the aftermath of that adventure, the big bang between the civil-military leadership, the failure of diplomacy, the impact of Kargil war on political system. This paper also highlighted the attempt to get Kargil at the rate of Kashmir. It is assessed that the kagril episode had some precious consequences related to the battlefield, warfare and the supremacy of army as an institution. This paper also showed the activities happened on the freeze heights of Kargil seriously affect, politics and civil-military relations in Pakistan.

Kargil Operation and its Effects on the Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

This paper aims to analyse the reasons of strained civil-military relations between the Army under General Pervaiz Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff and the civilian government under the premiership of Nawaz Sharif. A mixed method approach has been adopted for collection of primary and secondary data for this descriptive, theoretical, and qualitative study. The analysis shows that the relations between the two institutions i.e., the civilian government and the military were deteriorated due to an ill-fated Kargil war launched by the then Army Chief solely on his own decision. The war under the guise of Kashmiri mujahedeen movement became an unpleasant event for Pakistan in the international community. The situation compelled the elected government to declare withdrawal of the para-military forces unilaterally thus causing further damages in terms of human and material losses. The military, opposition parties and other groups in the country blamed the civilian government for this failure. Therefore, the post Kargil war developments became a major source of contention between civil and military leadership. The events and reasons leading to the removal of Army Chief, dismissal of elected government and dissolution of national and provincial assemblies have been critically analysed in this study.

The politics of the China\u2015Pakistan economic corridor

China’s presence in the Global South has increased dramatically over the course of a decade. The discourse of mutual benefit and non-intervention has attracted much attention in the developing world, which is now facing the consequences of Western interventions. However, the extent to which Chinese engagement in the developing world stays true to these principles needs to be evaluated in terms of its effects on the political economic structures of the host nations. This study analyses how China and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is interacting with the political and economic realities of Pakistan. Firstly, the study traces the history of regionalism in Pakistan and shows that over the years, the developmental mission of the central state has created deep-seated regionalism in Pakistan. The study shows that CPEC is deepening such cleavages. The regionalist forces have opposed the project in two broad ways: through demanding a greater share in the project or through completely rejecting the interventions. Secondly, the study analyses the lop-sided civil-military relations in Pakistan and concludes that Chinese engagement in Pakistan is leading to the military’s tighter control of civilian and economic matters relating to CPEC.

Civil-military relations in Pakistan: a case study of Sino-Pakistani relations and the port of Gwadar

This article analyses how the dynamics of civil-military relations in Pakistan have ensured policy continuity towards China. By looking at the development of the port of Gwadar, which represents the flagship project of Sino-Pakistani cooperation during the last 15 years, this article contends that the continuity in Pakistan’s policies towards China in the post 9/11 period is explained by a broad-based consensus among the Pakistani elites, in which, however, the military plays a dominant role. Civilian control over the military is a concept that was never fully absorbed in Pakistan and, as the analysis ascertains, most of the policies introduced by General Pervez Musharraf have been adopted by the subsequent civilian regimes under indirect control from the military establishment. The ultimate aim of the Pakistani leadership, civilian and military alike, has therefore been to provide a safe ground for the Chinese investments in the country because of the key role that China plays in Pakistan’s strategic posture. Organised around semi-structured interviews conducted in Pakistan in early 2015, the article is grounded in the relevant literature on civil-military relations and assesses the level of civilian control in three key decision-making areas pertaining to the port of Gwadar: economic policy, internal security and foreign policy.

A Tale of Two Trajectories: Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan and India

Since the partition of the British Indian Empire in August 1947, the two emergent nations, India and Pakistan, have followed markedly divergent trajectories. Though both trace their roots to the sa...

Author’s Response: Military Influence and the Reality of Politics in Pakistan

Iam thankful to all the reviewers for their incisive and helpful comments on my book The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Most have raised intriguing questions and issues for me to ponder in future research on the topic. Let me respond to some important points raised by the reviewers.In their thoughtful reviews, Christine Fair and Marvin Weinbaum illuminate the theoretical, empirical, and policy angles of my research. On the policy front, I second Fair's conclusion that the United States would do well to consistently support a democratic transition in Pakistan rather than putting all of its eggs in the basket of the military, which has been the default and misguided U.S. policy since the early 1950s. By enabling and empowering the generals vis-a-vis the political parties and civil society, this policy has negative consequences (to put it mildly) both for Pakistan's internal politics and, as Fair ably documents in her book, for regional and international security.Weinbaum points to an important omission in my work that is also common to the other two books under review: namely the lack of discussion of the interaction between the military and extremists and of its consequences for shaping the ideological beliefs that may underlie Pakistan's national security policies toward India, Afghanistan, and the United States. In defense, I would like to note that the primary focus of my book is the domestic political impact of the military's tutelary organizational beliefs, though these are linked to and often rationalized in the context of perceived external insecurity.In his review, John Gill suggests that my book does not pay sufficient attention to the role of actors in civil-military relations. He correctly notes that politicians share the blame for the military's intervention in politics because of their incompetence, corruption, or complicity. I also accept his point that Pakistan's chances of breaking out of its authoritarian trap are contingent on both civilian and military choices. However, in my humble opinion, analyzing the weakness of democratic institutions, norms, and practices in Pakistan as a product of politicians' ostensible venality is an equally inadequate approach because it fails to account for the real possibility that these nonmilitary factors are endogenous to military influence. Moreover, I wrote my book precisely with the goal of understanding the role of the military in politics from the perspective of the officer corps, an aspect largely ignored in the literature on civil-military relations in Pakistan and beyond (with a few notable exceptions).1 To be convincing, any story of military politics has to take into account the military's characteristic institutional features that shape its responses to specific political and security stimuli. In particular, its members' shared interpretations of their appropriate role in the polity do this by making some choices appear more plausible than others in a given situation.Gill also suggests that I am too critical of the army's relationship with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government. He cites two examples to prove civilian dereliction of duty: the PPP leadership's alleged inability to provide General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani with and civilian failure in taking over the reins of administration from the army once it cleared Swat of militants. For one, I find it hard to believe that Kayani ever seriously solicited the PPP leadership's advice on strategic issues, given that he and his fellow generals believed that civilian politicians were ill-educated, that they the wrong attitude, that they had not read basic defense policy documents, that they lacked a reading culture, and that even [their] thought process was non-existent.2 Besides, the militarized nature of Pakistani foreign policy, which typically excludes or ignores politicians' input or direction, has led to these politicians' pragmatic accommodation of the military's views to avoid conflict or the loss of power. …

The Military and Pakistan’s Political and Security Disposition

The Military and Pakistan's Political and Security DispositionThe military is the most formidable political player in Pakistan. The long years of direct and indirect rule have given enough experience and confidence to the military to overshadow core political institutions and processes even when it stays in the barracks. It retains professional skills, organizational capacity, discipline, and determination to set aside civilian processes through direct intervention. However, the military's preference since 2008 is for exercising political clout from the sidelines for reasons beyond the scope of this review essay. This has given some space to civilian leadership to function in a relatively autonomous manner. The military periodically builds pressure on the civilian government by publicly disagreeing on policy matters, encouraging the political opposition to become more active, forcing a change in civilian political power arrangements, or exercising strong influence in the policy areas of its choice.Pakistan's drift from a civilian political system to a military-dominated political order and the implications of this change for the Pakistani state and society, as well as for the country's foreign and security policies, have drawn the attention of academics and political analysts. Four factors explain this interest: Pakistan's perennial conflicts with India, its active cooperation with the United States and conservative Arab states to build up Afghan-Islamic resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-89), Pakistan's role in the U.S.-led war against terrorism, and its use of Islamic militant groups as an instrument of foreign policy.The three books under review-The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan by Aqil Shah, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War by C. Christine Fair, and The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World by T.V. Paul-are the latest additions to the literature on Pakistan. All three books show a strong focus on the Pakistani military as a state institution, its ascendancy to power, its dominance of internal political and societal processes, and the formulation of Pakistan's security and foreign policy profile.Aqil Shah has contributed the most current and comprehensive study to the literature on civil-military relations in Pakistan. The Army and Democracy combines an analysis of hard historical data with a consideration of the major theoretical formulations about different facets of civil-military relations and the experiences of several developing countries. This approach enables Shah to assess the dynamics of the Pakistani military's ascendancy to power, the problems of different military regimes, the means by which these regimes seek to craft political systems that ensure the continuity of the military's tutelary role, and the impact of military dominance on Pakistan's internal political choices, foreign policy, and security disposition over the years.Shah also examines the gradual degeneration and decay of political and societal processes in Pakistan. He identifies the country's perceived security threats, the inability of civilian and military regimes to ensure meaningful political participation and socioeconomic equity for different ethnic and regional groups, and the unnecessary delay in the framing of a democratic constitutional political order as the main causes of this downward trend. Shah discusses how the Zia and Musharraf regimes strengthened the military's tutelary role and also analyzes the interaction between various civilian rulers and the top military brass.While acknowledging the explanations given by other writers for the Pakistani military's rise to power and expanded role in civilian sectors, Shah focuses on the mindset, orientations, and disposition of the military officers as the principal causes. The critical factor in his view is how the officers articulate their role and self-image as well as their perception of civilian leaders and political processes. …

Civil-military relations in Pakistan: from Zufikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir Bhutto

Taking an explicitly comparative theoretical approach, Saeed Shafqat presents a comprehensive exploration of civil-military relations in Pakistan. He begins by describing the history of military hegemony in this volatile South Asian country and then examines the breakdown of military control, assessing the rise of the Pakistan People's Party and th