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Musharraf and his Khaki Turncoats
Samuel
Baid
In January this year it was
suggested that it was most convenient to blame jehadis for the two
serious attempts on the life of General Musharraf in December 2003,
but the real culprits might be in the Army. Army spokesman Maj.Gen.
Shaukat Sultan suspected a foreign hand behind these incidents while
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said a network including
foreigners could be responsible. It was also suspected that jehadi
organizations, which had been banned by Musharraf could be behind
these attacks. General Musharraftold a tribal jirga in Peshawar on
March 15 that Al Qaeda was involved. But his Government consistently
denied the possibility of the involvement of his own constituency
men from the Army.
But it took Musharraf about five months to admit that some Army men
were involved in the conspiracy to kill him in December. He told a
private TV channel (aired on May 27) that a few junior officers in
the Army and the Air Force had plotted to kill him. But he was too
late in his disclosures. Reports had already started coming about
the involvement of ISI and Army men in the plot to eliminate him. A
United States defence intelligence source had told news agency UPI
as long ago as February 26 that the man who tried to kill Musharraf
was 31-year old Mohammad Jameel, a Captain in the Pakistani Army
serving in the ISI. Jameel had been sent to Afghanistan to defend
the Taliban regime along with other spies in the wake of the US
bombing of that country. Later, he was captured in Afghanistan and
handed over to the US Government along with others. He was released
because the Americans did not find him directly involved with
Taliban or Al Qaeda. Jameel was himself killed in the bomb attack on
Musharraf on December 25.
Last month the South Asia Tribune reported that six Army
officers, who opposed Musharraf's pro-America policies, had
disappeared. They included two Colonels, three Majors and one
Captain. They were posted in the tribal areas of North West Frontier
Province.They had refused to attack local tribesmen "for the sake of
foreigners." Musharraf feared their thinking might infect other Army
men too. And so they disappeared. The ISI, which does this kind of
disappearing tricks, has expressed ignorance about their
whereabouts. Now it looks they are among those officers who,
according to General Musharraf 's latest disclosure, are under
detention for plotting against his life in December. He made this
disclosre after the Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court repeated
its notice to the Government to give its reply by June 4 about the
whereabouts of the six Army officers. Families of these officers
have filed six separate habeas corpus petitions.
The Pakistani Army has a long history of conspiracies against rulers
-civilians and military both. In 1951, a conspiracy was hatched by
junior officers, who called themselves "Young Turks", against the
very first Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. Their grouse against the
Government was on the promotion policy in the Army and also because
Mr Liaqat Ali Khan had agreed to a United Nations ordered cease-fire
in Kashmir in 1949. Maj.Gen.Akbar Khan, who organised invasion of
Kashmir in 1947, was the leader of this conspiracy. The ultimate
result of the confrontation between the Government and the Young
Turks was the assassination of Liaqat Ali on October 16, 1951. When
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to power in December 1971, Akbar was put in
charge of National Security even as Begum Raana Liaqat Ali demanded
action against her husband's killers. Junior officers, who were also
described themselves as Young Turks, were badly upset by the
easy-going life of General Yahya Khan and his coterie while Dhaka
was burning. When Bhutto took over as the President-cum-Chief
Martial Law Administrator after the fall of Dhaka in December 1971,
he sacked six senior Army officers in August 1972 on charges of
causing civil war in Pakistan and disturbing public life just two
days before he took over. Later, in March 1973 the Government
arrested a large number of Army officers, who, it claimed, had
conspired to seize power and arrest Government leaders and Generals.
The arrested officers included three Brigadiers, seven Lt.Colonels,
31 Majors, three Captains, three Air Force Wing Commanders and seven
Squadron Leaders. In addition, there were some retired officers and
civilians. So many arrests exploded the myth that Bhutto was a
darling of junior officers. It also showed that despite the loss of
the Eastern Wing in December 1971, Pakistani Army had not reconciled
itself to the civilian rule. Bhutto was deposed by his handpicked
Army Chief Zia-ul Haq in July 1977 and hanged in April 1979.
But Zia himself was not secured despite all the support he was
getting from the USA and European countries for fighting their war
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In March 1980, about 20
officers were detained for conspiring against Zia. It was suspected
that Deputy Chief of the Army Staff Lt.Gen.Mohammad Iqbal Khan was
among the conspirators. Zia's own right-hand man Lt. Gen. Faiz Ali
Chisti had also gone against him. Zia tried to keep Army Generals on
his side by allowing them to make money through drug and
gun-running. Their wives went to Europe on shopping spree on
Government expense. But if his son Ejazul Haq is to be believed,
Zia's air crash on August 17, 1988,was a conspiracy by Army
Generals. He named General Aslam Baig as the man behind this crash.
Baig became the Army Chief on Zia' s death. Zia ruled for about 11
years refusing to give up the post of the Army Chief.
General Zi'a's exploitation of Islam to stay in power worsened the
state of discipline in the Army. Children who went to schools or
madrasas in 1980 at the age of about 5 years are today in their late
20s or early 30s. They were all brainwashed by the jehadi curriculum
prepared for schools and madras as during Zia' s rule. Most of them
are now employed in different private and public sectors. That a
large number of them have got jobs in armed forces cannot be ruled
out. It can be presumed that those who didn't get jobs today form
the backbone of the jehadi groups live by sectarian, anti-Government
and other activities including those in Kashmir.
The British-trained Pak Army officers were not willing to work under
civilian leaders whom they had learned to abhor. The 1947 invasion
of Kashmir by the Army could be with the q1otive of investing itself
with the role of the defender of Pakistan's two- nation theory. It
called this invasion jehad although Jamaat-e-Islami described it as
haram. But it is a fact that the Army's conspjracies against Liaqat
Ali, Bhutto and Zia were not inspired by jehadi urges. The jehadi
craze came later as a result of Zia's islamisation programme, which
had the support ofUS and Muslim and European countries in the 1980s.
It was then the concept of jehad was incorporated into Pakistan's
school curriculum. And that suited the Americans then.
Gen.Zia facilitated the entry of jehadi young men into the Army by
declaring madras as degrees as equivalent to BA. He also permitted
Jamaat-e-Islami tabligi groups (Islamic preachers) to enter the GHQ
in Rawalpindi. Influenced by these groups, many Army officers began
growing their beard (now even Pakistani cricketers are growing
beard).
The very first result of Zia policy exposing the Army Hqrs. was the
growth of Khilafat movement within the GHQ. In September 1995, 36
Army officers, all Sunnis, were arrested for trying to exterminate
political and military leadership of the country. Maj.Gen. Zahirul
Islam Abbasi who led this conspiracy had received funds from
somewhere and brought arms from Dera Adam Khel to carry on this
operation. Abbasi now leads a Khilafat movement which he calls
Azmat-e-lslam movement and supports Al Qaeda. He claims that the
junior army men are all for Khilafat.
The writer is
Director, Institute for Media Studies & Information Technology,
YMCA, New Delhi & formerly Editor, UNI. By
arrangement with the Kashmir Images. | 
