US military and politics By Rafia Zakaria

Come September and the US would have been at war for almost a decade. The conflict that began some nine years ago as a Donald Rumsfeld-contrived ‘shock and awe’ exercise metamorphosed into a campaign to win ‘hearts and minds’.

The unceremonious departure of Gen Stanley McChrystal has reinvigorated speculations concerning the possibility of victory in Afghanistan and the seeming naiveté of Barack Obama as a war president.

For Pakistanis watching the denouement of the McChrystal saga from the frontlines of the war on terror, the firing of a war-time general by a civilian president holds lessons of its own. First, of course, is the testament provided by the act of the civilian-power dynamic in the world’s only superpower. In the American constitutional scheme, so complete is the supremacy of the executive over the military that a civilian president can sack a sitting general without much ado, even while being weeks away from a major offensive.

While speculation continues about whether the general’s unceremonious departure stemmed from an act of political suicide or was a desperate attempt by the Obama administration to lend a new face to a faltering war, there remains little question that Obama’s decision was lawful.

From a military and strategic perspective, Gen McChrystal’s departure signals the difficulties in implementing COIN, or the ‘counter-insurgency’ doctrine, popularised by the American military. Focused on using a large troop presence to secure areas and win the support of the local population, COIN came under severe scrutiny during the Afghanistan review earlier this year. As the now infamous article in the Rolling Stone magazine indicates, when the decision to order larger troop numbers was made, it seemed that Gen McChrystal had won and President Obama was committed to devoting the resources that would translate into dividends in Afghanistan.

Of course, as pointed out by Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations in an op-ed article published by The New York Times the day after the general’s resignation, troop levels in Afghanistan still remained far below those in Iraq and many promised reinforcements had not arrived. The lacklustre success of the Marja offensive and the increasing number of casualties — coming as they did before the initiation of an even riskier campaign in Kandahar — also signalled the increasing intractability of implementing a strategy that would yield dividends in the form of winning over Afghan hearts and minds.

The above reflects some of the challenges in implementing a strategy that has been touted as the magic solution for the Afghanistan problem. Ironically, however, the biggest challenges in implementing COIN lie not in the logistics of war-making or the forbidding terrain of Afghanistan but the juxtaposition of the American civilian-military power dynamic in a post 9/11 world. While the supremacy of the political branches of the government over the military and the unquestioned status of the president as the commander in chief is one of the cornerstones of American democracy, it also places certain decision-making challenges on the political branches.

In the post 9/11 culture of fear, political figures — be they in Congress or in the executive branch — have made the provision of security a staple of their political campaigns. Candidates running for Congress, the Senate and even local offices continue to be reluctant to evaluate the efficacy of existing strategies and remain committed to seeing counter-terrorism as a political issue rather than a military one. The American public in turn unquestionably believes in the necessity of endless counter-terror dollars in making the homeland secure, thus making the political appeal of pandering to their fears a staple of electoral politics.

Resultantly, the political branches of the US government are unwilling to make unpopular decisions regarding foreign wars. Military strategy is thus dictated by the political demands of being tough on terrorists and producing low-cost victories that respond to the population’s insatiable demand for security. Even those such as Vice President Biden, who were vehemently opposed to the increase of troops in Afghanistan, remain politically committed to the idea that the quick elimination of the bad guys is crucial to American security.

Even as the demands of the military change in response to unconventional warfare, American elected representatives refuse to close down bases and stop manufacturing equipment designed for a Cold War world, for fear of eliminating jobs and angering constituents. The consequence is that the war in Afghanistan has become a primarily political campaign outsourced to the United States military, which is then expected to deliver the political material to orchestrate campaign narratives that present candidates as being committed to national security, rather than actually producing positive results in places such as Afghanistan.

It is this dynamic between a military on the ground assessing the realities of Afghanistan and a political branch demanding material for electoral campaigns that is painfully obvious if one looks past the macho grandstanding and crass humour of the Rolling Stone-McChrystal variety.

The reticence of the political branches to truly evaluate the connections between security at home and wars abroad have thus essentially allotted a political task to the US military. Not only does this create logistical and training challenges, it also misunderstands the ultimate purpose of a military as a primarily destructive force to be utilised in only the direst of circumstances. The political army envisioned by the executive to win over hearts and minds, one that builds roads and tunnels, digs wells and befriends villagers while also eliminating the Taliban and protecting itself, cannot be produced without also politicising generals.

Winning hearts and minds is ultimately and essentially a political project, entrusted by American lawmakers to a military force that has had to transform itself in response. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that after almost a decade of such painfully wrought transformations the historically apolitical American military might begin to have some opinions.

The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy

Our national disgrace By Ardeshir Cowasjee

When a most foolish prime minister after committing an avoidable blunder handed over on a gilded platter this country to his army chief in October 1999, there was, to put it mildly, from a nation imbued with democratic principles, a strange outpouring of widespread joy. The love of and desire for democracy was shelved.

Gen Pervez Musharraf inherited a country that was broke, and that was regarded as an international pariah due to its nuclear ambitions. Initially he did not do a bad job of running it, with a cabinet of 12 citizens, and his popularity ranking by and large was favourable. We chugged along, with no help from the outer world, with no internal upheavals. Then came 2001 and 9/11, and Musharraf was established as one of the world’s most sought after leaders. Pakistan’s geographical location and his wink-of-an-eye decision had seen to it.

Then he got carried away, it all went to his head, by April 2002 he had ‘lost it’. His referendum was the beginning of his end. He then further ‘lost it’ by picking out the worst possible political actors on the national stage with whom to form a political party and run away with the elections he was bound, by the Supreme Court, to hold at the end of that year. His choice of manpower on the political side could not have been worse (well, yes, judging by what we have today, perhaps it amazingly could have been).

To form his new assemblies some bright spark advised him to decree that all those standing for election must be graduates. Utterly ridiculous, and against all democratic norms, because not only did it shut out the larger majority of the nation from offering themselves to the electorate but it opened wide the door to corruption (which until then had been held within reasonable bounds).

Musharraf knew his country-kin, he knew their propensity for corruption and he must have known that a large number of those he sought to install in his parliament would conjure up bogus degrees — which of course they did with his encouragement. He was not ignorant as to how entrenched was corruption. At the end of 1999, in an interview with the BBC, when asked how corruption in the armed forces compared with that of the political classes — Mickey (Kamran) Shafi will like this one — he responded, curtly and aptly: “We are all of the same stock.”

So, no one knew, or even cared, at that time how many bogus degrees had been produced before the Election Commission, and exactly how many cheats and crooks entered parliament — though we did have a fair idea from the calibre of those that sat there.

The graduate requirement was operable for the 2008 elections and so more bogus degrees were cooked up by the new lot of aspiring legislators. We now know much more. On orders passed by the Supreme Court, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has reportedly sent off the degree certificates produced by 934 parliamentarians for verification (the total number of these leech-like beings is 1,170). Apparently 161 certificates were illegible — what does that tell us as to their validity?

It seems that a dozen or so cheats and crooks have already been disqualified by our courts and over 50 cases are pending. The most famous legislator allegedly with a bogus degree is the man in charge of the law ministry who claims to hold a doctorate from a university that sounds like an Italian ice cream factory.

The media, particularly the press, has been active in its coverage of this national disgrace — and must be given due credit. ‘Civil society’ which reared its head in 2007 has not been too vocal, there have been no marches or demos against the cheats, charlatans, con-persons and four-flushers who have passed themselves off as legislators.

The two intrepid tilters at windmills, friends Naeem Sadiq and Isa Daudpota, appealed in April to the Chief Justice of Pakistan pleading that he order that the parliamentarians’ degrees be verified and those found with fake degrees be disqualified immediately and barred from ever again standing for election.

Last month they sent him a second appeal requesting that he take legal action against the CEC or Chief Election Commissioner (current and previous) for failing to verify the declared degrees and allowing cheats and crooks to sit in our parliament. The fault that they are where they are lies entirely with the CECs.

The CEC and, by extension, the HEC must shoulder the blame for this unacceptable state of affairs and see that the matter is sorted out as per the orders of the Supreme Court and as per accepted norms of honesty. All who have sat in parliament between 2002 and 2007 and all who now sit there must share the guilt for having connived and acquiesced with gross moral corruption. The universities of the country must cooperate, and not in their turn cheat and falsify, in weeding out the bogus degrees and by advising the HEC which in turn should make public the list of all the criminals who have conned us.

To top it all, when on the subject of connivance and acquiescence, we had the chief minister of Balochistan, a ‘nawab’ no less, Aslam Raisani, who recently when uttering on the subject of the holders of fake degrees in his assembly (13 members of whom allegedly stand accused) is quoted (this newspaper June 30) as having stated that “a degree is a degree whether fake or genuine”. If such be the belief and thinking of our legislators, then not even God Almighty can save this country from its moral morass.

arfc@cyber.net.pk

When Goliath gets the media to thwart the sling of David By Jawed Naqvi

Following the First World War, Austrian journalist Karl Wiegand made an insightful observation. “How are nations ruled and led into war?” he asked. “Politicians lie to journalists and then believe those lies when they see them in print.”
What seems cynical was true then, and it is true today. The one difference, however, is that the global media is vertically split today in this game with one side conniving in the crime, the other offering a glimmer of hope for truth and transparency. For every Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower who was imprisoned for revealing his country’s nuclear secrets, there is an army of embedded journalists who are willing to do the state’s bidding at any cost to their credibility.

Pakistani media is relatively free and charmingly pugnacious towards their government with a history of defying military and civilian dictators. Therefore, I wasn’t surprised to read in the Dawn last week of the Pakistan government’s plans to end the romance and have “policy guidelines” for private media organisations so that their news coverage does not hurt “national interests”. If we smell a rat here the odour cannot be too distinct from an almost similar doctrine that the Indian military (not without political connivance) unveiled in Delhi last month.

While the first doctrine deals with greater operational coordination of the three services for future conflicts, the new doctrine on Military Psychological Operations is “a policy, planning and implementation document that aims to create a conducive environment for the armed forces to operate by using the media available with the Services to their advantage”.

In other words, it constitutes “a planned process of conveying a message to select target audience, to promote particular themes that result in desired attitudes and behaviour, which affect the achievement of political and military objectives of the country”, a military release said.

Given the potential benefit of psychological operations as an effective force multiplier, its use in support of military aims and objectives is considerable. Among key areas of interest, the doctrine provides guidelines “for activities related to perception management in sub-conventional operations – such as the counter-insurgency efforts in Jammu and Kashmir and the North Eastern states – in an internal environment wherein misguided population may have to be brought into the mainstream”.

If I haven’t got it completely wrong, the idea to co-opt the media to overwhelm the perceived quarry with mythology that passes for information is Goebbelsian in its essence whose current exponents do not exclude former victims of Nazi practices. Take the Star of David, Israel’s national motif. Today, in a strange inversion of the myth in the Old Testament, it represents more accurately the people on the peace flotilla who were carrying little more than slings to protect themselves with. It is the Israeli commandos with their military might who became Goliath, the supposedly invincible giant who, in the myth represented the pagan ‘philistines’.

The story of David and Goliath is being played out for the third summer running in Kashmir. Enraged young people, even school-going children are thronging the streets, hurling anger and stones at heavily armed Indian troopers. The Delhi media describes them as a violent mob. The Home Minister has said in a public statement that the Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the protests. An unarmed, if outraged, people have thus been branded as terrorists by TV channels that claim to speak on behalf of the Indian nation.

Kashmir of course is not the only example where people face calumny in an unequal battle of disseminated perceptions. There are countless unarmed and peaceful struggles raging across India seeking to claim some basic and simple rights for the people. The struggles have had to confront not only the armed might of the state but also the slings and arrows of the corporate media’s diatribes. An ongoing battle between unarmed protesters against a mining syndicates in the eastern state of Orissa has seen villages under siege by thousands of police and paramilitary troops, ordinary people have been shot at, and poor villagers have to deal with a daily assault of the state’s and the industrialist’s armed might. In these extremely troubled times, the media has come to play a key role.

I once walked with Suneet Chopra, an indefatigable communist activist for miles on a blazing hot afternoon in Haryana. We were campaigning for Ms Chandravati who we were told was as a democratic candidate against Bansi Lal, a notorious member of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule. Along the way someone from our tired and famished group plucked a tiny bunch of green peas from a field. “Comrade, we must never steal from the peasants,” suggested the genial Chopra, who we suspected had a camel’s hump since he neither felt thirsty or hungry on the punishing journey.

It was therefore quite disturbing for me to read in most of the major Indian dailies last week screaming headlines that Maoist guerrillas who ambushed a paramilitary party had mutilated the bodies of the dead or injured troopers. “Maoists chopped limbs, slit throats of injured CRPF men,” claimed a huge headline in the Indian Express. In a report datelined Raipur last Friday, the paper said: “Several among the 27 security personnel killed in the Maoist ambush in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday had their throats slit and limbs chopped after being injured in the firing. The Maoists also took away their weapons, including AK-47s and INSAS rifles, and ammunition — the rebels did the same at Tadmetla in Dantewada on April 6 when they massacred 76 security men.” A similar account of the apparent outrage was carried in almost all other major newspapers. True to form, as is the bulldozing method of reportage these days, no source was cited for the macabre incident. Only a careful scanning of the papers revealed that the report, apparently disseminated by a national news agency, was completely cooked up. The Times of India in a very small story of three or four centimetres hidden in the inside pages ran a story that clearly contradicted all the other accounts about the killing of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men. What was significant was that the paper gave a solid incontrovertible source for the story. It went thus:

“CRPF bodies weren’t mutilated: CRPF denied reports that the bodies of its men were mutilated by Maoists. Any report that says throats were slit and limbs severed is inaccurate, said R K Dua, IG, CRPF. He said it was not possible to verify whether Maoists were killed in the exchange of fire, but said based on preliminary testimonies it appeared 12-15 Maoists were killed. One of our jawans said he stepped over two or three bodies of Maoists, the IG said. – TNN (Times News Network)”.

It is naturally heartening that just when the media looks so poised to be co-opted by the system nearly hook line and sinker, there rises a gem of a soul here or there, including from within the security establishment, who belies the hopes of a complete takeover of the truth by the state and its many agents. One among them is an army officer who has forced the establishment to consider rewriting the history of the Kargil war. In a dictatorship or a vacuous democracy there is something called a human spirit that remains indomitable.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com