Since seizing power on October 12,1999, Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's Chief of the Army
Staff (COAS) and self-styled Chief Executive, has carried out a number of changes at the
senior levels of the army leadership, but none of the previous changes had attracted as
much attention as his August 31 transfer of Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, a Kashmiri, from the
post of the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) in the GHQ at Rawalpindi to that of GOC, 4
Corps, Lahore. Lt.Gen.Mohammad Yusaf (a Punjabi), GOC, 2 Corps, Multan, has been moved to
the GHQ as the new CGS.
These changes, which were made a few days before the departure of
Gen. Musharraf to New York to attend the UN Millennium summit, have led to considerable
speculation, in Pakistan as well as abroad, as to whether the shifting of Lt.Gen.Aziz was
a pre-emptive move by Gen.Musharraf to prevent any threat to his position from him or a
placatory move to dispel US concerns over his role in assisting the Islamic extremist
organisations or a normal transfer to give him experience as a Corps Commander without
which he would be ineligible for consideration as the next COAS.
Lt.Gen.Aziz had come to be viewed as the evil genius of the
military regime and as the godfather of the Taliban of Afghanistan and the 300,000-strong
armed jehadist militants of Pakistan (as against the estimated 500,000-strong Pakistan
army) belonging to different Islamic extremist organisations.
The Pakistan army has 27 Lt.Gens, of whom nine are Corps
Commanders and the remaining hold other posts--either in the GHQ or elsewhere. Lt.Gen.
Agha Jahangir Khan, GOC, 30 Corps, Gujranwala, is a Shia (a Pathan), while the remaining
26 are Sunnis.
No Pakistani army chief can seize and sustain himself in power
without the support of the CGS, who controls the Directorates-General of Military
Intelligence and Military Operations, and the GOC, 10 Corps, Rawalpindi. One of the first
acts of Gen.Musharraf, after his appointment as the COAS by Mr.Nawaz Sharif in October,
1998, was to move Lt.Gen.Aziz from his then post as the Deputy Director-General of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) dealing with Kashmir and Afghanistan, to the GHQ as the
CGS and post Lt.Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, ethnicity not clear, but possibly a Pathan, who was
then Commandant, National Defence College, as the GOC, 10 Corps.
However, Gen.Musharraf could not succeed in having his nominee
selected as the DG of the ISI. Mr.Sharif instead appointed Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, now in prison,
as the DG. Like Mr.Sharif and Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, DG, ISI, during Mr.Sharif's
first tenure as the Prime Minister, Lt.Gen.Ziauddin is a Punjabi of Pakistan-Occupied
Kashmir (POK) origin and belongs to a family of Pakistan Muslim League (PML) loyalists.
Gen.Musharraf did not want Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, an engineer, to
handle Kashmir and Afghanistan. He disliked the latter immensely and distrusted him as
Mr.Sharif's mole in the army just as Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the COAS during Mr.Sharif's
first tenure, had distrusted Lt.Gen.Nasir.
He, therefore, transferred the Kashmir and Afghanistan operations
of the ISI to the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) and made Lt.Gen.Aziz
as the CGS handle them. The entire Kargil operation of 1999 was handled by Lt.Gen.Aziz and
Lt.Gen.Ziauddin was kept out of it.
The appointment of Lt.Gen.Aziz as the CGS had attracted
considerable attention because he was the junior-most Lt.Gen. at that time. This showed
Gen.Musharraf's trust in him. Previously, the tradition in the Pakistan army had been to
appoint one of the senior, if not the senior-most, Lt.Gens. as the CGS.
Amongst the present Lt.Gens., Lt.Gen. Aziz, an officer of the
Punjab Regiment, has served the maximum number of years in the POK and the Northern Areas
and is a widely-acknowledged expert of the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment on
Kashmir and Afghanistan.
His friendship with Gen.Musharraf dates back to the days of
Zia-ul-Haq, when the two, along with Lt.Gen.Yusaf, who is from the Armoured Corps, and
Maj.Gen.Mehmood Durrani, presently a close adviser of Gen.Musharraf, played an active role
in the training and arming of the Afghan Mujahideen and the foreign mercenaries, who
fought in Afghanistan.
Lt.Gen.Aziz was Zia's Deputy Military Secretary and, like
Gen.Musharraf, had also served in the Special Services Group (SSG), a commando force. The
friendship between Gen.Musharraf and Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed dates back to the days of their
career as young officers of the Artillery Regiment.
All of them were close proteges of Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul, DG, ISI,
under Mrs.Benazir Bhutto during her first tenure as the Prime Minister, and of Lt.Gen.
Nasir. The idea of a proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir to keep the Indian security forces
bleeding by using jehadists of Afghan vintage was their brain-child. The implementation of
this idea brought them close to the Islamic political parties and extremist organisations
and they came to be known as the Mullas' Generals.
However, only Lt.Gen.Nasir, Lt.Gen. Aziz, Lt.Gen.Yusaf and Lt.
Gen. Muzaffar Hussain Usmani (a Mohajir) of 5 Corps, Karachi, are the Mullas' Generals or
Islamised Generals in the true sense of the expression in that they never miss a namaz
unless they are ill, observe the injunctions of the holy Koran and work during their
off-duty hours for the Tablighi Jamaat, ostensibly an Islamic humanitarian organisation of
preachers, which provides most of the jehadist volunteers for the Pakistan-based extremist
organisations active in J & K in India and in other countries too.
Gen.Musharraf, Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed and Maj.Gen.Durrani have close
links with the jehadist organisations, but, in their personal lives, they do not strictly
observe the injunctions of the holy Koran.
It was Lt.Gen.Aziz, Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed and Lt.Gen. Usmani, who
refused to accept Lt.Gen.Ziauddin as the COAS and staged a coup against Mr.Sharif and
seized power before Gen.Musharraf's plane landed at Karachi on October 12 last year. The
other Lt.Gens approved their action ex-post facto.
Gen.Musharraf, thereafter, appointed Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed as the
DG of the ISI and posted Lt.Gen.Aziz as the GOC, 10 Corps, but Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the
Jamaat-e-Islami, and Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamaat-ul-Ulema Pakistan criticised the
proposed transfer of Lt.Gen.Aziz on the ground that this would weaken the so-called jehad
in Kashmir.
Gen.Musharraf, thereupon, cancelled his order and instead
promoted Maj.Gen.Jamshaid Gulzar, the then head of the India Division in the ISI and a
close confidante of his, as a Lt.Gen. and posted him as the GOC, 10 Corps, Rawalpindi.
Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed and Lt.Gen.Aziz continued to enjoy the
confidence of Gen.Musharraf till the visit of President Clinton to Pakistan in March last.
Thereafter, there were persistent reports of differences with Lt.Gen.Aziz, who strongly
opposed any pressure on the Taliban on the Osama bin Laden issue and any action against
the Pakistan-based activities of organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the
Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Al Badr.
In the conflicts with the Islamic political parties over issues
such as signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), moderating the procedures under
the blasphemy law, abolishing the separate electorate system, action to stop military
training in the madrasas etc, Lt.Gen.Aziz took sides with the Islamic parties and
encouraged them in their opposition to Gen.Musharraf.
In order to reduce the influence of Lt.Gen.Aziz, Gen.Musharraf
asked Lt.Gen. (retd) Moinudeen Haider, the Interior Minister, to take over the operations
relating to the Taliban and transferred to Maj.Gen.Durrani the operations relating to
Kashmir. He also posted Lt.Gen.Aziz as the GOC, 5 Corps, Karachi, and Lt.Gen.Usmani as the
CGS, but the former persuaded the latter to represent against the transfer on personal
grounds. Gen.Musharraf had to accept his representation and the proposed transfer was
cancelled.
Anxious to secure the US support for the re-scheduling of some of
Pakistan's external debts, which are due for re-payment on December 31, Gen.Musharraf, on
the advice of Maj.Gen.Durrani, decided not to oppose the Hizbul Mujahideen's move for a
cease-fire and dialogue with the Govt. of India, but Lt.Gen.Aziz had the exercise
sabotaged.
It was only, thereafter, that Gen.Musharraf decided to shift
Lt.Gen.Aziz out of the GHQ and post in his place Lt.Gen.Yusaf. Gen. Musharraf's
calculation is that since he too is an Islamised Lt.Gen, he would be acceptable to the
Islamic political parties and extremist organisations.
It would appear that Gen.Musharraf moved Lt.Gen.Aziz out of the
GHQ not because he apprehended any threat to his position from him, but because he felt
that the US dislike of Lt.Gen.Aziz was coming in the way of his securing US support for
the resumption of the IMF assistance and the re-scheduling of Pakistan's external debts.
It would be unwise and incorrect to interpret the shifting of
Lt.Gen.Aziz as presaging a possible softening of Gen.Musharraf's policy of supporting the
so-called jehad in Kashmir with no holds barred. The General is as determined as
Lt.Gen.Aziz to continue to support the Pakistan-based extremist organisations in their
activities against India, but at the same time, he wants to control their violent
activities in Pakistani territory and against US interests. He felt that Lt.Gen.Aziz
failed to do this.
Of the three Islamised Lt.Gens., Gen.Musharraf still enjoys the
support of Lt.Gens.Yusaf and Usmani. There has been speculation in Islamabad that the
General also wants to have Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmed replaced as the DG, ISI, by Lt.Gen.Usmani.
In fact, when Gen. Musharraf went to New York, he asked Lt.Gen.Usmani to look after the
work of the COAS in the GHQ, indicating his confidence in him.
In Pakistan, Lt.Gens, retire at the age of 57 or on completions
of four years as Lt.Gen, whichever is earlier. Presuming that Gen.Musharraf grants himself
an extension in October 2001, when he is due for retirement as the COAS, and hands over
power to an elected political leadership before October 12,2002, in accordance with the
recent judgement of the Supreme Court, Lt.Gen.Hamid Javaid, Director-General of Heavy
Industries, Lt.Gen. Aziz and Lt.Gen. Khalid Maqbool, the new Chairman of the National
Accountability Bureau, (in that order) would be the senior-most Lt.Gens still in service
at the time of the change-over, their common date of retirement being October 20,2002.
Lt.Gens. Usmani and Yusaf would have retired in the beginning of 2002. Lt.Gen.Aziz has a
better record than Lt.Gen. Javaid.
If the new Government, which comes to power in 2002, is unable to
supersede him in favour of Lt.Gen.Maqbool, a Punjabi, the Pakistan Army would be headed
for the first time since 1947 by an Islamic fundamentalist General of Kashmiri origin,
with his finger possibly on the nuclear button.
One shouldn't be surprised, if concerned over this prospect, the
US ultimately reconciles itself to the idea of Gen.Musharraf continuing in power even
after October, 2002, as the President with a politician or a non-political civilian,
elected in a sham election, functioning as the Prime Minister. This is what Zia did. In
the US perception, Gen.Musharraf, though close to the Islamic elements, is not a
fundamentalist.
