It’s been one heck of a roller coaster office stint for the soft-spoken and hard-smoking Pakistani army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He started off as the Teflon man, impervious to the minutest of scratches by the strongest of adversaries.
He was right there in the midst of the deals being hammered between Benazir and Gen Musharraf, courtesy the United States and yet, no one (including Nawaz Sharif) ever questioned his role while lampooning the fallen dictator for the dirty NRO.
Every intelligence cooperation with US was heaped on Musharraf even though Kayani was the ISI chief. Yet no one accused him of playing footsy with the Yanks. Zardari could not have become Mr President had the then top military brass, including Gen Kayani, opposed his elevation after first forcing a reluctant but increasingly unpopular Musharraf to give up his uniform.
Yet, while Zardari is criticised for every sin imaginable, the man primarily responsible for this action through his inaction (if not outright support) was never blamed for this fiasco.
During his first term as COAS, he was the darling of the Americans and a personal friend of the likes of Admiral Mullen, etc., who he now feels back stabbed his institution. Of course he had also bent backwards to prove a diehard friend of Pakistan’s democracy (if it can be so called).
Life couldn’t get any better, so apparently it decided to go the other way.
His world has literally transformed over the past one year. A three-year extension later, he carries the heavy burden of proving that his loyalty lies with his institution, to the state, and not to an individual who gave him an unprecedented extra three years in the second most powerful office in the country.
The same Kayani had, in 2010, returned a very happy man from his NATO get-together in Brussels, convinced that the US and others had become converts to his assessment of the Afghan imbroglio and his proffered tenable solutions.
Today, the same Americans and others view his viewpoint as being the biggest impediment to their own Afghan solution and would like to see his back along with that of ISI chief Gen Pasha.
As for democracy, well he’s surely had his fill of the democrats in the wake of the Osama and Mehran base incidents. Despite being a thorn in the West’s side, he is being viewed by his own top generals, and the middle-order officers in particular, as being a trifle soft on Americans and the president alike.
That is why all eyes are on the ongoing corps commanders’ meeting being held in the wake of the US withholding its $800 million military assistance package. By the time of this column going into print a lot of details of the meeting would already have come out and analysed threadbare by analysts of all ilk and acumen, but what shall unquestionably remain the most scrutinised aspect, both by the outside world of observers and his own peers, will be all that the chief said, or even more important chose not to.
To quote one of his most trusted and loyal top commanders: “The chief is someone who likes to think his way through very carefully,” adding in the same breath however, “but sometimes too much thinking also is not necessarily good as you can miss that vital right time to take the right action.”
A more ominous assessment was made by another many-starred general who added rather sombrely: “The army works in a different manner. A point comes where if the chief does not, or cannot run the army then the army runs the chief.” Hardly a comforting thought.
The COAS will definitely be judged for his ability to:
a) Ensure that the armed forces are not isolated as a separate recalcitrant factor by the Americans by specifically blocking the so-called military aid and that the political dispensation stands by its side.
b) Come up with a prudent, and justifiable, response to the increased public bashing by the US military and political establishment
c) To stand up for his institution that increasingly feels besieged both at home and internationally while preserving his professed democratic credentials
d) Convince the nation whether the policies being pursued by the army are pro-Pakistan, pro-Afghanistan or simply anti-US.
But most important of all, the time is fast approaching where Gen Kayani may have to decide whether he is part of the national solution or the problem. Could there be a greater dilemma?

The writer is editor The News, Islamabad






The greatest dilemma of the general