International Hall of Fame? By Dr Naeem Chishti

Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has been selected for the United States Army Command and General Staff College’s International Hall of Fame. The Hall “honours those officers of United States allies’ militaries who have attained the highest command positions in their national service component or within their nation’s armed forces.” The decision was communicated to General Kayani by Major General James R. Helmly, defence attaché at the US embassy in Islamabad, through a letter on March 20, 2008. Lt. General William B Caldwell IV, the commander of the Army’s Combined Arms Centre, which includes the C&GSC, said that General Kayani was the fourth Pakistani officer named to the hall, and met the requirements that he was a graduate and the chief of his service. According to him, the US Army has admitted 227 officers from more than 60 countries since the hall was established in 1973. Pakistan Army’s close cooperation with the US army started after Pakistan signed military pacts SEATO and CENTO in mid fifties following the dissolution of the First Constituent Assembly at the hands of Governor General Ghulam Muhammad. The relationship between the two armies was further strengthened when General Muhammad Ayub Khan seized power and declared himself President of Pakistan on October 27, 1958. Hundreds of Pakistan’s army officers have since then been sent on official training to the US C&GSC in Kansas. Not all the graduates were able to get themselves selected for the ‘International Hall of Fame’. Therefore, it is indeed a big honour for Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to be selected for the ‘International Hall of Fame’. After this selection, his photograph will also be displayed in the Hall with General Ziaulhaq who happens to be another Pakistani General who won this rare unique honour. General Ziaulhaq’s name or his services do not need much explanation. Suffice to say that he was born in Jalandhar in 1924 and was commissioned in the British Indian Army in cavalry regiment in 1943. After Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Zia joined the newly formed Pakistani Army as a major. He trained in the United States in 1962–1964 at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Zia was a tank commander. He was stationed in Jordan from 1967 to 1970, helping in the training of Jordanian soldiers, as well as leading the training mission into battle during the Black September in Jordan operations, a strategy that proved crucial to King Hussein’s remaining in power. On 1 April 1976, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto appointed Ziaulhaq as Chief of Army Staff, ahead of a number of more senior officers, most likely because he thought that General Zia did not have any political ambitions. However, General Ziaulhaq proved Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wrong. He not only seized power for himself on July 5, 1977 but also gave a permanent role to the Army in Pakistan’s politics. Much has been written about how the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was toppled and how General Ziaulhaq seized power. Most of the writers would agree that the United States was behind Bhutto’s removal. The main reasons for his removal were: his pivotal role in making the OIC as an active bloc against the US; his proposal to use oil as a weapon against the West and, above all, his relentless pursuit of nuclear program for Pakistan. The then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is on record for saying that the United States will make Bhutto an example for others. He was made an example when he was hanged in Rawalpindi in the wee hours of April 4, 1979. Pakistan’s new National Assembly is to adopt a resolution in its next session declaring Bhutto’s hanging as a ‘judicial murder’. If we accept that Bhutto’s hanging was a judicial murder that would automatically mean that whatever happened on Pakistan’s political scene following the National Assembly elections of March 7, 1977 was preplanned and both Pakistani and American intelligence agencies worked together in deposing Bhutto from power and in installing General Ziaulhaq as President. That would also mean that the close liaison between General Ziaulhaq and the CIA was not a sudden factor but it certainly had its roots in the former Pakistani President’s stay in C&GSC wherefrom he graduated in 1963 at the expense of the United States government. It is important that at least thirty of the C&GSC graduates selected for the International Hall of Fame rose in their countries to the position of President/Head of State. All of them belonged to developing countries and they seized power through coup-detat by overthrowing constitutional governments of their nations. They include: Brazil’s General Ernesto Geisel, General Humberto D Castello Branco; Burma’s General San Yu; Colombia’s Major General Gabriel Paris, Lieutenant General Miguel Ovalle; Ecuador’s Major General Guillermo Rodriguez Lara; El Salvador’s Lieutenant Colonel Jose Maria Lemus; Ethiopia’s Brigadier General Tefferi Bante; Ghana’s Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Acheampong; Guatemala’s General Carlos Castillo Armas and Brigadier General Kjell Laugerud Garcia; Korea’s General Chung II Kwon and Lieutenant General Song Yo Chan; Pakistan’s General Mohammad Ziaulhaq; Peru’s Lieutenant General Nicholas Lindley, Lieutenant General Edgardo Mercado and Captain Pedro Vargas Prada; Sudan’s Major General Jafar Mohamed Nimeri; Thailand’s General Kriangsak Chomanan; Venezuela’s General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud; Vietnam’s Lieutenant General Nguyen Khanh, General Duong Van Minh and Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thieu. This list is in not conclusive. Another Pakistani General who was selected for International Hall of Fame is General Jehangir Karamat. Karamat was made the Army Chief by the then President Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari in December 1996 when previous chief General Abdul Wahid Kakar’s three-year term was near expiration. Karamat was then given the additional post of chairmanship of Joint Chiefs of Staff in November 1997 by the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when the previous chairman Air Chief Marshal Farooq Feroze Khan’s three-year term ended. However, Karamat was forced to resign by Mian Nawaz Sharif when he criticized Pakistan’s political leadership and advocated a national security council that would give the military a constitutional role in running the country, similar to Turkey’s. He retired as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and as Chief of Army Staff in October 1998. Karamat’s statement was clearly political and was in violation of his oath as well as his constitutional duties. However, the prime minister was not able to take any action against him in view of the Army’s mighty role in the country’s politics. Apparently, General Jehangir Karamat refrained from imposing martial law in the country because at that time the Democrats were in power in the United States. President Clinton preferred to work with democratic governments in developing countries. As far as Pakistan is concerned he had made it clear that, despite Pakistan’s refusal not to test atomic bombs in May 1998, he would not support a military coup in Pakistan unless it was reactive in nature. Therefore, General Pervez Musharraf provoked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to sack him so that he could topple his government making Sharif fairly and squarely responsible for his coup. General Pervez Musharraf was successful in convincing the Clinton Administration that the military takeover of October 12, 1999 was in reaction to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ‘unconstitutional’ act of issuing his removal orders. To Musharraf’s good luck, the Republicans candidate George W Bsuh won the presidential election in 2000. This was followed by an attack on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 which gave Musharraf an ideal opportunity to consolidate his grip on power. Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has rightly diagnosed that the Armed Forces involvement in politics has resulted in decline of their professional standards as well as in bringing them into disrepute in the country. Therefore, he has already taken steps to depoliticize the Army. However, de-politicization alone would not be enough to restore the lost glory of our Armed Forces unless the process of de-Americanization is also started simultaneously. The best way to do this is to stop sending the officers on courses in foreign countries, particularly in the USA and the UK. General Pervez Musharraf never attended C&GSC in Kansas. Therefore, he could not be selected for the US ‘International Hall of Fame’. Instead he went to Royal College of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom where his tutor, while commenting on his performance in his report, remarked, “A capable, articulate and extremely personable officer, who made a most valuable impact here. His country is fortunate to have the services of a man of his undeniable quality”. General Musharraf’s British tutor may or many not have been right in his remarks. Whether Pakistan has been fortunate or unfortunate “to have the services of a man of his (Musharraf’s) undeniable quality” will be determined by the historians in future. However, we cannot afford to take such risks in future. Therefore, the new government of Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani must ban all the civil and military bureaucrats from attending courses in foreign countries even if they are free. It is the democratic countries of the West which have damaged democracy the most in Pakistan. Unless we take this drastic action to save our civil and military bureaucracy from their influence, we cannot hope to strengthen true democracy in Pakistan. The time has come that our civil and the military establishments should publish the lists of all those high ranking officers who attended courses in foreign countries with brief descriptions of the contributions made by them in the national development so that the citizens can make an appraisal of their roles.

Courtesy: The Frontier Post, 5/4/2008