Former head of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, Lt Gen (retd) Asad Durrani, has blamed some army chiefs rather than the institution for military takeovers in the country.
Delivering a lecture here at the International Institute of Strategic Studies on the reasons for frequent military coups, Durrani said the institution had never intervened itself. It had been invited by politicians.
LONDON: Former head of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, Lt Gen (retd) Asad Durrani, has blamed some army chiefs rather than the institution for military takeovers in the country.
Delivering a lecture here at the International Institute of Strategic Studies on the reasons for frequent military coups, Durrani said the institution had never intervened itself. It had been invited by politicians.
He said the military would never intervene unless it is fully assured that there would not be mass public resentment against such an action.
Giving the examples of General Aslam Beg, General Asif Nawaz and General Jehangir Karamat, he said that the situation was ripe for all those chiefs of army staff to take over but they resisted the temptation.
On the other hand, there was, he said, no political vacuum when General Ziaul Haq and General Pervez Musharraf intervened - “rather there was a lot of politics in the country on both occasions.” He said if the army were to come in on the invitation of politicians, then it would always be in power.
According to Gen Durrani, military interventions had never posed any problems for their chiefs because the institution followed the leaders without a whimper and the courts always gave legitimacy to the coups using the doctrine of necessity or citing their success.
“But the problem starts when the coup leaders look around for political legitimacy.” This urge for political legitimacy forced the coup leader to recruit pliable political leaders who then became a burden and did not let him formulate a decent exit strategy, he said and it became something like riding a tiger for the coup leader, he said.
“In order to keep politicians on his side, the coup leader starts manipulating the elections as most of his allies would never have won an election or have lost their acceptance among their voters by the time,” he said adding that the army should never have gone against the tribes in the tribal areas and now he thought it had become a no-win situation.
