Pakistan is never short of news. As Arshad Nadeem became the first Pakistani to ever win an individual gold at the Olympics, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed became the first ever intelligence chief to get arrested. Arshad won national glory and a buffalo. Hameed could lose his reputation and his head. All this is vastly interesting in terms of the flamboyant Faiz Hameed himself. What is more interesting is what it says about the Pakistani army. The days when Indian army officers often saw the other’s army as quite alike itself in terms of a British-trained and disciplined force are long gone. Think again. Things are getting dangerous.
An absolutely efficient General
First, the issue of the arrested ISI Chief. Enough has been said about his prowess in the field and his now famous photograph at the Serena hotel in Kabul, sipping a cup of tea as the Taliban took over the country. Enough to say that no intelligence chief worth his salt would be seen dead in an operational area, where he has a strong role to play. But that was Faiz all over. He got the Taliban in, and he had no qualms about claiming it. Then was his equal prowess in bringing all Imran Khan’s opponents to a sticky end. That included the virtual creation of the right-wing Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), led by a fiery preacher, Khadim Rizvi, who led a series of protests against Nawaz Sharif that ate away at his political bastion in Punjab. That was when he was a Major General in charge of the counterintelligence wing, believed to have backed the famous 2017 Faizabad protests that brought Islamabad to a halt, even while an Army officer was seen paying them off later. It’s another matter that when Rizvi became too big for his boots, he died under mysterious circumstances shortly thereafter.
In 2017 was also the (in)famous Joint Investigation Committee against Nawaz Sharif that probed his alleged corruption, which included an extensive publication and televising of a series of reports that exposed his vast wealth. So brutal was the exercise that the then Chief Justice
Saqib Nisar observed that ISI and military intelligence officers were made part of the team to “spice it up”. Visuals of riches beyond the imagination of an average Pakistani finished Nawaz Sharif off in the eyes of the populace – for good. Faiz was nothing if not thorough.
‘Routine’ ISI businesses
But such exercises are hardly unusual in the agency. It’s all par for the course. Neither was the whole ‘Top City’ case, which is getting media attention now. Simply put, on May 12, 2017, the Pakistan Rangers and officials of the ISI raided the office of a massive property developed “Top City” and owner Kunwar Moiz and took away valuables, including gold and diamond ornaments and money, supposedly in a terrorism case. The owner was also pressured into giving a large slice of land to Faiz’s brother, a tehsildar, who was arrested in
March this year. The brothers clearly had large ambitions; as scholar
Ayesha Siddiqa observes, hundreds of acres of land were thus ‘acquired’. The case landed up on a bench that included Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Isa (accused of being overtly lenient to Imran Khan), who directed the military to probe allegations that included a whole group of ISI officers and at least two Brigadiers and
six others from the agency.
None of this still explains why Faiz Hameed was arrested. There have been dozens of such cases before. Remember the Mehran Bank case, when a bank was literally carved out for the express purpose of disbursing funds to diverse politicians to oppose the then liberal Benazir Bhutto? That was in the 1990’s and dragged on for years. Younis Habib, a former chief of the Mehran Bank, revealed that he was pressured by then army chief Mirza Aslam Beg and the President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, to transfer some
Rs 1.48 billion, out of which Rs 140 million were distributed among political parties while the rest were invested in “army welfare schemes” and transferred to account numbers provided by ISI officials. He went to jail. The others got off scot-free. Another little nugget. Allegedly, some Rs
50 million was paid to Bangladesh’s Khaleda Zia to enable her to fight Sheikh Hasina at the time. How much of that actually went into ISI’s pockets remains unknown. Then was money paid to jehadis in the Kashmir ‘struggle’, much of which was siphoned off by ISI officials on the ground.
In other words, the ISI and its henchmen have been having fun for years. But the military is not usually very quick to act against its own. Earlier, some
12 army officers were arrested for corruption and made to pay heavy fines, but they kept their pensions intact. Then was the serious attempt at a coup by a triumvirate in 1995 that aimed to kill the Army Chief and Benazir Bhutto. That trial was still going on in 2023. But matters have undoubtedly been getting worse. In April 2024, Lt Gen Ayman Bilal Safdar, the GOC 1 Corps, resigned after the ISI recorded critical comments he made about Gen. Munir during a Saudi Arabia visit. Then was the response to the May 9 violence, which cost at least three senior army officers their jobs, including an honourable Lieutenant General who refused to fire on the protestors.
Then is the instance of Khadija Shah, grand daughter of former Army Chief Asif Nawaz Janjua, who was arrested together with a ‘son-in-law of a retired four-star general, wife of a retired three-star general, and wife and son-in-law of a retired two-star general’, according to the
military spokesman. Rumours abound of further arrests of army officers over their sympathies with Imran Khan. It’s not just the army. Just days ago, a
senior official of Adiala Jail was arrested for being a “messenger’ to Khan. Now Pakistani business is hit badly by an internet slowdown, as the Army Chief
declared that ‘digital terrorism’ (read social media and Whatsapp) was at the heart of the danger to Pakistan. In other words, it’s not just Hameed and his group, but almost the entire population that is being held as suspects.
The key question
Now here’s the icing on the cake. Remember that the whole Top City case dates back to 2017 (or earlier) after which the then Major General Faiz Hameed was promoted to one of the most sensitive posts in the country. Certainly he could have been shielded by the then army chief, General Bajwa, one of the most corrupt army chiefs, with his “Papa Joe’s” chains and dirty money. But appointments like this are not just the prerogative of a chief. It is scrutinised across the board. Now Faiz Hameed is also charged with treasonous activity after his retirement, presumably related to the May 9 violence. He is to face a Field General court martial despite having retired in December 2022, due to an
Amendment in 2023, which makes political activity punishable to even retired officers (within 2 years), or if he held a sensitive post, for 5 years after retirement.
Paranoia and the Pakistani army
The upshot of it all is two. First, the present Chief of Army, Gen Asim Munir, has gone down a road of arresting his own people, where there is no turning back. He has alienated an entire echelon of officers and, worse, their families, leading to a kind of accelerating paranoia based on the reality of deep divisions within the army. That means anyone and everyone is suspect. It is entirely likely that this paranoia will turn around and hit him soon, especially as the trial of Gen Hameed is likely to draw in more officers, especially the former Army Chief Qamar Bajwa. But all this is Pakistan’s internal mess and has not really a lot to do with India. It’s the second issue that is dangerous. What was once a highly disciplined force has degenerated due to the all too frequent military rule and now ‘hybrid’ regimes into a corrupt group that can take any action to suit itself.
Remember, armies are kept at a distance from civilians and politicians for a reason. Governance implies bending the rules, bribery, and deceit even in the most advanced democracies. Militaries, on the other hand, are expected to behave with decorum and integrity for the simple reason that they are armed and dangerous and trained to be so. To mix one with the other is asking for serious trouble, where neither governance nor defence of the country is in good hands. Under Asim Munir, this decay has worsened to a level not seen before and is likely to create unrest within the force itself. If India is even thinking of possible talks with its unstable neighbour, this needs to be kept in mind. Talking could get a better insight into the dangers within, but the key question is, just who is in charge? Certainly not Gen Munir and his coterie. They’re too busy biting their nails to the bone.
The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. She tweets @kartha_tara. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
