"Assuming Shuja Pasha has done all those great and glorious things for the nation. Even then, when it’s time for him to retire, give him a medal, shake his hand and say khuda hafiz. Pakistan zindabad." –Photo by APP

Just how much disregard does the army have for rules and civilians? Let’s rewind to a year and a half ago. On Sept 30, 2008 the front page of Dawn announced: ‘Kayani shakes up army command’.

The accompanying article reads: “In a major reshuffle in the army’s top command, Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Monday brought in a new head of the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) …

“Perhaps the most surprising of all such changes is the appointment of Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha as the new director-general of ISI .... A highly professional soldier in his own right, Lt-Gen Pasha has, for the past over two years, been overseeing the ongoing security operation in the tribal areas and parts of the NWFP.”

“In his capacity as the director-general military operations (DGMO) he was directly responsible for the launching and execution of all major security strikes in Fata and Swat, the latest being the major onslaught against religious extremists in the Bajaur tribal agency.”

All stuff that’s been re-hashed in recent days, culminating with the announcement of Pasha’s one-year extension. What the report did not address, though, were two things: the prime minister’s role and how long Pasha’s term was to last.

The missing details tell a story of their own.

Several weeks ago, trying to understand the arcane rules that are meant to govern the appointment of an ISI chief, I got a quick tutorial from a former head of the spy agency.

The rules, I was told, are clear-cut. The prime minister is the appointing authority and he can appoint anyone: civilian or uniformed; man, woman or, what I suspect was a rueful joke, monkey. Of course, there is often a gulf between the de jure and the de facto when it comes to civil-military relations: traditionally, the COAS has arrogated to himself the authority to appoint his spy chief, I was also told.

The 2008 Dawn report also contains this little nugget: “Gen Kayani … has put in place a new team to implement his vision for reviving the prestige of the armed forces and for enhancing the security of the state.”

So what, you ask. The army has always been in charge of national security. Nothing surprising there.

But someone around Kayani must have scratched his head and reached for a multi-year calendar. Right, that person must have thought, the chief wants Pasha to “implement his new vision” but Pasha is supposed to be put out to pasture in March 2010. That’s just 15 months away.…

Army folks can, of course, never question their boss about promotions and the like, so even if anyone did the little arithmetic necessary to realise the obvious he would never have dared raise the issue.

But for those of us not in uniform, we must ask: why was a man with 15 months to retirement picked as the spy chief to help steer his boss’s new vision for the country’s security policy? If the job wasn’t done in 15 months, then what?

Then he gets an extension.

I haven’t met Pasha, though I suspect that even if I were to, I wouldn’t be able to establish that he has in fact done all the great and glorious things attributed to him by, funnily enough, unnamed sources in recent weeks.

But let’s assume he has done all those great and glorious things for the nation. Even then, when it’s time for him to retire, give him a medal, shake his hand and say khuda hafiz. Pakistan zindabad.

But no. We’re told, again by those oh-so-loquacious sources, that Pasha is vital, that he’s needed for the sake of ‘continuity’, that without him the ‘new’ security policy can’t be implemented.

Welcome to Club Indispensable.

It’s a great club to be a part of. Everyone loves you, the media sings paeans to your heroic deeds, and nobody thinks to ask the obvious: how does staying on reflect on your peers?

The army, its members never tire of telling us, is an institution. It is professional, its officers are world-class, its training second to none. So is there no general in his early 50s, with several decades of training under his belt, in the entire upper echelons of the Pakistan Army who can fill Pasha’s enormous shoes?

And this whole business of a ‘critical moment’ in the counter-insurgency is a red herring. Hasn’t the army itself told us to be patient? That counter-insurgencies take years to win? Don’t the textbooks on counter-insurgency suggest that they typically last at least a decade, sometimes two? How does a one-year extension fit into that bigger picture?

The most charitable explanation for Pasha’s extension, and, let’s get real, Kayani’s later this year, is that that Kayani and Pasha are fighting the good fight, that of reorienting the Pakistan Army and changing its security outlook.

That could be true. But that would also mean Kayani has decided to wage this struggle behind closed doors, away from the scrutiny of other institutions and the public the army ostensibly protects.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not terribly confident that the army has finally produced something it never has before: a general who can, with the help of just a few uniformed allies, change the course of the country’s security policy for the better.

The least charitable explanation would be that Kayani is so disdainful of the government and the man who leads it, Zardari, that he isn’t about to waste time negotiating with them as equals, or even slight unequals.

In which case, Kayani has kept Pasha by his side because he can. After all, the generals know best and the ‘bloody civilians’ just don’t get it.

In which case, we, the people, might as well pack it all up and hand it over to the generals. Here, it’s your country anyway, you guys run it. Just do us a favour and don’t do what those other guys, Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf, did. Preposterous. That’s not Kayani, you say.

Time will tell. At the moment, only this is certain: you, me and our elected representatives are mere passengers in a vehicle that we can only pray Kayani and his boys know the destination of.

Welcome to Club Helpless.

cyril.a@gmail.com