Fauji Fascism
Has No Limits: Next Target is Pakistan Embassy in Washington
By
Muhammad-Najm Akbar
WASHINGTON,
August 27: Currently Ambassador-at-Large, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri,
the almost ousted ex-Foreign Minister, confirmed last week that
as widely speculated the Army will re-conquer Pakistan’s
Embassy in the United States within a few weeks.
After
the approbation of the US government, General (retd) Jahangir
Karamat will become the new Head of Mission in Washington. There
is no way new PM Shaukat Aziz will oppose this decision.
Surprisingly,
however, the people of Pakistan have been supported, to some extent,
in keeping a civilian face abroad by a less assertive but in this
regard highly effective European Union. One after the other, the
governments of the EU have refused to grant agre’ments to
the Fauji (Army) Ambassadors to the member states.
There
was not a single Fauji Ambassador in EU when I left Paris two
years ago and most probably there is none at the moment. I hope
that as the EU expands, including Turkey, the green pastures for
the Faujis will shrink further.
As
the EU members refused to grant agre’ments to Fauji Ambassadors,
they had to be redirected to destinations of least Fauji preference
like Middle East, Latin America and South East Asia. One of them
even condescended to replace me in Beirut.
The
US has followed a consistent policy of massive induction of
non-Senior Foreign Service Ambassadors and as the request for
a Fauji’s agre’ment comes from the Major Non-NATO
Ally, there is every likelihood of another victory for the Army
on the external front and to make a dent into the EU resistance
to the reinforcement of army rule in Pakistan.
The
EU is not in a position to seek US support for its ban on the
Fauji Ambassadors but if Washington decides to join its transatlantic
partners, it would be a generous tribute to the EU symbolism of
non-violent support to the democratic forces in Pakistan.
My
ex-colleagues in the Foreign Service are not the only beneficiaries
of the EU blockade. This decision has several merits for any country
or Foreign Service under siege.
Foreign
Missions can play a significant role in sending policy inputs
back home. It is, therefore, natural for army regimes to distrust
the Foreign Service, the present Establishment being very much
part of the continuum.
Not
a single serving officer of this otherwise docile service has
won military government’s confidence to become Foreign Secretary.
All two appointments to this office made by General Musharraf
have been on contract, an easy technique to control top bureaucracy
and ensuring unflinching personal loyalty.
Senior
appointments like this and the Fauji Ambassadors foreclose all
possibilities of sending objective analyses to a regime, which
is least interested in whatever little pro-democracy elements
abroad want to transmit.
There
is also a bigger disadvantage of Fauji postings: institutionalizing
inefficiency in Pakistan’s official presence abroad. By
the time, the Fauji Ambassadors are inducted - and the Faujis
incorporated at lower levels in the Foreign Service will readily
testify to it - they have totally exhausted their capacity to
learn and hence are absolutely unsuitable for a job that requires
constant education and perpetual adaptability, traits that Foreign
Service Academy seeks to inculcate into the Third Secretaries
right from the inception of their careers.
Most
inductees at the top, unfortunately, begin as Third Secretaries
as they have no idea of what they are required to do. The ex-Army
Chief, will be no exception. He will be a Third Secretary sitting
in a wrong office. I had to accompany him on one of his diplomatic
forays into Europe and realized how ineffective our top brass
tends to be outside the circle of darbaris (courtiers) and sycophants.
Pakistan
Army is deeply entrenched in our internal administrative structure.
The coup makers of July 1977 reserved a quota of 10 percent for
army induction into the CSP over and above all other channels
of infiltration into the power centers.
Some
of them were fine individuals. So, I have always resisted the
intuition to fit them into a Gestapo-kind of scenario where all
of them were hurled into the Civil Services with an ISI mandate.
The
Fauji inductees certainly brought a different mind set to the
Civil Services which was least democracy-friendly and all of them
theoretically were capable of and logistically poised to assess,
monitor and sabotage progressive forces in Pakistan.
It
was equally unintelligible that the GHQ deprived itself of well-trained
personnel, some of them F-16 pilots, and other highly skilled
individuals trained abroad, whose technical capabilities were
not even marginally relevant to their new jobs.
The
inductees from the army were sent to only a few of the services
- Police, District Management Group, and Foreign Service of Pakistan.
Other services were considered unworthy of them.
There
was no homogeneity in the selection process for the civilian and
the army officers. The civilians appeared in a competitive examination
and went through a rigorous selection process afterwards. The
army officers were required only to appear before a high-level
interview board, different from the FPSC and as such driven by
no consideration of standardization of decision-making or mainstreaming.
Few
of the Fauji inductees were certainly talented individuals. It
would be interesting, however, to launch a formal investigation
into the patterns of their selection that brought them before
the interview board, which eventually sent them to the Civil Services.
Only
under a strong civilian government, it would be possible to see
how the power structure intersected with the selection process.
Some Parliamentary Committee might one day ask for such details
as to what was the criteria on which they were short-listed.
As
a matter of fact, many of the Fauji inductees had either closely
worked with or were personally related to the army top brass.
In one induction in a grade higher than BPS-17, the sons-in-law
constituted 100 percent of the intake. If a prospective son-in-law
went back on the conjugal commitment after induction, the top
brass secured another berth and ensured a matrimonial link to
that department of the government.
In
1981 General Zia-ul-Haque told my batch mates that he would not
rescind his decision of 10 percent Fauji quota as he wanted to
"marry-up" the civilian and armed forces' wings of his
government. Zia-ul-Haque had found another front to attack the
occupied people of Pakistan. The sons-in-law of the nation, overwhelmingly
undergraduates, were given a day's seniority over their most brilliant,
talented and many-a-times highly qualified civilian counterparts.
General
Zia-ul-Haque wanted the nation's power brokers to be in no doubt
about who was in command. The influence of the power brokers also
reflected in the career patterns of their "footholds"
into the system.
Years
ago, as probationers, a late additional secretary of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs told us that there existed some guidelines
for postings/rotation of foreign service officers to various stations.
The missions were thus divided into categories such A, B, C. I
have seen officers moving from A to A stations, within a continent,
worst still within a country, without a shred of professional,
legal or moral justification for such travesty of regulations.
A
specimen of this draconian phenomenon can be seen in the most
recent list of Fauji inductees submitted by the Government to
the National Assembly on August 20, 2004. The government list
shows how General Musharraf has monopolized and personalized the
entire productive apparatus of the country.
The
offices held by the army, according to this list, include: Chairman,
Pakistan Steel Mills Karachi; National Reconstruction Bureau;
Chairman, National Fertilizer Corporation; Managing-Director Utility
Stores Corporation; Secretary, Defense Division; Chairman, National
Electric Power Regulatory Authority; Chairman, State Engineering
Corporation; Chairman, Alternate Energy Board; Director-General,
Civil Defense; Chairman, Gwadar(new seaport) Development Cell;
Executive Director, Frequency Allocation Board; Chairman, Karachi
Port Trust; DG, Pakistan Post Offices; DG, Health; Additional
Secretary, Defense Ministry; MD, Federal Employees Benevolent
and Group Insurance Funds; DG, National Institute of Public Administration;
Executive Director, Pakistan National Shipping Corporation; General
Manager, National Highway Authority; Secretary, Evacuee Trust
Property Board; Executive Director, Planning and Projects, PNSC;
DG License Enforcement, Pakistan Telecom Authority; DG, Federal
Directorate of Education; DG, Pakistan Baitul Maal (Collector
of the Booty); DG, Marine Fisheries Department; Joint Secretary,
Cabinet Division; Chief Engineer and Ship Surveyor, Ports and
Shipping Wing, Karachi; Deputy DG, Intelligence Bureau; DG, National
Security Council Secretariat; Joint Director, Vigilance, Pakistan
Railways; Executive Director, National Institute of Health.
Regrettably
even Baitul Maal or the Employees Benevolent Fund have
to be run by army officers, primarily because they handle other
peoples money and Faujis are not accountable for it. In a nation
reeling under unemployment and growing incidence of poverty, Fauji
Fascism knows no limits.
Postings
of Fauji Ambassadors, like in Washington, is yet another method
of spreading oppressive tentacles of army Raj through Pakistan's
body politic and render a nation of 150 million people totally
vulnerable to the machinations of Generals and their minions.
For
the time being, however, there is no hope of Washington lending
a helping hand to the EU in its limited effort to reverse this
tide.
The
writer has recently sought premature retirement as a senior Pakistani
diplomat
