Four Generals
Promised to Persuade Musharraf to Step Down as COAS
By
Rauf Klasra
ISLAMABAD,
November 12: The Pakistan Army Generals have all along been working
in close coordination with the extreme Right wing religious parties
and at least four seniors had given secret guarantees to the MMA
that they would ensure that General Musharraf would take off his
uniform by December 31, 2004.
This fact has now been publicly accepted
and revealed by the cornered MMA leadership as the crucial cut
off date of the uniform approaches and Musharraf ponders over
what to do, despite the maneuvers in the Parliament where he forced
his supporters to pass a law enabling him to stay as Army Chief.
But
while sitting on the Bill passed by the Upper and Lower Houses
of Parliament, the MMA has now started asking the guarantors publicly
to deliver what they promised. A report in the influential Friday
Times reveals the details. It says:
"Even
as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal prepares to carry out its threat
to launch a movement after Eid against General Pervez Musharraf’s
uniform, its leadership is trying, behind-the-scenes, to persuade
General Musharraf to remove his uniform.
The
MMA’s interlocutors are four top army generals which the
alliance approached secretly. Alliance sources told TFT that these
generals were instrumental in finalising the deal on the Legal
Framework Order and guaranteed to the MMA that as quid pro quo
for the passage of the 17th amendment, General Musharraf would
doff his uniform on December 31, 2004.
The
alliance has now approached these generals and wants them to prevail
upon Musharraf to honor that commitment. For their part, the generals
have reportedly told the MMA to sit tight and wait for the deadline
rather than raising ruckus within and outside the parliament.
This
back channel was confirmed to TFT by Liaquat Baloch, central leader
of the MMA and a top Jamaat-i-Islami leader. He said that the
alliance had contacted these generals because they were the guarantors
of the deal that allowed the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q to
push through the 17th amendment.
Interestingly, official sources remain
tight-lipped on this development. When TFT contacted some officials
and ministers, they refused to even comment. This included one
government spokesperson whose general lament is that the media
do not contact the government for its view.
The
four military generals approached by the MMA leadership include
new Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and former DG ISI,
General Ehsanul Haq, Deputy DG ISI, Maj. Gen. Zaki Zafar, Chief
of Staff to COAS, Lt. General (retd) Hamid Javed and former deputy
DG-ISI, now posted to Okara, Maj. Gen. Ehtasham Zameer.
Three
of these generals, excluding Lt. Gen. Hamid, are still serving
at top positions in the army. MMA sources claim they secretly
acted as guarantors on behalf of General Pervez Musharraf.
“We have approached them because
the civilian negotiators [SM Zafar, Ch. Shujaat Hussain, former
prime minister Jamali etc] had no power to give any commitment
on behalf of General Musharraf. They were part of the negotiations
just for ‘public and media consumption’,” Baloch
told TFT.
This fact was also brought to the
notice of the National Assembly by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who disclosed,
during debate on the uniform bill, how a team of military generals
had struck a deal with the MMA leadership soon after the October
polls. At the time Qazi had startled the entire house by saying
that General Musharraf had agreed to make Maulana Fazlur Rehman
the deputy prime minister of Pakistan and Liaquat Baloch as Speaker
of National Assembly, besides promising to induct a dozen or so
MMA MPs as federal ministers.
Qazi’s speech in the National
Assembly was the first official confirmation from the top MMA
leadership of the involvement of army generals in stitching the
deal between Musharraf and the alliance. Qazi had claimed that
these secret negotiations were held even before the maiden session
of NA was summoned on November 16, 2002. Another important revelation
was the claim by Qazi that General Musharraf had absolutely no
problem in working with the MMA as was generally perceived by
the media at home and abroad.
He told the house that it was the
MMA leadership that had walked out of the proposed deal and refused
to accept the offer to make Fazlur Rehman the Deputy PM because
Musharraf was not ready then to give a cut-off date to take off
his uniform. “He [Musharraf] wanted us [MMA] to accept him
in uniform for an indefinite period. But we weren’t prepared
to do that,” Qazi told the house.
Now,
Liaquat Baloch says the alliance has approached the generals who
helped cut the deal. “Yes, we have asked them to get Musharraf
to honor the deal,” he told TFT. When asked why the MMA
had contacted the generals to resolve a political issue and did
this not amount to involving the military in politics, Baloch
said the alliance had contacted the generals because “they
negotiated with us for breaking the political impasse over the
LFO issue”.
“If these generals had not
given us solid guarantees that Musharraf would take off his uniform
on December 31 we would not have signed the deal,” Baloch
said. “We now want to hold them to that promise.”
Official sources corroborate Qazi’s
and Baloch’s accounts and say Musharraf involved the generals
after the political interlocutors failed to get the MMA to sign
the deal. “He decided to deal with them directly and brought
in the generals,” one source told TFT.
It was obvious that Musharraf would
get the Inter-Services Intelligence to deal with the issue because
the ISI has a long history of political involvement and machinations.
So, three big guns of the ISI were made part of a team in addition
to Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid to negotiate with the MMA.
TFT
asked Baloch how the generals had reacted to the MMA’s demand
to get Musharraf to honor the deal. He said they were being ‘evasive’
and were ‘reluctant’ to entertain MMA’s complaints.
“They have told us to remain cool and calm and wait for
the deadline,” Baloch told TFT. “They have objected
to our making noises on the issue prematurely. They think it is
unjustified.”
The
MMA leadership thinks the generals are fobbing them off. “They
are now advising us to wait and see. But when they brought to
us the messages from their boss they praised him for being a man
of honor and commitment. They even told us that General Musharraf
was not like General Ziaul Haq,” Baloch told TFT.
Baloch said these generals were so
sure that Musharraf would keep his word that they just wanted
us to trust the words of their chief. “‘There is no
need to put all these assurances in black and white’ was
how they talked to us about him,” Baloch said.
Some
observers say the MMA has been hoist by its own petard. “They
broke away from the ARD to cut a deal and save their government
in the NWFP. Now that they find themselves in a trap they want
to talk about commitments and guarantees. They also say they oppose
the role of the army in politics and yet they were not averse
to making a deal with army generals. You can’t have your
cake and eat it too,” said one analyst."
