• 29 November, 2024
Foreign Affairs, Geopolitics & National Security
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Bonapartism and Pakistan

Rizwan Tahir
Fri, 13 Aug 2021   |  Reading Time: 3 minutes

Bonapartism refers to when Army Generals in the country start making all kinds of crucial decisions related to the state. In 1972, Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto removed Lt General Gul Hassan from Army Chief’s position after a drama and then appointed General Tikka Khan as Army Chief. On that day, Bhutto came out in public and said that, finally, today, we have eradicated the culture of Bonapartism in Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan will now look forward to a bright future in the years to come. Alas, it could not happen because Generals were not prepared to give up their space. Therefore, they implemented the Martial Law in 1977, executed the mighty Bhutto to make him vanish from the political scenes, and then started the Afghan jihad in 1979. All those things gave a new lease of life to Bonapartism and strengthened the Army’s grips on Pakistan’s everyday politics.

In September 2020 , Mian Nawaz Sharif (MNS), former prime minister of Pakistan, gave his speech at All Parties Conference (APC) asking Army not to interfere in politics and play its part as per the constitution. Interestingly Pakistan Army spokesperson General Iftikhar Babar gave the rebuttal on the mainstream media that politicians like Nawaz Sharif drag us into politics by sending their emissaries such as Zubair Omar asking for political concessions.

Similarly, we also heard a story from Sheikh Rasheed on mainstream media that Pakistan Army Chief has called the meeting of opposition politicians, including Sherry Rahman, Bilawal Bhutto, and Shabaz Sharif in an Army mess to discuss the Gilgit Baltistan issue. In this meeting, civilian politicians rejected the Army Chief’s proposal of making Gilgit Baltistan a province. Yet they insisted that on a free and fair election in Gilgit Baltistan and argued that these issues need to be discussed in the parliament, which ought to represent the people of Gilgit Baltistan.

Amid this meeting, Sherry Rahman asked this question of why Prime Minister Imran Khan is not chairing such a crucial and vital meeting? General Bajwa chose not to reply to this question. However, when another politician and ally of Imran Khan, Sheikh Rasheed, was asked the same question in the mainstream media, he innocently replied, ” Maybe Imran Khan was not invited for such a meeting by Army Chief.”

Interestingly, it seems that nowadays, generals in Pakistan call the shots and have successfully created the “State over the state.” Politicians under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif have started challenging the Generals or Generals are more precisely fighting to keep this Bonapartism alive and kicking in Pakistan. However, now the agonizing issue is that Generals are not being challenged for their space, not by the Sindhi politician like ZA Bhutto or Pathan/Baluch politicians like Wali Khan and Nawab Akbar Bugti. They are now being challenged by a Punjabi politician Nawaz Sharif. Generals have once created him to counter the mighty Bhutto in the 1970s and 80s.

Punjab has always been a strong base for the Pakistan Army. This must be giving the Generals sleepless nights when they see Maryam Nawaz attracting so much crowd on Lahore’s streets and watching the Punjabis in towns and villages gluing to their computers and televisions to listen to the speech of Mian Nawaz Sharif in the APC. It seems that now daggers are drawn. There is a serious fight going on in the open (unfortunately) between Pakistan Army, more precisely Generals, and Mian Nawaz Sharif for this space. In this process, Imran Khan has been sidelined by the Army. More precisely, he has lost his venom (if any) and became irrelevant in this crucial fight for space between civilian supremacy and Bonapartism in Pakistan.

Pakistanis need to think that in the future, we want to make Pakistan like Bangladesh and South Korea, by living under civilian supremacy or choose to live like the people in the countries such as North Korea or Myanmar. Anyway, we will be watching this fight between Generals and politicians on the streets in the months to come, and most democrats will be looking forward to seeing if the dream of civilian supremacy will ever become the reality in Pakistan.



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