The denial earlier this week that the Indian prime minister had used the back channel to contact Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ahead of the match at Mohali had Pakistanis puzzled. Of all the army chiefs Pakistan has had, they said General Kayani is the least interested in politics. Why would anyone want a back channel with him when he has been so open, they asked.
Kayani meets a select group of journalists for lunch every month. At one such meeting, he was asked what his (the Pakistan army’s) view was on talks with India. He said quite clearly: “We will go along with the government on this.” When the Malakand and FATA operations – where the army was trying to militarily overcome Pakistan’s own people – were undertaken, Kayani got the director general military operations (DGMO) to brief Parliament and got elected representatives to suggest what should be done next. “There is no reason for the army not to be on board on India. If he’d wanted a coup, he would have done one by now,” commented a retired Pakistani General about Kayani.
Kayani has recently been given another three years in the job, in itself unprecedented. Three years is plenty of time to improve his current golf handicap (average, at 18), and to try giving up smoking (he’s a chain-smoker and though he succeeded in kicking the habit once, he restarted when he was DGMO and Operation Parakram was on).
So here are some must-knows about Kayani.
A reserved man, Kayani has a reputation of talking little but getting a lot done. He has very few friends but if he shares anything he shares it with these men. His dearest friends are Defence Secretary, Lt General (retd) Syed Athar Ali who took over in November 2008; and Lt General (retd) Imtiaz Hussain who heads the Army Welfare Trust. Both are infantrymen who have trained at the Command and Staff College, Quetta with Kayani in his salad days. If anyone knows what is going on in Kayani’s head, it is these two.
Kayani is an infantryman, the son of an army non-commissioned officer. He received his commission in the Pakistani army in 1971 in the prized Baloch Regiment. His father died when he was training at the military academy. The task of supporting his family – he was the oldest of four brothers – fell on him.
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In 2002, he was appointed commander of the key Rawalpindi Corps. Why is this key? Since theoretically, while the army is fighting crucial battles in Swat and Balochistan, it is Rawalpindi that is the centre of political – and strategic – action.
In 2003, then President Pervez Musharraf gave Kayani charge of investigating two assassination attempts on him. All intelligence agencies in the country were tasked to work with him. In a few months, Kayani had unravelled the two plots and arrested many culprits, chiefly from the lower ranks in the Pakistan Air Force. On this basis, in 2004 he was promoted to head the ISI. Musharraf promoted only two Generals to 4-star: Kayani and General Tariq Majid, now retired, who became chairman joint chiefs of staff committee.
After General Musharraf shrugged off his uniform, Kayani gave no indication of wanting to wear a civilian hat. In fact, he likened coups to temporary bypasses that are created when a bridge collapses on democracy’s highway. After the bridge is repaired, he said to a Pakistani newspaper, there’s no longer need for the detour. Kayani is the most important man in Pakistan today: not for what he does, but for what he is unlikely to do — hobble the working of the civilian government. You could argue that this is unnecessary because everything the government does, he knows about. But the difference between him and General Musharraf is: the element of unvaunted ambition is missing here. Kayani has been correct to the point that General Musharraf has complained to friends that the new chief has not spoken to him even once after Musharraf left the country.
Kayani’s favourite general is the chief of general staff — Lt General Waheed Arshad — from the Armoured Corps. He is the de facto number two in the Pakistan army, which has no vice chief of army Staff. Arshad was made chief of general staff without having commanded a corps. Three generals who had worked with him in the ISI are now his most trusted Corps Commander — General Asif Yaseen Malik in Peshawar; General Rashad Mehmood in Lahore from his own Baloch Regiment; and Lt General Mohammad Zahirul Islam in Karachi. So the ISI is very much in the Pakistan decision-making loop, but legitimately so. Rawalpindi is occupied by Lt General Khalid Nawaz Janjua, also from the Baloch Regiment.
In other words, there is no danger of a coup from within the army. The chief of army staff is a man immune to the seduction of civilian and political power. And what is more, he is in the saddle for at least another three years. So the Pakistan army, as much for India as for Pakistan, poses no danger to peace. For the moment.