Haris
August 30, 2007, 9:27am
9
Re: The New Power Structure after “Deal”
the armed forces in pakistan has gone through several phases of evolution..from 1947-58 the C in C was not by virtue of precdence the Army. Pakistan inherited the British Armed forces structure which places the navy as the top force, Ayub Kahn resented that and his first move when he overthrew the civilian govt was to downgrade the navy. From 58-73/74 the C in C system worked, now Ayub Khan was not appointed by seniority he was appointed by a mixture of fate and because he was deemed not ambitious. So under his term anxious not to repeat the same mistake he made himself field marshall. This worked till after the 65 war when he appointed Yahya who ruled not through personal stature but through a group of generals. So when Yahya was ousted ( his supporters and him were threatened with being bombed out of office) general Gul hasan took over, after Gul Hasan brought back ZAB, he in turn was ousted by ZAB with the backing of other generals. ZAB realised Pakistans army had what he called a Bonpartist tendency so he pushed through reforms creating a joint chief and a COAS, thereby diluting the armys power and making the COAS more dependant on the corp commanders. In reality his reforms were never completed and he became dependant on the army again by needlessly taking on the opposition in Balochsitan and the frontier. From Zia onward military rule formally was decided more through the corp commander meetings and the other forces were sidelined totally. PAF, the navy, engineering and medical corp have all been kept out of the loop and generally as a result they have maintained a higher level of professionalism. After all as is unversally known, no good soldier wants to get involved in politics.
Very informative post Zakk! :k:
Thanks for summing it up well, I had some confusion regarding the basis of the diff between C-in-C system and COAS.