The United States official believe that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had ceded control over certain security matters to Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, and next month, top American officials will hold talks with the Pak army chief who, many people say, calls the shots on the issues Washington cares most about, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Gen. Sharif has eclipsed the authority of the country’s elected leaders on critical security-policy matters, including the fight against Islamic extremists, the Afghan peace process and the country’s nuclear weapons programme, officials and analysts say.
“The civilian entities don’t have the ability to deliver on a few things at this point,” a senior US official said. As for Gen. Sharif, the official said: “He can deliver.”Gen. Sharif has turned himself into a cult hero by battling terrorism and restoring a measure of order in Pakistan’s biggest and most violent city, Karachi.
That has bolstered the army’s standing and political power in a country where democracy has struggled to take firm root.
The improvement in Pakistan’s security situation is stark. The number of civilians and soldiers killed in terrorist attacks is on track to be lower this year than at any time since 2006, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks casualties. That has helped spark an economic rebound.
“There is God in the sky, and here on the ground there is Raheel Sharif,” said Muhammad Atiq Mir, Chairman All Karachi Tajir Ittehad, an association of small traders. Billboards in the city, paid for by local businesses, proclaim: “Thank you for saving Karachi, Raheel Sharif.”
Speaking to a small group recently at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London, Gen. Sharif said Pakistan’s lack of good governance had “created a vacuum” and required him to play a wide-ranging role as “a soldier-statesman,” according to a person who was present.
A senior aide to the prime minister said governing Pakistan was a “joint venture” between the elected civilian leadership and the military brass.
A western diplomat described it as an “unequal coalition” that now favors the armed forces. Since Pakistan became independent in 1947, military strongmen have competed and alternated with democratically elected political leaders.
The civilian government insists it is firmly in charge. “The prime minister is in the driving seat,” said Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif. He said it was Nawaz Sharif who was “managing the balance between institutions.”
Gen. Sharif, who is due to step down in November next year, declined to comment.
“The army chief identifies security gaps and flags them to the government,” said a senior Pakistan Army officer. “Like in any country, the military gives input.”
Pakistani politicians and political analysts, however, say the military’s sway has grown.
Earlier this year, military courts were set up to try civilians for terrorism, while the military sits on new “apex committees” that oversee internal security issues across the country.
In June, Asif Zardari, who served as president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013, gave a speech warning that the army was “stepping out of its domain.”
Ayaz Amir, a former lawmaker in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, said: “The army is setting the direction and taking the major decisions.”
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s English language newspaper, Dawn, published an editorial about the prime minister’s visit to Washington, saying: “Worryingly, for the civilian dispensation and the democratic project, Mr. Sharif has appeared an increasingly peripheral figure in shaping key national security and foreign policy issues.”
Current and former US officials said they believe the prime minister had ceded control over certain security matters to Gen. Sharif, while the prime minister focused on economy and other issues.
They said the prime minister appeared comfortable with the division of labor and that Gen. Sharif had been “supportive” of civilian institutions.
In a recent meeting in Rawalpindi, Gen. Sharif told a visiting US delegation how important it was to him “not to be seen as the main power” in Pakistan, according to a US official who was present.
The prime minister’s visit comes as the administration moved to finalize a long-standing plan to sell up to eight additional F-16s to Pakistan.
Administration officials said the proposed sale, aimed at bolstering Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign against militants, won’t be formally announced on Thursday.
Officials said Thursday’s meeting between Mr. Obama and the prime minister, in the absence of Gen. Sharif, was meant to highlight the importance the White House places on empowering Pakistan’s civilian government. But given the country’s history and the role of the armed forces, US officials said a transition to civilian leadership in all matters of state would take time.
Meantime, “the US can’t want something for the civilians more than they want it for themselves,” a senior administration official said.
A 59-year-old infantry officer and former commandant of Pakistan Military Academy, Gen. Sharif has won widespread approval for moving authoritatively where previous Pakistani leaders, military and civilian, have dithered.
The extent of his popularity in Pakistan has prompted intense speculation that his term as army chief could be extended.
Last year, he opened a new front in the fight against extremists with an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan insurgents and al Qaeda in North Waziristan — a move long advocated by the US and initially opposed by the prime minister.
Army-led forces have also led a bloody fight against jihadists and criminal gangs in Karachi. The campaign has won Gen. Sharif plaudits.
Gen. Sharif also has a high profile abroad. He met the British prime minister at his official Downing Street residence earlier this year.
Last year in the U.S. he met Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials and was awarded the US Legion of Merit for his contributions to peace and security.
When Afghan President Ashraf Ghani made his first visit to Pakistan after being elected last year, he drove straight from the airport to see Gen. Sharif at his headquarters in Rawalpindi — before going to nearby Islamabad to meet the civilian leadership.
Officials in Washington, Kabul and New Delhi, however, also accuse the defense establishment of continuing what they say is Pakistan’s policy of giving safe haven to the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups, and using them as proxy warriors in Afghanistan and India.
The US has warned Gen Sharif that it will withhold $300 million in military aid if Pakistan doesn’t do more to curb the Haqqani network, an insurgent group allied with the Taliban.
The US sees the Haqqanis as an arm of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.
The Pakistan Army maintains it is taking on all militants. “We are against use of proxies and won’t allow it on our soil,” Gen. Sharif said in London this month, according to his spokesman.
President Obama said last week that the US was keen for Pakistan to use its influence on the Afghan Taliban to advance peace talks between the militants and the Afghan government.
US and Afghan officials say Gen. Sharif was the force behind a brief breakthrough in the Afghan peace process earlier this year, when a group of senior Taliban were brought to meet Afghan government representatives just outside Islamabad.
The US has also been engaging in exploratory talks with Pakistan about a possible deal to limit the country’s growing nuclear weapons programme, seen as especially risky because of the country’s history of political instability and jihadist attacks on military installations.
