Things are in a bit of a flux, so some of the facts might change by the time you read this. But even if they do, what wouldn’t have changed would be the way things originally played out in this particular episode.
In case you haven’t been living under a rock, you would know by now that the army chief has decided to let go of some officers of the Pakistan army. These include some generals as well.
On what charges? A bit of a haze there. Okay, but how many officers in total? Well, a certain lack of clarity there as well, with the figure fluctuating from six to 11. Why are things so unclear, you ask? Because there hasn’t been a formal word on this from the army itself. Yes, we hear of a now retracted original statement, but all this hullaballoo has been whipped up by a group within Whatsapp, the internet-enabled cell-phone messaging service.
This is a rather strange trajectory for the news media. Originally, there was print media, which was followed by broadcast news media. Then there was the online media, comprising, primarily, of the web pages of print and broadcast outlets. This was followed by social media, which democratised the news business further, placing power into the hands of even the one-man news operations.
But this latest case of the news being broken, not by an open Facebook page or a Twitter account, but by a Whatsapp group, a medium not as open and accessible to everyone as the others, had got to be a first.
Yes, the military is being contacted by national and international news outfits and yes, sources within are confirming the news, but the military’s principal spin doctor, the ISPR, is still silent.
Even if they break their silence by the time you read this, the way the news initially made its way to the public at large won’t change.
The specific timing of the Whatsapp leak is also key. The major general in question, a former IGFC (Balochistan), was actually removed from service in 2015. But back then, it hadn’t made that much of a buzz. Instances of senior military officers being penalised might be rare but aren’t unprecedented.
It is only in the context of the Panama Leaks — and the subsequent accountability speech by the army chief — that the dismissals seem like an unequivocally political move. A tactical move. And it has certainly paid off. In the media circus that has followed the leaks, all political pundits, including those that are firmly in the pro-democracy camp, are of the opinion that the noose around the prime minister has just gotten several notches tighter.
In the midst of the media maelstrom that followed the news of the dismissal, it is easy to forget just how little it takes to satisfy whatever little hunger there is in the collective hive mind of the public to make the army accountable.
The armed forces take up a little less than one out of every five rupees in the budget. And if you do your calculations by taking out debt servicing, the military’s pound of flesh comes to around a little less than a third of the budget.
Yet this huge head of expenditure is represented in the Finance Bill by only a couple of lines. It was this much last year, and it is this much this year. Not contested by opposition benches members either. This, from the institution that wants more accountability in the country.
The military claims it has a stern internal system of accountability but that doesn’t seem like much of an argument. All government departments, be they irrigation or culture, are audited by the audits and accounts services, despite internal accounting by the said systems. If the military has such a strong system, what really does it have to be scared of?
And it isn’t just the issue of possible misappropriations in what is a gigantic budget. The paramilitary forces and civil armed militias that are officered by the army, like the Rangers, Anti-Narcotics Force, Frontier Corps and others are uniquely placed to make a killing if the officer in question were so inclined.
In the current, as yet unnumbered set of sackings, it is not really clear what, specifically, was the crime. It is not certain what the spectrum of punishments are, ranging from premature forced retirements to dismissals.
As Saad Rafiq pointed out cautiously on Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Ke Saathon Geo News, this bit of accountability cannot be compared to civilian accountability. It’s like comparing apples with extremely small oranges.
