He may have said it out of conviction or perhaps to please Rawalpindi. But by demanding that former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa “must be questioned about why he resettled these [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP] militants,” Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Asif could well have unwittingly annoyed the top brass of the country’s all-powerful military [appropriately referred to as the “establishment”], which is well known for fiercely protecting the dubious actions of its leadership from public scrutiny. 

Even at the cost of digressing, it would be in order to mention that some may argue that the arrest and ongoing court martial of former Director General [DG] of Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] Lt Gen Faiz Hameed [Retired] contradicts claims regarding existence of some sort of covert arrangement within the army that provides extra-constitutional immunity to Generals. While Lt Gen Hameed’s case may give the impression that as far as Rawalpindi is concerned, no one irrespective of rank is above the law, however, this notion is far from reality.

The fact of the matter is that the former DGISI’s trial is part of an elaborate plan entailing the killing of two birds with one stone conceived by Pakistan army chief Gen Syed Asim Munir with twin objectives. One, securing his own position as Pakistan’s supreme leader by politically emasculating Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf [PTI] chief Imran Khan who has dared question Rawalpindi’s extrajudicial authority and is hence a potential threat, and two, avenging the humiliation of being unceremoniously removed from the prestigious post of DG ISI by Khan in 2019 to make place for the PTI chief’s favourite Lt Gen Hameed.   

Returning to Defence Minister Asif’s demand for questioning Gen Bajwa, there’s no doubt that the Pakistan army is, through omission/commission [or both], solely responsible for the massive........

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