The army’s dominance is owed to structural problems. Simply wishing civilian control will therefore not push the army back. Indeed, civilian control is not an automatic outcome of democracy; it relates to effective control of the military. There are a number of countries in the world where militaries have not intervened and yet they lack effective civilian control of the armed forces. Among other things, controlling and monitoring the military requires civilian expertise in understanding the military and its functioning. No such expertise currently exists in Pakistan.
In addition to internal structural problems, Pakistan also faces, at this moment, external factors that require a measured response. While it is very easy to direct abuse at the US, fulminations do not make policy.
The difference between the two camps is one of methodology, not objectives. The transitionists too want to see the army relegated to the barracks and to its primary function. But they understand that given structural problems on one hand and the uncertainties of the situation on the other, it is much better to carry the army along to the next phase rather than facing the imponderables of a sudden transformation or change.
It is difficult to sell this argument in a charged atmosphere. People want change; in democracies, change is effected through constitutional procedures, one among them being elections. Winston Churchill was a great wartime prime minister, but the British electorate brought in Clement Atlee as it afforded a break from the ravages of war and their memory and dole queues.
Democracies can afford major changes because of built-in mechanisms. Not so with political systems that are precariously perched to begin with.
The other problem with the current binary split is the fact that no course of action is cost-free. For instance, it would be audacious on the part of any of the two camps to claim that their respective courses of action will not have negative fallout. But this is a problem more with idealist positions than pragmatic ones. And the idealist position here belongs to the transformationists who would like to bull in and let the chips fall where they might. This is our version of the chivalrous “Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium” (I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery).
But this chivalry may not be lasting and may well extract a high price. It would be instructive for the transformationists to read up on the literature on democratic transitions and the problem of consolidating the gains. The theoretical models in this literature are based on real political situations and derived through comparative studies of several states. Such study may give them some idea of the difficulties involved in keeping a ship in rough waters from running aground or, worse, making shipwreck.
The End
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