Army’s intervention in politics detrimental to country, says ex-ISI chief

Former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director general Lt Gen (r) Asad Durrani has said that the meddling of the military in the political affairs, though a reality, was “detrimental to the country”.

In an interview with BBC Urdu, the former general said whether the army should intervene in politics or not is a debate that has led us nowhere. “Our experience tells us that whenever the military intervened, the political parties ostracised staged a comeback,” Durrani said.

“Gen Ayub Khan was supposed to keep Zulfikar Ali Bhutto out, but he staged a comeback and got elected. After Ziaul Haq, Benazir Bhutto came to power.”

The same thing happened during the regime of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf. “The two parties which he thought should be kept out – PPP and PML-N –were elected to power. So, this political engineering is harmful,” he said.

“Imran Khan’s biggest problem is the impression that he did not come to power by himself and that he came with a khaki burden. Some people don’t learn from history because they say we will create our own history,” Durrani added.

The former general also talked about challenges faced by Pakistan on external and internal fronts.

“If you ask me challenges from outside, I would say Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey pose new challenges,” he said. The former ISI chief went on to say that “India has not always been the biggest threat to us”.

“The country is facing three types of challenges: economy, political instability, and social cohesion,” he said.

“There are some areas like Balochistan where there is unrest among people who feel politically alienated and deprived. The economy is in bad shape…. The government’s credibility is bad because people believe it has been brought into power by the military,” he said.

He also opposed the changing of status of Gilgit-Baltistan which, he said, will be a blow to the Kashmir cause.

“When I was looking after the affairs of Kashmir, a close friend of mine, Yusuf, explained to me that the day we made the mistake of changing GilgitBaltistan status, it would be a big blow to our Kashmir cause,” he said but did not explain who Yusuf was.

“You may give more rights to G-B, if you want to, but it should not be forcibly made a province of Pakistan,” said Durrani, while commenting on recent government promises of giving Kashmir the provincial status.