Pakistan has “very little or no tradition” of holding its armed forces accountable, says an editorial in today’s ‘Dawn’, the fearless Karachi newspaper that’s again venturing where few news organizations in the country would dare to tread.<\/p>\n
In the editorial titled ‘Storm in a teacup?’, Abbas Nasir, a formerDawn editor, writes that therecent storm over an article+<\/span>that talked about tensions between the civilian government and the Pakistani army, was just a manifestation of ” unequal power-sharing arrangements+<\/span> between the civilians and the military”.<\/p>\n That unequal relationship+<\/span> has meant the two institutions are “always prone to tensions”, Nasir writes.<\/p>\n “This anxiety can manifest itself in a number of ways…Most critics today blame the government, since there is very little or no tradition of holding the armed forces to account even where they choose to take the lead,” he explains.<\/p>\n Tellingly, the editorial points out that while the contentious article itself barely made headlines beyond the subcontinent, the travel ban on its author, Cyril Almeida+<\/span> , did.<\/p>\n For Islamabad, the Dawn story about government-military tensions came at a time when it has to be decided who will be appointed the new army chief. Raheel Sharif, the current chief of army staff, is scheduled to retire next month.<\/p>\n That appointment, “in any other country. ..would be a matter of routine to be dealt with according to laid-down policy and established practice.”<\/p>\n Not so in Pakistan, the editorial says.<\/p>\n “Ours is always a different case. Everyone knows that under the current constitutional provisions it is the prime minister’s prerogative to name the army chief….But historical experience causes anxiety among civilian politicians since they see their choice as having a bearing on whether or not they are able to complete their elected term in office,” the editorial says.<\/p>\n Since 1951, there have been three successful military coups in Pakistan and several unsuccessful attempts, all of which together would rattle any civilian government there.<\/p>\n And Nawaz Sharif is in a particularly precarious position.<\/p>\n As the editorial says, Sharif is battling revelations in the Panama Papers Leak and “the foreign policy shortcomings of the Sharif government are translating into international pressure on the government.”<\/p>\n The editorial shies away from specifying these shortcomings, but it’s clear, the lack of a crackdown on home-grown terror is the issue that’s brought Islamabad close to becoming an international pariah.<\/p>\n Ironically, it is this very issue that the Dawn article by Almeida addressed. And it this very issue that lead to more than a storm in a teacup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pakistan has “very little or no tradition” of holding its armed forces accountable, says an editorial in today’s ‘Dawn’, the fearless Karachi newspaper that’s again venturing where few news organizations in the country would dare to tread. In the editorial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23059,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23058\/revisions\/23059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23058"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=23058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}