Rana Banerji, one of India’s experts on the Pakistan army, says Asim Munir is likely to be more hardline in his attitude to India than the outgoing Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa but adds that the 2003 ceasefire along the LoC, which was reinforced in early 2021, will be strictly enforced.
Below is the full text of the interview he gave to Karan Thapar about General Munir’s background, his relationship with different politicians, his attitude to India and more.
Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. Earlier today the Pakistan government, headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the name of the country’s new Army Chief. It is Lieutenant General Asim Munir. And so, today we ask: What do we know about General Asim Munir? How will Imran Khan respond to this appointment? And what do we know about General Munir’s attitude to India?
Joining me to answer these questions is the former Special Secretary in Charge of R&AW and the author of a seminal book on the Pakistan Army, The Pakistan Army: Composition, Character and Compulsions, Rana Banerji.
Mr Banerji, let me start with that simple question; what do we know about General Asim Munir, the new Pakistan Army chief? I know that he was Quarter Master General until his announcement today as the new Army chief. I also know that he has earlier served as Director General Military Intelligence and briefly as Director General of the ISI. What more can you tell us about General Munir?
Rana Banerji: Yes, thank you Karan. General Munir was first Commander Northern Areas, which looks after the Gilgit-Pakistan border with India when General Bajwa was the 10 Core Commander in Rawalpindi. Before then, he has also served a stint as a Defense Attache in Saudi Arabia. He is from the 17th course of the Officers Training School, Mangla which is a feeder stream, which served to provide officers to the Pakistan Army at times of grave shortage. It had been started in 1948 and used to function from Kohat in Northwest Frontier Province; later it was shifted to Mangla. Munir is from the 17th course, which is of 1985-86 vintage, which is just senior to the 75th PMA long course from which General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, the present Core Commander Rawalpindi has also been promoted to the other four stars top slot of chairman, Joiny Chiefs of Staff Committee.
KT: Now you pointed out that General Munir comes from the Officers Training School’s ’85-86 batch at Mangla. Does that mean he is not a graduate of the Pakistan Military Academy?
RB: Yes, though this is not really a disqualification. There is a caste system type of perception which operates, where officers who graduate from a regular long course of the PMA Kakul consider themselves superior. But this has not prevented other officers from OTC-OTS stream to reach the top slot. Notably, General Zia-ul-Haq himself was from the OTS stream, as was General Musa, who succeeded Ayub. And also Zia’s Vice Chief K.M. Arif, who virtually ran the army during Zia’s long years of martial law rule, was also from the OTS stream.
KT: Tell me, because General Munir comes from the OTS and not from the Pakistan Military Academy, will there be any resentment on the part of officers who he has now superseded – because he’s become chief while they haven’t – who were from the military academy? Could this be a cause of resentment?
RB: Not really. There is the tradition in the Pakistan Army, because the chief enjoys so much power, that as soon as he steps into the mantle, dissent will automatically die down and all senior officers will rally behind him in support. Also, technically he is senior to the 75th long course. He has benefited from this strange work of faith where though he was to retire two days before General Bajwa, his name was included in the panel and he was the seniormost who has been selected.
KT: Now you mentioned that earlier under General Bajwa, he served as General Officer, commanding Northern Areas. He also then went on to serve as corps commander Gujranwala. In the Pakistan Army system, how important are these posts?
RB: Well the FCNA post is very important. It is a part of the Rawalpindi corps commands offensive front against India, whereas the Gujranwala corps is a defensive Corps. So he has had experience of both an offensive corps and a defensive corps in these two assignments.
KT: Now I believe he’s what’s called a ‘Hafiz Quran’, which means he can recite the holy book in its entirety. Does that also mean that he is somewhat fundamentalistic in his attitude or is that an incorrect conclusion?
RB: It should not necessarily follow. He did this course, which is a prescribed official course through some madrasas which have government backing. But he did this course when he was a colonel, having a string to his bow where he can be considered an expert to recite the Quran, should normally help him in his standing within the Army, though it does not necessarily grant him as a fundamentalist.
Attitude to India
KT: What do we know of General Munir’s attitude to India? Will he be like General Bajwa, more open to want to have economic relations even though they didn’t increase despite General Bajwa’s efforts, or will he be more hardline?
RB: I would think he would be more hardline. We do not have any readily available record of his statements in the open domain on what he thinks or feels about India. He has been fairly low profile in this regard. But we should assume that he will generally be hardline and at the moment, his credentials and his priorities would focus elsewhere to the domestic front. So on India he cannot afford to be seen to be very pragmatic or over friendly to India.
KT: You said that he’s likely to be more hardline than General Bajwa. Now it was under General Bajwa that the 2003 ceasefire was renewed a year and a half, nearly two years ago. Will General Munir respect that ceasefire, because under Bajwa for the last almost two years that ceasefire has been pretty scrupulously observed. Will that continue to be the case?
RB: I would think so. What is a necessary to realise is that even today there has been a press release from the ISPR, which has criticised the recent announcement by the Indian Northern Areas, the Northern Command General, about readiness to occupy Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This statement has been criticised by the ISPR. So at this juncture, when the new chief is just going to step into his mantle, the Pakistan Army would be very careful not to let any sign of weakness appear in their official posture. So India should factor in this environment in determining their responses and avoid needless hard rhetoric.
KT: Absolutely. This is a transition period for the Pakistan Army, and therefore it is a sensitive and delicate period, and therefore the Army will be on alert, and they will therefore be very concerned about statements being made by our Northern Army Commander. But that apart, will General Munir observe scrupulously the 2003 ceasefire? It was observed very scrupulously by General Bajwa for almost two years. Will Munir continue that?
RB: I should think so, because of the grave economic constraints that Pakistan still suffers. Any escalation on military retribution would have an economic cost which Pakistan’s military can ill-afford at this juncture.
Controversies
KT: Let’s come at this point to two controversies that surround General Munir’s appointment. The first, and you hinted at that a moment ago, the first is that he retires on the 27th of this month. General Bajwa only retires on the 29th. So can there be legal questions raised, perhaps even court cases, about General Munir’s appointment as Army Chief, two days after his technical retirement?
RB: There can be, though just now in the press statement given by Khwaja Asif, the Defence Minister, he has mentioned to journalists that all aspects have been taken care of in the latest cabinet meeting, which was held this morning and, which apparently had the objective of resolving this lingering technical issue by making certain amendments in the rules of business relating to the Army Act 1952, where any such changes regarding promotions or extensions of officers of the rank of Lieutenant-General or above require prior assent of the president.
Now there still remains a question, a doubt, about what sort of role the president would take, because last night, former Prime Minister Imran Khan gave a statement that Dr Alvi would definitely consult him about the summary of names when it comes to him. So far the summary has not gone, it is just going to be said, although the announcement has already been made. So the present government, PLMM government of Shahbaz Sharif, is calculating, taking a calculated position that the president at this stage will not make an issue of it, though this cannot be ruled out.
KT: The report put out by Dawn, Pakistan’s leading newspaper, on their website shortly after the announcement of General Munir was made, clearly says that as yet President Alvi has not given his clearance. Now you’re saying that, in fact, Imran Khan last night has been claiming that President Alvi will consult him before clearance is given. If President Alvi were to consult a former prime minister, that would presumably be constitutionally incorrect. So let’s leave that aside, that is obviously between President Alvi and Imran Khan, but clearly it would be constitutionally incorrect. But what are the chances that President Alvi might pick up on the fact that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has appointed as Army Chief a man who technically retires two days before he takes over? Might that be grounds for refusing to clear General Munir’s name, or do you think that at the end of asking questions and expressing concern, President Alvi will accept and clear the name?
RB: Well you see underArticle 243(4), he is bound by the advice of the prime minister. However under Article 48, which precedes Article 243, or under 48(1), the president has the power to hold on to his assent for a period of 15 days. He can refer back the advice to the prime minister and this would delay the whole process for about between 15 to 25 days. If the prime minister sends back the same advice, then it would be binding on the president. This is how the Constitutional position stands.
KT: Okay.
RB: So if this sort of step is resorted to by the president, there will be a certain limbo in which the new chief would be placed.
KT: Absolutely. There could be a 15-day delay if President Alvi were to choose to send the name back, and it then requires reiteration by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
What about a second controversy that surrounds the appointment of General Munir, and again you’ve hinted at it. It arises from the fact that as DG ISI, he exposed corruption that was allegedly connected to Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Sheikh and apparently also some of her relatives. This is why he was removed and only served very briefly, I think nine or ten months, as Director General ISI. Does this mean that he is perceived to be anti-Imran Khan, and secondly, does it also mean that Imran Khan will resent this appointment for this reason?
RB: Well conventional wisdom would suggest that this was the reason why Imran was feeling so upset at Nawaz Sharif having decided to support Asim Munir’s candidature when Shahbaz Sharif went to London to consult him, and it need not necessarily follow because this was something Asim Munir is said to have done in his capacity as the DG ISI because he felt that if any allegations of this nature became public, it would dent the image of the then Prime Minister Imran Khan and he had conveyed this thing in confidence to the Prime Minister for this very reason.
Yeah, it’s a different matter that Imran took umbrage about it; he kept quiet at that time but he later told Bajwa to remove him because he was interfering in his personal affairs. So it could prevail both ways, Asim Munir may have this resentment, but if he wants to grow into the mantle of an army chief, he need not carry the vindictiveness forward if he has to diffuse the politically fraught, polarised situation between the present PDM government and the opposition of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party.
KT: Absolutely, how Asim Munir behaves towards Imran Khan after Asim Munir becomes Army chief, we don’t know and there may be good reasons as you suggest that Asim Munir will not be anti-Imran Khan once he becomes Army Chief. But it’s also clear that in the eyes of Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif’s elder brother and the former prime minister, the reason he was pushing for Asim Munir as Army Chief is because, he believes, Nawaz Sharif believes, that Asim Munir would keep Imran Khan in check. Is that the real reason why Nawaz Sharif was pushing for Asim Munir as Army chief, or are there other explanations for Nawaz Sharif being close to Munir?
RB: No, I am not aware of other reasons. You see, there is this general expectation and awareness on part of the senior Sharif brothers that Imran Khan by his recent, very unparliamentary statements against the senior Army generals, and particularly General Bajwa, has antagonised the entire cohort of senior Army leaders. And this became clear during the joint press conference of October 27 when the DG ISPR and the DG ISI General Nadeem Anjum came before the public and they clearly castigated Imran for having made this type of statement, calling the Army leaders as neutrals or “jaanwars”, or betrayers like Mir Sadiq. And then yesterday again General Bajwa in his farewell speech at a martyr’s conference, once again flagged this issue by saying that certain politicians in recent times have criticised the Army; while they had a right to criticise the army, they should not have used such unparliamentary language.
KT: Absolutely.
RB: The Sharifs are calculating very clear-headedly that this type of anti-Imran feeling will be of the benefit to them to provide a level-playing field in the future, before the next elections, for Nawaz Sharif to come back, to have his disqualification waived, and to have a proper contest between the PDM and the PTI, particularly in Punjab, during the next elections.
KT: For the audience’s sake, I should point out that a couple of days ago Imran Khan has said that he will accept any name as Army Chief put forward. He may not mean it. It may have simply been a clever, expedient, political thing for him to say, but say it he did.
Let me now come to Imran Khan’s March, which is supposed to reach Rawalpindi and Islamabad on Saturday the 26th, and Imran Khan has said he will be there in person to address the rally. [Update: Khan on Saturday cancelled the Islamabad protest.] That will be the conclusion of the march. Do you believe that as new Army Chief, General Munir will permit the Long March to reach Islamabad? Earlier in an interview to me, former DG ISI General Durrani had said that the Army will take preventive and preemptive action, and prevent the rally either reaching Islamabad, or entering parts of Islamabad that are considered sensitive. Do you believe therefore that General Munir as Army Chief will let the rally complete its journey and reach Islamabad or enter sensitive parts of the capital?
RB: Both options are possible or permissible. You see, it will all depend on whether there is any violence during the rally. Imran Khan has sought permission to land his helicopter at a parade ground and also there is an earlier request for the venue of the meeting. Whether this is to be an I9 area, which is non-controversial, or it is nearer the red zone areas of the D-Chowk, that is what is going to make the decision for the Army Chief. In any case, it will be done through the law and order authorities of the civilian company, that is the Interior Ministry and the Islamabad police administration. So the Army will come into the forefront only if it is requested by the Islamabad civilian administration to come to their aid.
KT: Well let me at this point ask you this question. If the rally that is held by Imran Khan turns violent or there is trouble and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif calls upon the Army to control the situation, will General Munir as the new Army Chief agree, or might he be concerned about sending his soldiers to fire on their own countrymen? In an interview that Najam Sethi, the editor-in-chief of the Friday Times and the former Caretaker Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, gave me a little while ago, he felt that the Army would be reluctant in those situations to fire and might actually put pressure on the government to negotiate with Imran Khan. Now there’s a new Army Chief, he has a background, or so people believe, of being anti-Imran Khan. So how will General Munir respond? Will he accept a request to control the situation, even if that includes firing on Pakistani citizens?
RB: This is a very difficult question to answer. It could go either way. Najam is right in suggesting that the Army would be very reluctant, but at the same time there is this feeling of resentment among the senior Army Generals that Imran has been allowed to go too far and too much leeway has been given to him. Also figuring in this whole issue would be the response of the senior judiciary, which has in the past been very pro-Imran. What they do now – lately, they have been a little more neutral or difficult in asking Imran not to provoke needless violence or to explain why he did not adhere to the earlier May 25 call of not going to B-Chowk. So he has not, Imran has not been very clear in answering these questions. So it’s a very difficult thing to say how this will pan out, but by and large it will be a difficult situation and that’s what Imran is calculating on to make his Long March, which was almost fizzling out, relevant once more. He is hoping to play on persisting differences within the senior echelons of the Pakistan Army about this whole rigmarole and controversy of succession to General Bajwa.
KT: In other words, General Munir could face a serious challenge almost two-three days after the appointment as army chief, as early as Saturday or Sunday.
RB: That’s right.
Army and political interference
KT: Now yesterday General Bajwa in that favourable speech at Martyr’s Day that you alluded to a moment ago, also spoke about the Army’s attitude to political interference. He said the Army has decided not to interfere in any political matter. He then added pointedly, “I assure you, we are adamant on this and will remain so.” Would that also be General Munir’s position? Is he also equally adamant that the days when the Pakistan Army took over are over, and now the Army will play a constitutional role? Army interference, Army taking over the country is ruled out, will that be General Munir’s attitude as well?
RB: Yes, this is a collegiate consensus of the Generals which has been thrashed out and I would presume that the new Chief would follow the trend set by Bajwa. Of course every Chief, when he becomes the Chief, sets his own tone in how such issues will be dealt with, so we will have to factor that in how Asim Munir responds. But technically they will profess to remain neutral.
General Sahir Shamshad Mirza
KT: Now one quick question about General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, who has been appointed today as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Until that appointment was announced, and it was announced at the same time as General Munir’s appointment as Army Chief, General Mirza was Corps Commander Rawalpindi. Briefly what can you tell us about General Mirza, but briefly?
RB: Oh, he has been a very brilliant officer and his peer group always considered him to be very, very good. He was Director General Military Operations, then Chief of General Staff, and now Corps Commander Rawalpindi. Very low profile, he comes from a very humble background from Chakwal, Punjab which is a heartland, traditional recruiting area for Punjabi soldiers and officers in the Army, and overall has had a profile where he is considered very balanced, very correct, having the confidence of the rank and file. So in a sense he would feel hard done by, by this choice of Munir at the last minute, because otherwise, normally he would have become the Chief of Army Staff. The other post of four-star general, that is the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, he’s more ceremonial in nature, though it oversees the Pakistani nuclear complex – but not for operational reasons.
KT: In a nutshell, if the present prime minister had not tried to find a way, and we presume he’s done it successfully, of promoting General Munir, despite the fact General Munir retires two days before General Bajwa, if that hadn’t been done then you’re saying it was likely that General Mirza would have been Army Chief. Or that’s your hunch.
RB: Yes either Mirza or Azhar Abbas, who is an equally well-reputed officer, having done key assignments of General, Chief of General Staff and also the Corps Command in Rawalpindi.
KT: So this means both Generals Mirza and Abbas will have a certain grudge, a certain ill-feeling, because they have lost out to someone who technically should have retired but two days after retirement gets the job they wanted.
RB: Yes possibly, but then this is where the tradition of the Chief’s position in Pakistan Army will come in – they will all rally and fall in line behind the chief.
KT: Mr Banerji, I’m going to take a little break at that point. We finished talking about General Asim Munir and what sort of person he is, about his background, how Imran Khan will respond to his appointment, why it pleases Nawaz Sharif in particular that he has become Army Chief, and what will be General Munir’s attitude to India.
After the break I wanted to come back and briefly touch upon the pretty shocking revelations made by Ahmad Nurrani, one of Pakistan’s foremost journalists, on his website “Fact Focus”, alleging that General Bajwa and his family, during the last six years when General Bajwa was Army Chief, have amassed a total of Rs 12.7 billion in accumulated assets. How accurate is this report, because it does come with actual tax returns of General Bajwa, General Bajwa’s wife and General Bajwa’s daughter-in-law. How accurate are these allegations? What will be the implications for General Bajwa? And what will be the response of the new Army Chief, because now this is a problem he has to face? All of that in a moment’s time after the break.
Ahmad Nurrani’s allegations
KT: Mr Banerji, a couple of days ago, a Pakistani journalist called Ahmad Nurrani on his website, “Fact Focus”, published the present but retiring Army Chief General Bajwa’s tax returns. He also published the tax returns of General Bajwa’s wife as well as General Bajwa’s daughter-in-law. And Ahmed Nurrani claimed that during the last six years – those are the six years when General Bajwa has been Army Chief – the Bajwa family has accumulated assets more than Rs 12.7 billion.
Almost immediately the website was blocked, and I presumed that was done by the Pakistan government, and within hours Pakistan’s Defence Minister ordered an immediate inquiry, which was asked to report back to him in 24 hours, into the leaks of the Bajwa tax returns. Does the fact that Ahmad Nurrani’s website was instantly blocked, and does the fact that the Defence Minister ordered an inquiry that had to report in 24 hours, suggest that the allegations made by Nurrani are correct?
RB: Yes, I have seen this report. It is the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar who has ordered the investigation, by a senior officer of the Federal Bureau of Revenue. Yes, the collection of assets or the increase in the assets of the Bajwa family and those of his son’s wife are remarkable, but if you see the general pattern of wealth acquired by Pakistan’s Generals and retired Generals in the past, these are passé for the elite in Pakistan. So it will of course raise eyebrows.
Ahmed Nurrani, as you know, is in exile, he had to leave Pakistan and he is now based in New York. Earlier, he had run a similar exposé about the other Bajwa, General Asim Bajwa, whose wife ran a chain of pizza shops in America, and General Asim Bajwa was earlier the head of the CPEC authority, and an advisor to Prime Minister Imran Khan. He had to leave as advisor, but nothing much happened about the allegations on amassing of wealth. The same sort of inquiry results could be likely in case of General Bajwa, unless Imran Khan comes back to power and then takes it on himself to persecute the retired former Army chief, by which time Asim Munir as the new Chief would have settled down and traditionally again, the Army Chiefs have always protected the institution and their past senior generals, as has been the case with General Musharraf’s problems: Rahim Sharif as the Army Chief protected him after a point when the civilian government was determined to deal with him on grounds of sedition.
KT: If I understand your answer correctly, you’re saying the real danger to General Bajwa will occur if Imran Khan comes back to power. That means he has to win an election and at the moment it does look as if he would win a free election, his popularity is so great at the moment. The danger is if he comes back, he would have a grudge against General Bajwa because General Bajwa failed to support him and ended up supporting his opponents and helping Shahbaz Sharif become Prime Minister. In those circumstances, Ahmed Nurrani’s revelations would give Imran Khan grounds on which to prosecute, or even possibly persecute, General Bajwa. But you’re adding that there’s a tradition in Pakistan that Army Chiefs support and protect their predecessors, and General Munir by then would be Army Chief. He would protect General Bajwa, and as we know General Munir was the person who in fact exposed Imran Khan’s wife’s corruption, or alleged corruption, and therefore his relationship with Imran may not be the best, and he may in fact lean towards supporting General Bajwa instead.
That I understand, but what I want to ask you is, how credible are the allegations made by Nurrani? If I read that report correctly, it seems that literally days before she got married to General Bajwa’s son, the daughter-in-law became a billionaire by acquiring assets, and that none of her sisters achieved the same level of wealth as she did. The second thing that emerges from Nurrani’s report is that until she became the Army Chief’s wife, General Bajwa’s wife had not filed any tax returns. But shortly after he became Army Chief, she started filing tax returns and she too was showing billions of wealth. And the third thing that emerges is that General Bajwa, somewhere in 2017, revised three or four times the return he had filed in 2013, which was the last return filed before he became Army Chief. And he kept saying that he was remembering things that he had forgotten to put into the original 2013 return.
Now, to a layman like me, that does sound all very fishy, as if this family was fast acquiring assets and then backdating them by revising their earlier returns. But you understand the situation better, so in your eyes how damning is the evidence or the allegation?
RB: The evidence is damning all right. The documents cited by Nurrani are genuine. They are genuine tax returns which even Ishaq Dar the Finance Minister has acknowledged, after the findings of the preliminary inquiry that they have been accessed through somebody who had access to the records in Islamabad and by another person in Lahore. He has not revealed the names. But this could be due to the fact that there has been certain amount of resentment against General Bajwa, even within the senior echelons of the Pakistan Army, which would explain the timing of this leak or report at this juncture by some disgruntled elements within the army.
But again, see the love of Pakistani army, generals, brigadiers, what have you for both land and wealth of office has been very great. So this has been looked upon with the Nelson’s Blind Eye in the past and I don’t think this pattern will change. Even General Kayani, after he retired lot of allegations about his alleged corruptions came to the fore which were not liked by other senior generals, who did not benefit General Kayani’s tenure. So these types of things will keep happening, but the system of the elite and the perks which nearly everyone in the military enjoy will not really be questioned or brought to book. That is what I feel.
KT: I am told by people in Pakistan that in fact what Ahmad Nurrani has revealed is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m also told that there could be more revelations, particularly now that General Bajwa will be demitting office on the 29th. Would that make the situation far worse for General Bajwa?
RB: It could, but it will all depend on the protective umbrella of the new Army Chief General Munir, and of course the possibility of what sort of stand Imran Khan takes before he actually comes back to power. This would be a process over the next seven-eight months which will unfold. At the same time, the present ruling dispensation of the PDM will focus on now bringing Imran to book for all his misdemeanours, including the theft of watches and sale of watches from the toshakhana and other cases in which he has been implicated. So they will make sure that he keeps running around the courts and there will be a certain amount of pressure on the courts to be even-handed. So I think the focus would be diverted from General Bajwa’s riches.
KT: Okay, that’s very interesting. A lot depends upon how Imran Khan, even in opposition, plays up this issue and how he builds up the national mood to mood of concern about the former or the present Army Chief’s corruption. But on the other hand the new regime, and perhaps with the help of General Munir, would also be targeting Imran Khan and the allegations that he’s been stealing watches or acquiring watches cheaply from the toshakhana and selling them at a profit. Therefore, the attention could deflect from Bajwa to Imran Khan.
But there’s one other thing you said. It’s widely believed that the tax returns are not just authentic but they were given to Ahmad Nurrani by some sources within the army. That must worry General Bajwa. It must worry even General Munir that the Army is fracturing to the extent that people are leaking tax returns of the serving sitting Army Chief.
RB: Yes, in fact that is going to be a main preoccupation or priority for General Munir, to take the army with him in the sort of first few steps that he takes the postings and transfers that he does, and how he accommodates disgruntled generals who have been feeling that Bajwa has not been so fair in his dealings with them. So this is going to be his first priority, even before the impasse in the domestic polarised political situation between civilian political parties. So, Asim Munir will have to be seen to be leading the Army in a united manner.
General Munir’s stance on corruption
KT: One last question. General Asim Munir is, as you said, a Hafiz e Quran. He may not be fundamentalist in his attitude to religion, but he can recite the entire Quran and that clearly means that the values and principles of the Holy Book matter to him. Secondly, as DG ISI, he was the man who felt conscience found to inform Imran Khan about his wife’s alleged corruption, for which he lost his job. Given that he’s taken these high-principle stands in the past, do you think as Army Chief he will seek to clean up the Army’s Augean Stables, to try and put a full stop to the corruption that Army Generals in Pakistan have traditionally benefited from?
RB: That’s unlikely. You see there are Generals who are honest who have had personal standards – and the person who comes to mind most obviously is General Durrani himself, the former DG ISI, who has been one of the more honest generals and he hasn’t amassed so many riches as normally generals do. He was later on given a chance to be Ambassador in Saudi Arabia and also in Germany, where he improved his financial status. Similarly one can say about the late General Gul Hasan, who was unceremoniously sacked by Bhutto after two-three years, before he could complete his full term. Again he was from a town, Pabi in Nowshera, and he is supposed to have left the post of Chief just with his one car and a very simple sort of standard of living. But those are days of the past.
Generals now have benefited from allotments of various defence housing societies which have been formed and there is an escalating pattern of land allotments, preferentially given, which they obtain at very cheap rates and they can sell at great lucrative value. This has been dealt with quite extensively by a person like Dr Ayesha Sidiqqa in her book Military Inc and also the revised edition thereof. So the Army will take this type of thing in their stride and I don’t think Munir will be able to change much, whatever his personal predilections are of simple living, if at all.
KT: And I presume in the course of the years he spent as Director General ISI or corps commander Gujranwala, General Munir also benefited from some of these land allotments.
RB: We don’t know much about it. He’s said to come from very modest middle class origins, from a place called Dheri near Rawalpindi. His father was a simple teacher and he has been regarded as a fairly straight-shooter type of person, who has gone by the book. But we don’t know much about his later acquisition of wealth.
KT: Mr Banerji, thank you very much for this detailed account of General Munir’s past, your assessment of his qualities as the new incoming Army Chief, his attitude to India, his relationship with Shahbaz Sharif-Nawaz Sharif on the one hand and Imran Khan on the other, and also thank you for explaining precisely how damning are the allegations made against General Bajwa, but also how it’s likely, just as other earlier Army Chiefs have got away with it, General Bajwa probably will as well. I thank you for this interview. Many thanks indeed.
RB: Thank you for having me.
