Since the day he joined the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) as a cadet, General Pervez Musharraf has been used to taking orders from his superior officers and giving orders to those below him. Based on his lifelong career as a soldier, he considers the people of Pakistan his troops and the civilian politicians who joined the King’s Party formed after Musharraf’s 1999 military coup as junior and non-commissioned officers. Those protesting against him are seen by Musharraf as the enemy.

The general is now beginning to voice the worry that his ‘subordinate officers’ are failing to motivate ‘the troops’ sufficiently. He is afraid that the failings of his officers’ corps will cause him to lose the most important battle of his life.

The training of a military officer prepares him for waging war not for effecting compromises or conducting politics. Former Pakistan army chief, General Musa Khan, used to say that he was trained to “locate the enemy and liquidate the enemy.” He found this training useless when dragged into politics as governor of West Pakistan during the late 1960s.

Protests broke out against Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s military dictatorship soon after Musa Khan became governor. The retired general found himself at a loss, he later said, in “figuring out how to deal with my own people, angry with our government and refusing to take our orders.”

General Musharraf recently complained that the more than one thousand elected officials of the ruling coalition who enjoy state patronage because of their membership of the King’s Party, are doing little to defend their benefactor. Musharraf’s complaint reflected the surprise Ayub Khan had expressed when members of his party disappeared after the popular agitation against his rule began in 1968.

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