Night of the Generals

MATHEMATICAL models sometimes shape events in international relations. General Tojo used game theory to simulate American responses to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The Pentagon used statistical time series to evaluate Vietcong body counts in the Mekong Delta. Chess games were used to teach young Persian, Ottoman and Mughal princes strategy in war.

By Matein Khalid

Published: Sat 31 Jul 2004, 9:31 AM

Last updated: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 1:27 AM

As a student at the Wharton Business School, I once created a mathematical model to predict coups d'etat in the Third World for a statistics seminar. My thesis was that Third World generals moved to seize power during times of economic chaos (rising inflation, currency crises), ethnic conflict, socialist policies (nationalisation, tense relations with the United States) and civilian interference in the military's internal processes (creating a palace guard to rival the armed forces, sacking generals, military budget cuts, politicised officer corps). I created a quantitative variable for all five phenomena and ran my model across the political-history of major Third World countries.

My multiple regression model predicted Sukarnos overthrow in Indonesia, Pinochet's coup against Allende in Chile, General Evrens coup in Turkey, the overthrow of Indira Gandhi by the Indian Army during the Emergency (model messed up), and all three coups in Pakistan to that time (Ayub Khan, Yahya and Zia).

Sure, I got a 'A' for my Wharton seminar, but it is one of the great regrets of my life that I could have made a fortune licensing my model to Third World dictators to forewarn them of the risk of a military coup. Imagine what Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif would have paid me to warn them about the risks of extra-constitutional monkey business brewing in the Rawalpindi GHQ? Alternatively, I could have migrated to Nigeria and taught the wanna be Napoleons in Lagos how to look out for Number One when the civilians messed up (as they always do in Africa). Since Nigeria's generals are some of the richest kleptomaniacs on earth, I could have fleeced them for a million or two in consulting fee out of their stolen offshore petrobillions, sunning themselves in the Swiss Alps?

I could have been the world's only coup consultant, a modern Oracle of Delphi or Nostradamus in international politics, commanding a fee for which Mckinsey or Booz Allen partners turn cartwheels. I lived through Zia's overthrow of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Operation Fairplay in July 1977, and Musharraf's countercoup against Nawaz Sharif in October 1999. Had a secular civilian, not a theocratic military regime, ruled Pakistan in the 1980s, I would have become a diplomat, not a Wall Street banker. Sadly, military coups changed my life time and again in Pakistan.

So, what are the lessons of Pakistan's successive coups? One, the Pakistan Army is a disciplined, bureaucratic pyramid. Only the Big Guy (Chief of Army Staff) can initiate a successful coup. All four successful Pakistani coups were led by the C-in-C, acting with the approval of his army corp commanders. Every coup attempt led by junior officers - the young majors in the Hyderabad Conspiracy Case who tried to overthrow Bhutto in 1974, the zealot Major-General Abbassi who tried to assassinate Benazir and her corps commanders as a prelude to declaring himself caliph of Pakistan - failed. Thanks to the Army's Sandhurst legacy, there are no Colonel Gaddafis and Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings (Ghana's dictator) in Pakistani politics.

Two, coups happen during times of inflation and economic chaos. Bhutto, despite his Berkeley and Oxford education, learnt his economics at the school of Chairman Mao and Kim II Sung. The result? Total disaster. Nawaz Sharif's economic policies, curiously for a billionaire, were also a failure. US sanctions after the nuclear tests in the Chagai Hills turned Pakistan into a basket case on the eve of Musharraf's takeover.

Three, interfering in the GHQ's promotion pecking order or monopoly of force is fatal to the occupant of the Prime Minister's House. Nawaz Sharif plotted to fire Musharraf in favour of a crony General Ziauddin, the head of the ISI. The corps commanders rallied around their chief and overthrew Nawaz while Musharraf was on a flight from Sri Lanka. In 1976, Bhutto retired six senior lieutenant-generals of the Pakistan Army to make General Tikka Khan, the butcher of Dhaka, his defence minister. He created a paramilitary force whose model was Hitler's Gestapo, the FSF - thus ending the Army's monopoly on force in Pakistan. Bhutto ended up under the hangman's noose in Rawalpindi, Nawaz lives in bitter exile in Jeddah.

Four, humiliation in war, ethnic conflict, or shooting civilian demonstrators provokes a military coup. This is a recurrent theme in Third World politics, to be sure. The catastrophe of the 1948 Palestine war led to coups in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The Falklands invasion traumatised the high command in Argentina. The Biafran revolt led to General Yakubu Guwon's coup in Nigeria. Even Brezhnev's failure in Afghanistan and Gorbachev's inaction during the Baltic revolt in 1990 precipitated the abortive KGB-Red Army coup that was the death rattle of the Soviet Union. In Pakistan, Ayub lost his legitimacy after the military stalemate in the 1965 war with India, and diplomatic faux pas at Tashkent. Yahya Khan was literally booted out of the GHQ after Tiger Niazi surrendered East Bengal to the Sikh Regiment in 1971. Z. A. Bhutto used the army in a bloody police action in Baluchistan and ordered his jawans to shoot demonstrators against the PPP regime in the streets of Karachi and Lahore. Nawaz infuriated the generals by sending his brother to meet Bill Clinton and backing down on Kargil without GHQ approval to save his own skin.

Five, every Pakistani general has claimed that necessity, not ambition, forced him to intervene. Zia promised to rule for 90 days and ruled for eleven years until his C-130 Hercules cargo plane blew up over Bahawalpur with most of the ruling junta. Musharraf claimed he was a temporary CEO - he has still not shed his uniform for a Presidential Brioni suit and Versace turban. Ayub Khan promoted himself to Field Marshal to pre-empt a military coup - his generals replaced him with Yahya anyway.

Six, unlike Latin American or African armies, Pakistani generals have tapped the best brains of Wall Street, the IMF and the World Bank to rule Pakistan.

Their economic track record has been far superior to their civilian predecessors. Military rulers have also been able to offer an olive branch to India, from the Zia-Rajiv summits to Musharraf-Vajpayee rapprochement at Agra and Islamabad.

Postscript: A dinner in London, two Pakistani generals are present. I sighed and said I wished I had gone to PMA Kakul to college, not the Ivy League. "After all, the military academy is the shortest route to become the President of Pakistan. We all laughed, but we should have cried, instead."