Choosing Merit over Friendship
Lt Gen Mohammad Yusuf Khan, Chief of General Staff (CGS), and Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan, Commander 4 Corps at Lahore were respectively appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS) and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC), both promoted to the rank of General in keeping with their new appointments on Oct 7, 2001. General Pervez Musharraf’s tenure as COAS had expired the same day but his retirement as COAS could have created a legal imbroglio due to the Supreme Court (SC) Judgement mandating him by name to complete the democratic process before Oct 12, 2002. A five-day gap between Oct 7 and Oct 12, 2002 necessitated an extension without a time limit instead of the “one year” mandated by the Constitution.
Gen Pervez Musharraf’s penchant for clearing the decks for battle and his timing thereof are both exquisite. Very much as he did immediately on taking over as COAS in 1998, he removed the weak links in his chain of command. In a way he has used one crisis to control the other. In choosing Lt Gens Yusuf (37th PMA) and Aziz (1st war Course) to supersede Usmani (36th PMA) and Mahmood (37th PMA), Pervez Musharraf made an agonizing choice as not only the leader of the Army, but as the leader of a country facing its gravest crisis since 1971. Mahmood has been one of his closest friends and a regimental colleague from 16 SP (Self-Propelled) Regiment (of Artillery). As Comd 10 Corps Mahmood led 10 Corps troops (111 Brigade) into the PM’s House (closely following SSG troops heli-lifted earlier from Mangla Airfield on orders of the CGS Aziz) on the fateful 12th day of October 1999. It was Muzzafar Usmani as Commander 5 Corps Karachi, who took over the Airport to allow the PIA aircraft in which the COAS was travelling, and which was dangerously low on fuel, to land. Usmani has again been his close friend and colleague for many years, first as a student and then fellow instructor in both Command & Staff College, Quetta, and the National Defence College (then at Rawalpindi). Yusuf was probably the odd man out of the loop in Multan on the fateful day as Aziz as the CGS masterminded the counter-coup which brought Pervez Musharraf back as COAS and de-facto ruler of Pakistan. But when it came to replace Aziz (who needed experience as a Corps Commander) he chose Yusuf as CGS, arguably the CGS-slot is the most powerful in the Pakistan Army after that of the COAS, particularly because the elite SSG Brigade plus is under his direct control. Aziz was the one who denied control of GHQ to the new team hastily selected by then PM Mian Nawaz Sharif’s COAS-designate Lt Gen Ziauddin Butt. Some feel that putting Aziz (who is junior to Yusuf) as Chairman JCSC means that he is being kicked upstairs, unfortunately they are ignorant of the many changes in the JCSC’s working that Pervez Musharraf has brought about in the two years of his incumbency, bringing the Armed Forces into an integrated command as envisaged in the creation of JCSC in 1976, 25 years earlier, at least in military minds if not in the political one of late PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who invented it more as an anti-coup device.
