Newsmaker: Qamar Javed Bajwa

Trying to decipher Pak's new strongman

General Qamar Javed Bajwa is a second-generation infantryman, from the Baloch Regiment. He is from the October 1980 batch of the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, having also trained at the Staff College, Toronto (Canada) and the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey Bay, US. And he acquired UN Peace Keeping Operations experience, where he commanded a Pakistan army brigade in South Kivu, Congo.

That’s where he came in contact with General Bikram Singh, who later became Chief of Army Staff in India. Friendships forged between Indian and Pakistani professionals, when they are abroad, are legendary. Gen Singh said Bajwa was a professional and competent soldier. 

Pakistan, unlike India, does not have a Corps headquarters in Kashmir. Its 10 Corps has responsibility for Jammu and Kashmir. Gen Bajwa has had three tenures in the 10 Corps — as chief of staff at the headquarters; GOC Force Command Northern Areas, which also guards its assets in Siachen and the Saltoro ridge; and as GOC, 10 Corps. The importance of 10 Corps can be judged by the fact that after his 1999 military coup, Gen Pervez Musharraf initially posted Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz (a Kashmiri), as GOC, 10 Corps but Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamaat-ul-Ulema Pakistan criticised the appointment on the ground that this would weaken the ‘jihad’ there. Musharraf later cancelled his order. So, experience of serving in 10 Corps does shape thinking and politics. As it will in the case of Gen Bajwa.

If predecessor Gen Raheel Sharif’s legacy has been the way he has put down insurgency in North Waziristan and cleaned up the mafia in Karachi (hence the social media messages prior to his retirement which said ‘we love you, Raheel Sharif’), Bajwa had another message. He has said publicly that internal extremism is a bigger threat to Pakistan than India. While this sounded good when he was fighting the internal extremists, his experience in 10 Corps cannot be discounted. 

It will take Bajwa at least six months to come to full terms with his new job. Pakistan will also have to come to terms with new realities on the US front, with a new and not particularly friendly administration at the helm and, as a result, altered priorities in Afghanistan. This will give the civilian administration in Pakistan a chance to catch its breath. If firing on the Line of Control can be muted even a little, diplomacy can get another chance.

Armies anywhere don’t like sudden movements. As long as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif doesn’t make any radical interventions to assert himself, the chances are that the civilian-military balance in Pakistan will endure – and India-Pakistan relations might start inching towards normalcy.