ISAS Briefs

In wondering which way Pakistan is headed I am reminded of a conversation I had with General Abdul Waheed Kakar in July 1993. He was then Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff and had forced President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign from their respective offices. An interim government was appointed with Moeen Qureshi, former Senior Vice President at the World Bank, as Prime Minister. I was made the new prime minister's economic advisor. Recounting what had happened a month earlier, the General said that "two senior-most executives of the government, the president and prime minister, were behaving as school kids. I had to come in as a monitor and expelled both of them". It does not seem that the political system has matured much in the 20-year sordid period since then. Once again the army has been called in to arbitrate a dispute between the government and one noisy section of the opposition.