Does it want to be a normal state? Or would it rather be a special one that helps it sidestep the boredom and banality of development in favour of abstract, imagined greatness? Look a little closely and it becomes apparent that Pakistan is far from finished fighting a bruising battle to define its mission, its raison d’etre.

One manifestation of this quarrel with itself is putting an army chief -- even if a retired one -- on trial and its consequences. It has been easier said than done merely bringing Pervez Musharraf to the dock -- it has taken nearly six decades after the first of four military rulers put themselves in charge, appointing themselves as arbiters of the fate of a nation they never helped create (unlike the Chinese and Turkish armies having a hand in creating their respective republics) to be made answerable for at least some of their actions.

That it is far from assured the trial will ever reach its conclusion is merely the rule that proves the exception in Pakistan: it takes only three hearings to indict an elected prime minister (Bhutto) leading to his hanging and at least 33 to likewise arraign a non-elected ruler (Musharraf). And merely 30 seconds to disqualify an elected prime minister (Gilani) who while in office walks to the court to make himself available for prosecution but more than three months to get a self-appointed ruler to merely get out of a hospital without getting an angiography to follow the law despite being retired.

Critical mass

In an age of real-time media, reactions to Musharraf’s trial throw into sharp relief the status quo on the nature of civil-military relations in Pakistan and the paradoxically never-ceasing mêlée between democratic forces and the military establishment.

Deconstructing the discourse on political evolution in a pluralistic and dissatisfied society like Pakistan’s where everyone is competing for basics rather than advances is a tricky business because there are a lot of firsts to be scored and when there is hardly consensus on rules of the game let alone the game. The 1973 Constitution (itself taking 25 years to arrive at) has taken another four decades of bruised fighting over.

So, even as the vibrant airwaves remind us of the daily din of democracy, the mostly-silent-but-never-dead competing narrative of macho nationalism, as defined and sustained by the military, offers a reminder how fragile is the delusion that electoral politics equals mission control. An elected government finally charging a former army chief for violating the constitution -- something that he himself admits he committed -- is as confident an advertisement for a changing civil-military equation as there can be.

And yet first the incumbent army chief comes to the indirect defense of a former and then the army leadership corps issues a statement that serves both as an unvarnished expression of displeasure at the way the political leadership is seeking to define the narrative around supremacy of the law, as well as a thinly-veiled promise (some would say threat) to strike back to protect its dignity.

Paradoxes

So, one step forward, another -- if not two -- back, when it comes to changing the civ-mil equation?

And the paradox again contributes confusion to the attempt at clarity: are the civilians managing to assert the supremacy of the democratic project by employing the law to push forward their mandate? When the corps commanders, with the chief at their head, make a written pledge (through the ISPR statement) to defend their dignity it is a strike-back at parliamentary assertion of its constitutional supremacy.

The commanders criticised Khawaja Asif for asserting parliamentary supremacy. So the commanders were defending their immediate boss at the perceived loss of dignity for his office and institution but not worried about the boss of their boss!

Hence, there is forward movement and there is pushback, and the battle to redefine civ-mil equation continues but the issue remains far from settled on the ground. Because, legally, the country is a constitutional democracy and historically an unsettled political duality, and because the cost paid by political forces is high -- hangings, roadside bombings and exile, the calculation by the khakis is that they can continue to pile the pressure even if calibrated rather than unbridled.

And so it happens. As when the corps commanders spoke against the Kerry-Lugar-Bergman Bill when it is not their mandate to comment on country-to-country bilateral relations. Or when the primary intelligence agency’s chief deposed in court against the country’s own ambassador for alleged treason.

And yet in neither case was there any consideration that either the country’s dignity was being tarnished or the sovereignty of the elected political leadership’s mandate tarnished. Contrary to some perceptions, dignity does not come with a uniform.

Dignity in popular imagination

The trial of a former army chief for alleged treason as a measure of the ongoing struggle over recalibration of the civ-mil equation to the standards in normal countries is also illustrative in the characters at its heart. The first military dictatorship of Ayub Khan perhaps is not remembered by the people as brutal because it did not kill any icon of democracy. The civ-mil imbalance came to be really defined in the popular imagination by the undignified, naked murder of a people’s leader after his deposition by Ziaul Haq.

This was fortified in the images of more undignified political roles arrogated to themselves by several army chiefs as they helped depose Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif who were voted to power through people’s balloted mandates, and then forced into exile. Benazir’s tragic assassination on the watch of another military ruler only served to worsen the imbalance in civ-mil relations.

While both Zia and Bhutto are long gone -- they have their respective places in people’s imaginations as villain and hero. They are firmly part of history. The latest public spectacle in the context of the fight to change and/or retain the status quo on civ-mil equation offers an interesting chance to make sensible choices. Musharraf got himself a relatively dignified retirement from the army and a guard-of-honour send-off from the presidency. But he refused to stay dignified or to allow the army to repair its image soiled by his hubris.

Musharraf chose to refuse to become part of history and insisted on being made part of the future when his time was clearly over. Despite shedding his uniform, he remains a soldier even as the current head of a political party. While he is cured of his passion, he has forced his former institution into the undignified position of attempting to redefine the concept of dignity. They are soldiers and won’t be able to do it.

The army does not begin with Musharraf and should not end with his view of what it should be. Dignity does not consist in possessing honours and medals but in deserving them. The army must be part of Pakistan’s future and for this it will have to seek a dignified break from the past.

Read also: A constitutional settlement finally by Babar Mirza