The long standing tussle of power between the two forces of Pakistan is not new to us. These two power houses are the armed forces of Pakistan and political establishment of Pakistan. Before giving my current point of let me first criticize my own opinion which was that the armed forces have been looting our country for decades now and the dictators have been the root cause of downfall of economy and have been the only reason why we are in such a dire state. What made me rethink my point of view, well no surprise there the current government has made the opinion about democracy in a lot of common people change myself included. We all know that these two institutes have been covering each other’s back for a very long time now but to know the lesser evil we face let’s consider their merits separately.

One issue that we hear and repeat without so much as second thought or a proper insight is the defense budget. The much criticized issue by politicians, media personalities, the so called advocates of democracy and even the common man. But no one justifies or explains why this is the bigger issue than any other in our country. We have all heard the much pronounced sentence that instead of giving this much budget to the army why not spends it on education or welfare. Let me first clarify a small point here which I too understood recently, the point that no one gives a thought to is that what a defense budget is. A set amount of money given to the army? Well not just the army but the armed forces which include air force and navy as well. Our army is the 5^th largest army in the world and maintaining that army needs money and we should not overlook the inflation that is growing in the economy. Another big factor is the Indian angle. We know that our defense budget is directly proportional to their defense budget and vice versa. If they buy a new weapon than we need to do that too for self-defense off course , so these factors affect the amount of budget the government sets for defense. Apart from that we are defending or facing animosity from all sides of border, not one side is safe and we need to maintain all borders. I won’t request you to do an economic analysis of the budget and all but if you could just Google the price that the army needs to pay to maintain a single soldier or to load a single weapon or even to fly a single fighter plane and then see how many of these actions they have to do every day you won’t mind paying them that much. As far as the education is concerned or welfare is concerned, I never saw anybody on television or anywhere questioning the accountability of the 32 billion allocated to education or 85 billion for energy crisis or even the 23.1 billion for health all allocated in the 2010 budget and this is 2 years after that but nobody raises a finger. The second problem is the dictatorship that we have had to face in the past, well I don’t think anybody can favor it but if you see the kind of democracy that the vadera politicians or politics run by the influential families has brought isn’t actual democracy as well. I think they have been the unifromless dictators. All of them have used their positions to their own benefits and not even one has delivered what they promised. The politicians have always criticized the military but when in office the same political party has used the armed forces to gain popularity and strength not just locally but in the eyes of the international political scene as well. Each and every politician has forwarded their career in the eyes of the international political leaders claiming that only they are the solution to the issues of the region and to do that they have used the military and made very dangerous decisions.  Decisions that when went wrong were blamed on the army. The dilemma is that due to the code of conduct and discipline of the military these decisions or the actual scenario is never brought in public or is unknown by the common man but anybody who has been studying the recent history of the region knows what actually happened.

I have wondered that these politicians have been defaming the military for so long then why we common people are attached to it, why we support it? Well if you think harder the answer is not that difficult to get. Even though military has been famed to be corrupted but in a recent survey the armed forces are the least corrupt institute of Pakistan and government sector being the highest. Apart from a bunch of top officers I don’t think you can find many corrupt officers in the army. The second reason is that  selection of being an armed forces officer is purely democratic, if you fulfill the merit you are hired otherwise  you can’t be included in it. There is no other criterion, there is no family background no ethical back ground or even the area you belong to is not considered and we have witnessed that officers from very humble backgrounds have become one of the most influential generals of the world in this institute. It’s hard to find a single family in rural or urban areas that has not one army officer or soldier in their family, be it close or far. Now let’s compare it with the political institution of our country, to be a successful politician you have to be influential, be it family wise or business wise. Either your family should be a Bhutto or wattoo or sharif or gillani etc. or you should be owning businesses or charitable companies otherwise you cannot be a successful politician, if you are a nobody from nowhere then you can be a jiyala or a karkun as they call it but you cannot be a leader or politician of any worth…. No sir. When was the last time we had a prime minister or a minister who was a common man from a mohala. This is the reason that army cannot be hated as it comes from our roots. We know they are closer to us and our lives and understand our problems more than the leaders.

Another issue we hear more than often is the ISI agenda. Everyone in the world let alone Pakistan is using this propaganda to defame this institute. Again I don’t need to remind that every politician in power has used this institute against the others but when it is used against themselves they defame it openly and sometimes outrageously. As far as the foreign media is concerned I think that we should educate ourselves into knowing that why intelligence agencies are made? They are made to do the dirty work, the hidden work that common people need not to know or bother about. They are guarding their respective countries interest and trying to keep an eye on people who are the enemies and trying to guard their own stability even if the cost is destabilizing other countries. These institutes work without the knowledge of people around the world and we as people might not appreciate the dirty work they do but when the game is of power play in the region and maintaining your own sovereignty these institutions play an important role. But the question is that why don’t we discuss the role of RAW (Indian agency),CIA ( American agency), MOSSAD(Israel agency), M1-6 (UK agency), FSB (Russian agency) and the list goes on, all of these agencies have been working very hard to destabilize other nations to get what they want and these agencies work independent of the government setup and if I say that the president of America is bound to listen and report to CIA I would not be overly exaggerating. The function of raw and fsb and even mossad in destabilizing the complete region of Muslim countries is quite evident if we study history but we don’t question them, we don’t discuss them, all we do is criticize ISI. Why do people throughout the world pin point our agency, well in a recent survey ISI has been proved to be the most successful intelligence agency with the least amount of funding to operate in. I don’t want you to appreciate ISI or every general that ever came in office in the army because that would be too much to ask for as we have become a confused lot BUT I want that we should realize that political culprits should not be easily forgotten and forgiven by just blaming the army. We should at least give credit where it is due, as much as the current government tries to ignite a response from the COAS and ISI chief, they are maintaining dignity and respecting our constitution more than the constitutionally elected parliament.