New Delhi: The Pakistan Army’s announcement that it had fired three officers, including a lieutenant general, and initiated disciplinary proceedings against 15 others over the attacks on military installations by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) workers shows that the establishment remains in an unrelenting mood and is a signal to the judiciary.While no names were taken, he said that action has been taken against 18 officers for their negligence in failing to protect military installations on May 9.On Monday, the Pakistan Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry revealed the action taken after completing the investigation into attacks on military installations following the arrest of former Pakistan prime minister and PTI leader Imran Khan.While no names were taken, he said that action has been taken against 18 officers for their negligence in failing to protect military installations on May 9.He asserted that military courts were indispensable to getting justice for the May 9 attack, asserting that the trial of 102 suspects was underway.Incidentally, the announcement about the army court proceedings against civilians was made after the Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial had asked the attorney general on Monday to assure him that no such trial would occur as long as a legal challenge was being heard in the court. When the Supreme Court of Pakistan resumed hearing on Tuesday, the lawyers had asked for a stay on trying civilians in military courts. The attorney general repeated that no trial had started.The lawyers told the attorney general to make his statement part of the record as it contradicted the statement given by the army’s spokesperson a day earlier. The Supreme Court’s six-member bench subsequently rejected the request for issuing a stay order on the trial of civilians in military court.In his press conference, the Pakistani army spokesperson noted that two close relatives of retired four-star generals, including a granddaughter and a son-in-law, spouses of a retired three-star and two-star generals, and the son-in-law of a two-star general were facing strict ‘self-accountability proceedings’.Throughout the press conference, he didn’t take the name of Imran Khan, but his inference was clear. He claimed that the army had been targeted for over a year for “vested political interest and lust for power”.Stating that people were “incited to mutiny”, he said that on May 9, the rhetoric was at its peak and “naïve people were persuaded for a false revolution”.He noted that “three to four masterminds and ten to twelve planners” were behind the May incidents, who were inciting the people as they assumed that the army would react in a way that would suit their “nefarious designs”.After “the arrest”, he said that over 20 military installations in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Mardan, Chakdara, Lahore, Sargodha, Faisalabad, Mianwali, and Multan were attacked by protesters.A day later, the Dawn newspaper observed in an editorial that “by underlining that the military had penalised its own over the May 9 ‘tragedy’, the DG ISPR seemed to make it clear that his institution believes it is time to make the civilian perpetrators pay”. Among the various English newspapers, only Dawn critiqued the press conference by noting that the ISPR’s insistence that the officers were fired for incompetence contradicted the earlier narrative that the armed forces had deliberately shown restraint that day by refusing to engage with the protesters.The News also analysed that the “military is in no mood to play ball with those seen to be behind what it says was a carefully planned day of chaos”. “Two, no one is being given a free pass: whether by virtue of being part of the armed forces or being related to a member of the armed forces. Three, there seems to be a thinking that fake news, false narratives, and orchestrated campaigns are trying to harm institutional and national interest,” said the newspaper’s editorial.
