The Bajwa Outreach Plan

As Pakistan hurtles towards a third consecutive general election, the country’s most powerful man, the avowedly apolitical army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, is the one making the headlines

- Wajahat S. Khan in Islamabad

ON A HOT SUMMER night in 2014 at General Headquarters in the cantonment town of Rawalpindi, a crowd of fans surrounded Raheel Sharif, the mustachioed poster-boy Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan’s 15th military commander. It was Defence Day. The army was just beginning to crawl out of the Musharraf-era shell of political awkwardness, and the Kayani-era restrictions of terror threats. After more than a decade of a blanket stoppage, public parades— where the chosen few could interact with the top brass—were being reintroduced.

A 40-minute drive away, in Islamabad, opposition leader Imran Khan was in the middle of an extended sit-in for electoral reforms, which he hoped would attract thousands, trigger a Tahrir Square-like situation, and cause the incumbent premier, Nawaz Sharif, to buckle and resign.

GHQ’s top generals were divided about whether to side with a government that abhorred the military or support the struggling opposition, which many had supported, but not voted in.

As the crowd around Raheel refused to thin out and the selfies continued, in the distance, a tall, broad-shouldered man, who had made it a habit over the years to hunch down to listen to the counsel of shorter soldiers, stood alone. With one hand folded behind his back, the other one thumping a command cane onto his leg, this was Lt General Qamar Javed Bajwa, then commander of Pakistan’s largest military formation, the X Corps.