Here's a News Op Ed by Wajahat Khan on choice of next COAS:
Simply, command posts are those that grant an officer operational control of deployed forces over a specified covered area. At three-stars, that means a corps command. All five potential successors would play that gig: Haroon Aslam would get Bahawalpur’s XXXI; Rashad Mahmood would get Lahore’s IV; Raheel Sharif would get Gujranwala’s XXX; Tariq Khan would get Mangla’s I; and Zahir-ul-Islam would get Karachi’s V.
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In the army’s jungle of myth and law, Lahore and Karachi are more prestigious commands; they come with an informal degree in politics for the commander, just because of where they are headquartered. Battle-focused, Mangla is an elite ‘strike’ formation, hard-tasked to knife into India. Bahawalpur and Gujranwala are ‘holding’ formations, assigned to assist other, larger corps.
Thus, the tactics of their deployments disclosed the strategy of their boss. Rashad and Zahir were meant for bigger things (the politically sensitive chief of general staff and DG-ISI after Lahore and Karachi, respectively). Tariq, the tough guy of the western front (by 2010, he had done two serious stints with the 14th Infantry Division and the Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency/counterterrorism operations in Fata/KPK, liaised with US Centcom and commanded another strike formation in the famed 1st Armoured Division) would now harden his troops for the ‘perpetual threat from the east’.
As for Haroon (GoC of SSG) and Raheel (commandant of Pakistan Military Academy plus another premier infantry division’s GoC), not top guns but not lightweights either, thus, still worth rewarding, would get secondary corps in Bahawalpur and Gujranwala. To those who can read the code, the math was clear: though all had three-stars, some brass was worth more – and better polished, too.
But besides command, there comes a time in every officer’s life when he has to do a more ‘political’ desk job – the staff job – and at the three-star level, that means serving as a principal staff officer (where one is within walking/whispering/wooing distance away from the boss). The PSO job reinforces the best and singles them away from the rest. It’s also where one gets to lunch, talk golf and of course, work with and impress Kayani.
In this darker world of staff jobs, the chief’s matrix would become clearer: The number two, Rashad, would get the choice chief of general staff (after Lahore, this would peg him as a ‘favourite’ for COAS). The number one, Haroon, would get the less-glamorous chiefdom of Logistics Staff (readying him for the coordinative role at CJCSC). The number three, Raheel, a war-hero legatee (after all, he is Nishan-e-Haider Shabbir Sharif’s brother, but severely underrated by analysts), would get the cumbersome IGT&E (inspector general training and evaluation, a bean counter of sorts).
Zahir, at five, would take the fearsome ISI (not a PSO, but an adjutant to the real ISI chief, Kayani himself, a trustworthy title further enshrined after Karachi’s politics and terror). Only Tariq Khan, who lives for the field, would remain in the command world and not get a staff job, drilling his strike corps for the day of reckoning with India.
As for the hot favourite, Rashad may have a novice’s handicap of minus-two in polo, but Kayani’s fellow ‘Baluchi’ is a contender by the very fact that he’s led the sensitive Lahore Corps – where he duly interacted with the Sharifs as they held Punjab in the previous administration – and is now Kayani’s premier PSO....
The chief
