General Qamar Javed Bajwa. (Photo : Pakistan Army)
General Qamar Javed Bajwa will become the 16th Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army on Nov. 29 and is neither expected to end the Army's hostility towards India nor modify the Army's decades-old strategy of bleeding the Indian Army to death through a thousand cuts in Kashmir.
The hard liner succeeds General Raheel Sharif, who retires from military service on Nov. 28, but whose three-year tenure as army chief was marked by a frosty and sometimes hostile relationship with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Gen. Bajwa was once Chief of Staff (as a Brigadier General) of the important Pakistan Army X Corps. He returned as X Corps Commander from 2013 to 2015 and is, therefore, very familiar with Pakistan's policy towards India.
X Corps is one of two military brigades seeing combat against India in Kashmir. Gen. Bajwa was posted to X Corps three times, the first time as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Gen. Bajwa's appointment as Army chief is puzzling some quarters since his X Corps is notorious for its frequent involvement in military coup d'etats against the Pakistani government since Pakistan's independence in 1947.
Other observers, however, said he was appointed Chief of Army Staff because he has no interest in politics and doesn't seek attention.
"I believe there will be no let-up as far as Pakistan Army's Kashmir policy is concerned," said former Army chief Gen. Bikram Singh, under whom Gen Bajwa served as a brigade commander in the United Nations peace-keeping operations in Congo in 2007.
Gen. Singh advised it's important to "wait-and-watch" how Gen. Bajwa conducts himself.
"In the UN operations, Gen Bajwa's performance was totally professional and outstanding. But a military officer's conduct in the international environment is different from the way he conducts himself back home. There, he is governed by his country's national interests," said Gen. Singh.
An unidentified senior officer in the Pakistan Army told Pakistani media that Gen. Bajwa has extensive experience with the complexities, the nature of operations and terrain along the Line of Control (LoC) separating areas of Kashmir separately administered by India and Pakistan.
Gen. Bajwa is expected to continue bleeding the Indian Army across the LoC through a combination of incessant small unit raids by Kashmiri militants, Pakistan Army Rangers, covert operations by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the occasional artillery and mortar bombardment.
The danger of a full-scale war erupting at the LoC remains high as both the Pakistan and Indian Army continue carrying out violent activities short of war. Most of those killed in the worsening violence are Indian and Pakistani civilians, however.
Prior to his appointment as army chief, Gen. Bajwa served at General Headquarters as the Inspector General of the Training and Evaluation from 2015 to 2016.
