Ishtiaq Ahmed’s book helps us understand the role of the military in shaping the history of Pakistan and the lives of its people, writes PR Chari
THE PAKISTAN MIlITARY in POlITICS
Asuthor: Ishtiaq Ahmed
Publisher: Amaryllis, Rs 795
The author is Professor Emeritus of Political Science in the Stockholm University and Honorary Senior Fellow in the Institute of South Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore. His ex-pat status needs mention upfront to suggest that his study on the Pakistan military could be expected to be free of the influence that organisation has on scholarship in the country. It is known that academics, media persons, politicians, civil servants and businessmen are fearful of the Pakistan military and comport themselves suitably. A non-resident Pakistani could be expected to be objective in his analysis. The author does not disappoint here and his large narrative of over 540 pages is a scholarly treatise on Pakistan’s armed forces and the dominant role it plays in the nation’s polity and governance. Almost all references to the Pakistani military in this volume pertain to its army, which is much larger than its navy and air force, and is deeply embedded in the nation’s political system.
The conundrum why the Pakistani Army, an integral part of the British Indian Army until 1947, evolved so differently to obstruct Pakistan’s passage to democracy, unlike its neutral Indian counterpart, yields several narratives. An extreme anti-India sentiment permeates not only the Pakistan military but also the nation’s ruling elite; this sentiment persuaded Pakistan to join the United States during the Cold War in confronting the Soviet Union and China. Pakistan was thereby enabled to acquire arms aid from the Western powers to sustain its hostility towards India. What resulted thereafter, according to the author, is a conviction in Pakistan’s rulers that it is the “fortress” of Islam. Surrounded by enemies, Pakistan is a “garrison state”. The recent upsurge of Islamic beliefs has allowed the Pakistan military to harvest religion to serve its ambitions. Now, the infiltration of jihadis in its ranks has become the Pakistan Army’s greatest internal problem.
Citing Ayesha Siddiqa, the author draws attention to the reality that “the political economy of the military’s so-called institutional interests in actual practice means control by senior military officers over vast economic and financial sources through ownership of agricultural land, real estate, businesses and industrial enterprises”. Further, the death of its tall leaders — Mohammed Ali Jinnah and liaquat Ali Khan — shortly after Independence permitted the rise of an oligarchy within Pakistan, comprising its military and the civil services, who made common cause with the local bourgeoisie and landholding gentry that were the traditional exploiting classes. Incidentally, the cohesiveness of the Pakistan Army, the most politicised of its armed forces, derives its rank and file from its historically narrow recruiting base, restricted to a four districts in west Punjab and two in the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
What the author might also have emphasised is the sad fact that Pakistan’s civilian leadership has signally failed the country throughout its history, creating a fruitful milieu for military intervention. Remarkably, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf — who ousted their civilian predecessors to seize power after staging a coup — used the same justificatory language to cloak their ambitions. Words like “unpleasant” and “reluctance” have punctuated their speeches to suggest that “the action (was) taken in the greater national interest, claim(ing) that the country had been saved.” It is ironical that the aftermath of these military coups were uniformly disastrous for Pakistan.
What commends particular attention in this book is that its account of the Pakistan military is embedded in the chequered history of Pakistan. The author analyses the Pakistan Army’s colonial roots, and its role in the four India-Pakistan conflicts — 1947-48, 1965, 1971 and 1999 (Kargil). There are chapters on the first military takeover (1958), the alienation of East and West Pakistan, rise and fall of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Afghan jihad, vicissitudes of the Musharraf regime, and the growth of terrorism. Further, conceptual chapters address civil-military relations, Gen Zia’s Islamic drive, relations between civilian governments and the military, and the US preparing to leave the region, with an altogether fascinating account of the “gory end of Osama bin laden”.
Considerations of space only permit some unusual insights to be mentioned. Apparently, the press was “positively inclined” towards Ayub’s military coup in October 1958. The American and British press “wrote approving editorials in favour of the coup”, and “the influential Dawn of Karachi came out strongly a few days after the coup, in support of it in an editorial entitled ‘A Sane Revolution’”. This situation has not changed over the years. Pakistan’s people, intelligentsia and the media remain ambivalent over the military’s control over its governance. later, the author quotes the former Air Chief Nur Khan, saying that the 1965 India-Pakistan war was an “unnecessary war” and “big lie”. Apparently, “the army came to believe its own fiction and has used Ayub as its role model and, therefore, has continued to fight unwanted wars — the 1971 war and the Kargil fiasco in 1999 — in each of the subsequent wars we have committed the same mistakes that we committed in 1965”. This harsh judgement calls into question the received wisdom that nations, like individuals, learn from their past experience; evidently, this is not true in the case of Pakistan and its military apparatus.
Then, again, the civilian (Bengali) casualties in the 1971 India-Pakistan war is a matter of some controversy with figures ranging from 26,000 (Pakistan military) to three million (Bangladeshi estimates). The author has an interesting take on these figures. “I was told that the origins of the story about the three million dead was to be found in a statement of Mujib in which he had confused a million with the South Asian ‘lakh’ or ‘lac’ which means 100,000.This is not surprising because Mujib’s command over the English language was far from enviable.” Significantly, the official death toll according to the Bangladesh National Party is 300,000, which seems nearest to the truth. Finally, coming to laden’s execution in Abbottabad, the author concludes that the Pakistan military’s plea that it knew nothing about his presence has become “increasingly incredible”. Gen Asad Durrani, a former ISI Chief, has opined that the American Navy Seals “must have received some ground support from Pakistan... (which) could not possibly own up to its participation in the operation because that could inflame public opinion in Pakistan”. The Pakistan military’s two-faced policy in such matters becomes clearer from its public censure of the US drone attacks in its territory, while providing the Americans technical support for executing these attacks.
This book is not an easy or quick read with 540 pages, less some 80 pages of citations, bibliography and index, filled with factual details and close analysis. However, it is commendably dispassionate and eminently sane, and eschews making hortatory remarks or taking extreme positions, which includes the prickly subject of India-Pakistan relations. This book would reward the serious layman and scholar wishing to understand Pakistan’s compulsions in the historical perspective, especially the role of its military in shaping that history.
The reviewer is Visiting Professor, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies , New Delhi