It will be unwise to expect any change in Pakistan's attitude. Cross-border terror strikes will increase rather than decrease in number and ferocity. India must further strengthen its efforts to counter these
The recent past has witnessed the detonation of several explosive developments — the Islamic State’s declaration of war against India; the Dinanagar attack; the revelation in an article in The Dawn by Mr Tariq Khosa, a former Director General of the country’s Federal Investigation Agency, of the Pakistani establishment’s complicity in the staging of the 26/11 attacks; the attack on a Border Security Force convoy in Udhampur, Jammu, which led to the killing of two jawans, one Pakistani terrorist, and the apprehension of another.
Understandably, these have resurrected some of the observations that emerge from the woodwork whenever Pakistan triggers a major terrorist strike. One such is the affirmation that it has people like Mr Khosa who do not support its involvement in staging cross-border terrorist strikes, but they as well as civilian Governments favouring friendship with India, are thwarted by fundamentalist and/or dyed-in-the wool anti-India elements advocating continuing confrontation. These include a significant section of Pakistani Army and the country’s super spy organisation, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. It is no secret that the Army and the ISI call the shots in the last reckoning.
The question follows whether Pakistan’s civilian Government, headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, can defy their opposition and enter into a successful peace process. The answer is ‘no’. No civilian Government can do such a thing and survive. In 1993, the Army defenestrated him (then Prime Minister) and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who were constantly jousting. It not only removed but also imprisoned and, subsequently, exiled him, following the 1999 coup. Also ousted unceremoniously were Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 and his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, in 1990. The Army, led by General Zia-ul-Haq was directly behind his ouster in 1977 and, indirectly but unmistakably, involved in his judicial murder in 1979.
The next question is whether the Army and the ISI can themselves change. The answer will be in the negative and accompanied by a gargantuan laughter. An important reason is that General-turned-President Zia-ul-Haq’s strenuous Islamisation policy in the 1980s has created a significant presence of fundamentalist Islamist elements in the Pakistani Army.
Zahid Hussain writes in Frontline Pakistan: The Path to Catastrophe and the Killing of Benazir Bhutto, “Islam was incorporated into the Army’s organisational fabric. For the first time Islamic teachings were introduced into the Pakistan Military Academy.” He adds, “Islamic training and philosopy were made a part of the curriculum of the Command and Staff College. A Directorate of Religious Instruction was instituted to educate the officer corps on Islam.” The subjects for promotions examinations were made to include Islamic education. Officers were required to read The Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier (later Major General) SK Malik and were taught to be not just professional soldiers, but also soldiers of Islam. Zia-ul-Haq wrote in his foreword to the book, “The professional soldier in a Muslim Army pursuing the goals of a Muslim state, cannot become ‘professional’ if he does not take ‘the colour of Allah’ in all his activities.
Zia upgraded the status of Maulavis — until then barely tolerated by the military elite — attached to Army units, integrated them into the ethos of Army life and made it compulsory for them to go into battle with the troops. An officer had to be a devout Muslim to be promoted. Zahid Hussain writes, “Scores of highly professional and secular officers were sidelined for not meeting the criteria of being a ‘good Muslim’….many conservative officers reached the senior command level. Radical Islamist ideology permeated the Army with the free flow of religious political literature in the Armed Forces training institutions. Friday prayers at regimental mosques, a matter of individual choice in the past, became obligatory.”
The character of the officers corps changed. Earlier, it mainly drew young men from liberal, Westernised urban families and rural landed aristocracy, many of whom loved the good life and had little time for religious bigotry. Those who were exceptions and fundamentalists at heart had no impact on the general ethos. From the 1980s, officers began coming from conservative rural or middle class and lower middle class backgrounds and more prone to be attracted by Zia’s Islamisation drive. They became the main base of his regime.
The strength of such officers, known as ‘Zia bhartis’ or Zia recruits, in the Pakistani Army is a matter of speculation. Zaid Hussain quotes a retired lieutenant-general as saying that 25 to 30 per cent of officers had fundamentalist Islamist leanings. Mr Shuja Nawaz, a distinguished military historian and author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within states that Zia recruits would run the Pakistani Army once the senior lieutenant-generals, commissioned between 1960 and 1980 retired. Given that it is now 2015, the process has by and large been completed.
Attempts to purge the Army of fundamentalist elements have failed. Besides, Mr Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Mr Shahbaz Sharif have very cordial relations with Hafiz Saeed who runs the lashkar-e-Tayyeba and its parent organsation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h. As Chief Minister of Punjab, Mr Shahbaz Sharif had provided a grant-in-aid of `6.1 crore from the province’s 2013-2014 Budget to the Markaz-e-Toiba, the JuD’s largest centre, for setting up a “knowledge park” at the organisation’s campus at Muridkey in the outskirts, of lahore, and another `35 crore to the JuD for the park and other initiatives in Punjab. Even if some miracle changes the Pakistani Army’s pathological anti-India stance, the Sharif brothers are unlikely to abandon Saeed and the JuD and leT.
It will be unwise to expect any change in Pakistan’s attitude. There appeared to have been a chance of it after the Pakistani Taliban’s attack on an Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, last year, which left 148 persons, including 134 students, dead. Authorities seemed to display a new resolve as grief and anger spread across Pakistan. “We announce that there will be no differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban,” said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the incident’s wake. Also, the Government lifted its moratorium on the execution of convicted militants and started to hang them in pairs or small groups. A law was quickly passed enabling the Army its own courts to try terrorists through summary proceedings.
The resolve proved ephemeral. Soon, it was business as usual. The message is simple. Terrorist attacks from Pakistan will not only continue but become more frequent violent. India must further strengthen its efforts to counter these.
(The accompanying visual is of paramilitary soldiers standing near the body of the terrorist who had attacked a BSF convoy in Udhampur, Jammu & Kashmir on Wednesday. PTI photo)