In Stephen Cohen's words, "there are Armies that guard their nations borders, there are those that are concerned about protecting their status in society, and there are those that defend an idea or cause. The Pakistan Army does all three." From the days when Pakistan was created it has been involved in helping to restore internal order (often created or encouraged by its own top brass), as well as protecting Pakistan's permeable and often ill defined borders. It has used all its power and special position within Pakistan to ensure it be supplied with adequate weapons, resources and manpower. Moreover it has always regarded itself as the special expression of the Idea of Pakistan and some officers have advocated an activist role in reforming or correcting society. Despite its importance, Pakistan's military remains an opaque entity, both inside and outside of the country. Few publicly available reports exist for those seeking to acquire a basic understanding of its leaders, its functions, and its prime motivators.
Pakistan's military is a central actor in many of today's most pressing security challenges, and few institutions face such extreme pressures from such diverse forces. In recent years the Pakistan army has been asked to simultaneously combat a vicious internal insurgency, suppress international terrorist groups, and respond to Pakistan's worst floods in eighty years, all while squaring off against a much larger rival in one of the most strategically complex regions in the world. Pakistan's armed forces are not only an instrument of the state's foreign policy, but also the most influential actor in the country's internal politics. They are currently battling brutal domestic adversaries who have killed thousands of civilians and targeted the nation's military and civilian leadership. They additionally figure prominently in efforts to suppress international terrorist groups, and have, at the same time, been tolerating and even supporting those same organizations. Furthermore, Pakistan's armed forces oversee the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal amidst great concerns about its security given an active domestic insurgency, strategic competition with its nuclear neighbor, and the A.Q. Khan network's legacy of proliferation. Finally, the Pakistan military participates in an ongoing strategic standoff with rival India-a simmering conflict that continues to threaten to explode into war for a fifth time since 1947.
Historical Perspective
3. Ancestry of Pakistan Army. The vast bulk of Pakistan army consists of men with Hindu or Buddhist ancestry. As a matter of fact the Rajputs of the north of Chenab area from where the vast bulk of Pakistan army is recruited were far more difficult to govern before they were converted to Islam. The only positive connection that these races had with the Muslim Turks was the fact that one of their members killed Sultan Ghauri. Even the Pathans, the second largest group of Pakistani soldiers, had little connection with Turkish invasions of India. Babar did not like the Pathans and the Pathans generally remained in conflict with the Muslim governments in Delhi. The Pakistan Army is not the descendant of the Turk armies that invaded India. Of course with the exceptions of some genuinely Mughal villages like Lehr Sultanpur etc, the Pakistan Army is a chip from the block of the old mercenary British army with its origins in the "Mutiny Loyalty of Punjabi Muslim, Pathan and Sikh soldiers" who attacked Delhi for the first time in September 1857 and in phenomenal staunchness of Punjabi soldiers while facing the Muslim Turks in World War 1.
4. British Indian Heritage. The Punjabis once totaled as Muslim, Hindu and Sikh, as an ethnic group became the largest single group and the vast bulk of the British Indian Army in the period 1883-1911. In 1883 there were about 34.09 % or 120 Punjabi companies (25 Punjabi Muslims, 18 Punjabi Dogra, Hindus and 77 Punjabi Sikhs) and 15 Pathan companies out of the total 352 infantry companies of the Regular Bengal Army. By 1911 the Indian Army was a more than 50 % Punjabi army although never a Muslim majority army. In 1929 thanks to Pathan and Ranghar defiance of the British in World War 1 the Punjabi percentage (divided into roughly one third Muslim, Sikh and Hindu) of the Indian Army rose to 54.36% if the Ghurkhas were included and to 61.8 % if Ghurkhas were excluded. The Pathan share at this time stood at 4.02 % out of which all were not ethnic or linguistic Pathans. [2] The Marathas militarily defeated the Mughals long before 1971 and their hold on India was finally successfully challenged not by any Punjabi or Pathan Muslim army but by the Bengal and Madras armies of the English East India Companies at Laswari and Assaye respectively in 1803.
5. Martial Race Syndrome. The problem is that Pakistan has yet to get out of the "Martial Races Syndrome". Let us analyse some pertinent examples. Punjab dubbed as a martial province in Pakistan with a Muslim majority, was firmly under Sikh domination despite the fact that the Sikhs were a 8 or 9 % minority. During Sikh rule mosques were often used as military magazines, including the famous Badshahi mosque and sometimes plastered with cow dung as happened with the Golden Mosque of Kashmiri Bazaar Lahore. [3] So much for the martial traditions, just 122 years ago, of the largely Punjabi Muslim army that surrendered in East Pakistan. Ironically, there was the fact that the same West Pakistanis, who despised Bengalis as non-Martial race in March 1971, at least were not as martial in 1849, as they became in 1914, because of British recruitment policies and situational reasons. The problem is that Pakistani's have forgotten that all territory west of Aligarh district , including Delhi, Agra, Punjab and Frontier was under Maratha or Sikh rule till 1803 or as late as 1849. There were no martial races in Muslim majority Punjab, at least to rule Punjab till 1849. So much for the martial traditions of Muslims of Indo-Pak. It was all situational, there being no martial races. But somehow in Pakistan by 1950s myth became mixed with reality and myth finally gained the upper hand. The winter of this discontent finally came in the killing fields of Bengal in December 1971.
The story of the evolution of Pakistan Army is the story of the birth of Pakistan itself against odds. It is a story of crises and conflicts created by its search for an identity after 1947. On 30 June 1947 the Partition Council, chaired by the Viceroy of India, Mountbatten, and consisting of the top leaders of the Muslim League and the Indian Congress, agreed upon the procedure for division of the Armed Forces. FM Auchinleck, then C-in-C India, was appointed Supreme Commander under Mountbatten to ensure smooth division of units and stores etc. It was announced on 1 July 1947 that both countries would have operational control of their respective Armed Forces by 15 August 1947. On the eve of Partition in 1947 the strength was 11,800 officers, 450,000 OR plus about 50,000 of Indian Princely State Forces. It is noteworthy that at that time as per policy of the British Raj since 1857 there were no complete Muslim infantry units. In armour there was only one complete Muslim unit. In artillery there were 12 Muslim regiments, and in engineers, there were about 12 Muslim companies; all other arms and services were grouped on "all class" basis.
Officer Corps. Punjabis dominate the Pakistan Army, which reflects the high educational standards and traditionalism of the officer class at intake level. However the great bulk comes from the middle class (upper/lower) predominantly from rural background. The development of the officer cadre can be traced back to the Ayubian system when officers with ranker background or those who lacked independent judgment were preferred for higher ranks. The ulterior motive was to ensure that relatively more pliable, politically inert, and orders oriented material entered the Indian officer corps.
Islamisation of the Officer Corps. This is a cause of concern, for it gives impetus to fundamentalism, which in turn can lead to irrational behavior and decision-making. Brain Cloughley in his book A History of Pakistan army says - "I was informed gravely by a junior officer that the beard of one of his soldiers had turned red of its own accord because of the piety during his Haj. His commanding officer buried his head in his hands, but made no comment. I do not say that these officers are typical; only that their attitude is disconcerting". [4] Zia-ul-Haq is to blame for this, and successive governments have done nothing to improve matters. He discouraged the teaching of English. He encouraged rote learning of religious detail at the expense of of improvement in intellectual probity.
Nuclear aspirations. After almost twelve years of efforts India exploded a nuclear device at Pokhran on 18 May 1974 not far from Pakistan's borders, thus starting a nuclear arms race in the Sub-continent. By 1986, after only seven years of a crash program, Pakistan had acquired her own nuclear capability to match and deter that of India. Thus it tied to establish a strategic balance in the region. Pakistan Army called it an Islamic bomb based on the ideology 'striking terror into the hearts of the enemy' as enjoined by the Holy Quran.
Islamic Concept. In 1976, the Higher Defence Organization was streamlined and revitalised. The western influenced strategic doctrine was critically analysed and re-evaluated in the light of the geostrategic realities and operational environment. Core issues of Quranic concepts of warfare, regulated by laws like Jehad, checks and balances on use of force, prohibition of total unlimited war, humane measures to protect women, children and prisoners, encouraging negotiations for honourable peace and that enemies need not be permanent, and other fundamentals were highlighted in the re-evaluation. These concepts have been fundamental in creating an Islamic Ideology in the minds of the present generation and exploited to keep the morale going in the adversity of severe set backs like Kargil. Mottos and battle cries like 'Allah-o-Akbar', 'Ya Ali', 'Ghazi Ya Shaheed', 'Labbaik' and others, would continue to inspire and guide them for the present and the future.
Partition, Kashmir, and the Beginning of the Use of Proxies. The 1947 Partition of British India divided the British Indian Army into two unequal components; East and West Pakistan received approximately one-third of the former British Indian forces while India received the other two-thirds. Because Muslim-majority Pakistan had a smaller military, and because India called for the reunification of the former British Indian territories, Pakistani leaders immediately saw India as the nation's most significant military threat. Much of the acrimony between Pakistan and India stems from the decision of a minor potentate to side with India over Pakistan around the time of Partition. When the 550 Princely States of British India were given the choice to join the newly formed countries of India or Pakistan, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir decided to join his Muslim-majority territory with India. The details of this deal, including the intrigues of the last viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, remain contentious; the political leadership from both countries strongly believed that the territory was rightfully theirs. At the time, Pakistan's nascent military forces could not take the territory by force. Equally important, the Pakistani military was still under the command of British officers who would not have led their troops into Kashmir. Thus, Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, along with lower-level Pakistani military leaders, approved a plan to use irregular forces to fight for Pakistani interests in the region. These militias from the North West Frontier Province, called lashkars, crossed the border on October 21, 1947. After a few days of battle, these irregular forces nearly captured Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. Indian forces-deployed on October 27-eventually pushed them back.
Army Rule. Pakistan's army has governed the country directly or indirectly for much of the Nation's history, having arrogated the prerogative to set external and domestic policies, many of which are deeply intertwined. The most notorious of these twinned policies involves the deployment of Islamist militants as tools of external influence in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This has required the Pakistan army and intelligence agencies to instrumentalize Islamism to sustain these varied militant groups. Having instigated four wars with India (in 1947-8, 1965, 1971 and 1999) and waged a low-intensity conflict since 1989 in Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistan army nurtures the intractable security competition with India. Through its dominance of state affairs, the army has developed immense and ever-expanding economic interests, the protection of which provides compelling incentives to seize power.
Democratic Transitions from Army Rule. The first democratic transition took place in December 1971. General Yahya Khan, the second military ruler, precipitated a civil war in East Pakistan that ultimately drew in the Indian army. The hopelessly tired, outnumbered and outgunned garrison under Lt.-Gen. A. A. K. Niazi surrendered in less than a fortnight to the Indians, reversing centuries of Muslim military tradition in the sub-continent. Senior army officers deposed the feckless Yahya, who caved in only after his house was buzzed by fighter aircraft. The first democratic transition ended in 1977, when General Zia, Bhutto's hand-picked army chief, overthrew him. Zia's Operation Fairplay was ostensibly carried out to hold free and fair elections during the next 90 days [5] .
The second democratic transition took place in December 1988. After Gen. Zia died in a still-mysterious plane crash in August, the army decided to hold the party-based general elections that Zia had found so difficult to conduct during his eleven-year rule. The new army chief was Zia's deputy, General Baig. He committed himself to handing over power to whoever emerged as the victor. Once again, the PPP was victorious and this time power was transferred to Bhutto's daughter, Benazir. This transition, too, was abrupt and chaotic and saw Benazir Bhutto alternating as prime minister with Nawaz Sharif, a Zia protégé and an industrialist with a strong power base in Punjab, the most populous province. The democratic interlude came to an end in October 1999 when General Musharraf, the army chief, overthrew Sharif, alleging, inter alia that the latter had prevented his plane from landing at the Karachi airport [6] .
The third democratic transition was triggered by Gen Musharraf's ill-advised decision to suspend the Chief Justice on the 9th of March, 2007. It set in motion a political dynamic which resulted in general elections being held on the 18th of February, 2008.
The Kashmir Factor and the Army. The concept of a parliamentary democracy for Pakistan as a nation received its first setback when only a part of the nation joined together just before independence. Greater knocks were to follow later, whether in failure to establish sound and stable competitive political constitutions, which led to the events of 1970-71, or the fissiparous tendencies and pressure for sub national separatism in different forms. It is this factor that propels the perception in Pakistan that it is an incomplete state without Kashmir being incorporated into it. Those and many other factors led to the rise and sustenance of praetorianism in Pakistan. This has also resulted in reinforcement of powerful interest groups in Pakistan. (e.g. the military and civil bureaucracy) which has sought to externalise vulnerabilities arising out of inner contradictions and at the same time generated and sustained a sense of not only suspicion but even hostility towards India in order to maintain their privileged position in the state and society of Pakistan.
Pakistan continues to support the Afghan Taliban and allied networks (e.g.Jalaludin Haqqani), despite receiving more than US $19 billion from Washington in direct aid and military compensation to support the US-led global 'war on terror'. Pakistan also continues to nurture the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and other so-called 'Kashmir' groups even though it has embarked on a serious fight against its own domestic Islamist militants operating under the rubric of the Tehreek-e- Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP or Pakistan Taliban). For these and other reasons, many observers see the Pakistan army as both the best possible remedy for Pakistan's contemporary ills and the root source of them. This has led a raft of analysts and policy-makers to postulate that a genuine civilian transition is a necessary-if insufficient-condition for Pakistan to become more stable internally, abandon its revisionist commitments to Kashmir, become reconciled with India and accept Afghanistan as a neighbour rather than a client.
The army's ability to intervene in Pakistan's governance without immediate public outrage stems from its assumption, well rehearsed in public, that it is the pre-eminent guardian not only of Pakistan's foreign and domestic interests, but also of the nation's 'ideology', variously construed. [7] Equally important, the army's willingness to intervene politically and economically stems from its own enduring belief that it is such a guardian and is the single most capable entity to undertake both state- and nation-building. Despite the polity's cyclical disgruntlement with the mis-steps taken by military leaders when they directly hold power, the citizenry generally greets its assumption of authority with enthusiasm or relief at first. This assumption of authority on the part of the army, which has generally broad support among the populace, has a number of ramifications apart from the sustained enervation of democracy. The army has a revisionist agenda, seeking to change the regional status quo in Kashmir, and it has created a stove-piped decision making process with little space for rigorous national security debate or competent civilian input. This combination of factors explains in some measure how the army has come to pursue a variety of problematic policies at home and abroad. These policies have both sustained the Indo-Pakistan security competition and confirmed the reality of the Indian threat among Pakistanis, who are often ignorant of their army's activities, including its culpability in commencing hostilities, fostering proxy elements and failing to achieve victory in its varied efforts [8] .
These historical factors explain in part why the army sees itself and is seen by many Pakistanis as the guarantor of an inherently insecure state. Pakistan's civilian institutions are unable to constrain the army in part because of their own weaknesses but also because they ultimately embrace or at least tacitly accept this narrative. During the army's various tenures, it has expanded its grip over ever larger economic interests; cultivated and co opted bureaucratic, industrial and political elites; weakened the capacity of political actors; diminished opposition to the concept of military intervention by accumulating ever greater numbers of stakeholders; and secured strategic partnerships with the United States, which have been very lucrative for the army [9] . With each round of failed military government, the political system has become less capable of governing once the army leaves.
