Author: Anand K. Sahay
Publication: Tehelka
Date: August 12, 2006
URL: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main18.asp?filename=Ne081206essayp26.asp
Introduction: The Pakistan army is ideologically
contaminated. its stranglehold has held the country from realising Jinnah's
vision. That's Pakistan's tragedy
This is not apocryphal. General Zia-ul-Haq's
coup of July 5, 1977 that overthrew the civilian regime of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
in Pakistan was codenamed "Operation Fairplay"!
Considering that it is the Pakistan Army we
are talking about, there ought not to be too great a surprise about this.
The irony, however, resides in the fact that Bhutto had fast-tracked Zia over
the heads of others to make him Army chief. Taking "Fairplay" to
its logical end, Zia imprisoned Bhutto and hanged him two years later. As
Nawaz Sharif was to learn to his cost, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
current Army strongman whom he had promoted over others to make chief a la
Bhutto, has kept up the tradition of biting the hand that fed him.
Who knows, if Sharif were to return home from
exile, the Musharraf dictatorship might deal with him the way Zia dealt with
Bhutto? The record is quite unambiguous: the Pakistan Army is a very dangerous
institution indeed.
And the story goes back a long way - almost
to the founding of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan, the landed aristocrat from
Meerut who became the country's first prime minister, was shot dead at point-blank
range in 1951 as he was addressing a public meeting, in full view of his security
apparatus.
It was given out that a deranged Afghan had
committed the murder. Jinnah was already dead three years. It was clear that
if Liaquat too went, there would be a political vacuum, and all links snapped
with the historical processes that had led to the establishing of Pakistan.
Events unfolded exactly in this manner. The field was now open for a succession
of feckless bureaucrats to adorn the positions of president and prime minister
with the blessings of the Army whose star was in the ascendant from the day
Pakistan was born, thanks to the security psychosis that was unleashed with
the invasion of Kashmir within weeks of Partition.
In October 1958, the Army did away with the
charade and General Ayub Khan seized power. Since then, for Pakistan, it has
been a long, undistinguished, line of military-plotters with interludes of
civilian governments politely called democracies. While suspicions remained,
we shall never know if the Army got the first pm bumped off. But there is
no question that the forces began to directly call the shots after Liaquat's
liquidation and were the prime beneficiaries of that episode. When Jinnah
and Liaquat were around, the Army had only enjoyed a special leverage in the
power set-up on account of the role thrust upon it by the nascent State.
It is the alacrity with which the Pakistan
Army moved to grab power five decades ago, and the avidity with which it has
retained it, that makes it both dangerous and remarkable. Its self-appointed
role was to keep democratic urges from crystallising and to keep alive the
"Pakistan ideology", viz. the Muslims of the subcontinent were a
common religio-cultural and political entity that must 'develop separately'-
exactly the definition of "apartheid"- from other religious groups,
noticeably the Hindus. The psychological ghettoisation of the Muslims who
chose Pakistan does not seem to have led them very far as a State, civil society,
or nation. Nevertheless, the Army has prospered. It also appears to have succeeded
in its aims despite its failure to maintain national cohesion and presiding
over the vivisection of the country (the creation of Bangladesh). Nor have
defeats come in the way of the Army's entrenchment as the country's most powerful
institution that casts a long shadow on every aspect of life. This, of course,
is a comment on the emasculated state of other institutions. The rise in the
power of the military - and the concomitant enfeeblement of other public platforms
- is not least due to the pampering of the Pakistan military by the US which
made it a frontline Cold War ally, emboldening the Pakistan Army into domestic
and foreign misadventures.
Given the manner in which the Army of the
"land of the pure" has dealt with its political class and its people,
it is unrealistic for India to expect that the Pakistan Army, which really
speaking, runs the State even when civilian governments are nominally thrown
up, would behave honourably towards it. If anything, it is by pointing to
the existence of India as a threatening neighbour that the Army is able to
justify the continuation of its exalted status to the people of Pakistan.
It is therefore no surprise to learn that
a Pakistan Army major, identified as Mohammed Hyder Turki of the 9th Baluch
battalion on the basis of papers found on his body, was killed in a gunbattle
with Indian troops in Kashmir last week. He was with a band of armed infiltrators.
If a middle-level Army officer had crossed over into India in the guise of
a terrorist, we may be certain that hordes of other ranks are doing exactly
the same, under command, in direct violation of Pakistan's agreement of January
2004 with this country whereby Musharraf pledged not to let his country's
territory be used for terrorist activities against India.
There was no such explicit agreement then,
but in 1965 the Ayub government had launched "Operation Gibraltar"
under which 5,000 Army men infiltrated into Kashmir to trigger an uprising,
acting on the assumption that the Kashmiris were waiting for just such a push
to revolt against India. As it happened, the ordinary Kashmiris handed over
every Pakistani trooper they caught.
The story of the deceased Major Turki suggests
that "Operation Gibraltar" is a continuing saga. We saw similar
infiltration in 1948. That was the first time. "Gibraltar" came
next. Kargil was to be the subsequent occasion of a similar nature.
But the difference was that the Kargil misadventure
showed the extensive degree of ideological contamination of its armed forces
on account of association with jehadi elements. Unbelievable though this is,
regular troops and jehadi terrorists formed the same fighting units.
That, in truth, speaks of the degeneration
suffered in the organising principle of the Pakistan Army, which is of exactly
the same vintage as the Indian Army, and possesses identical fighting experience.
Few would today disagree that the Pakistan Army has been losing its professional
élan. But getting mixed up with the jehadis could undermine the Army's
status as Pakistan's most viable institution.
The Pakistan Army is said to have a strength
of 22 divisions, about half that of the Indian Army. That is an impressive
figure, given that it does not need to guard two fronts, unlike India. The
Army is predominantly drawn from Punjab but also has a significant presence
of fighting men from the NWFP. The country's other nationalities - the Sindhis,
the Baluch and the Mohajirs - are virtually missing from its ranks, as were
Bengalis before the emergence of Bangladesh. For this reason, the Army is
not viewed as a national force, not least on account of its involvement in
Baluchistan and against the Mohajirs. It also eats up close to 70 percent
of the budget.
The pervasive control of the Army on the country's
foreign and security policies is legendary and is a subject of scholarly and
journalistic attention. But the Army's stranglehold over public life is perhaps
best summed up in Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal's eye-catching expression
"the political economy of (its) defence". Not many know that the
Army is Pakistan's biggest landlord and investment source. Naturally, it has
the first claim on the country's resources, which far outweighs development.
In Pakistan's early years, the Army was influenced
by the feudal classes and officered by Sandhurst-trained sons of the landed
elite. Zia changed all that. Besides Punjabi in greater measure, he made it
middle and lower middle-class with a distinct Islamist stamp, which exactly
fits with the profile of the Lashkar-e-Toiba with which the isi, Pakistan's
'state within a state' and crucial branch of the Army, is said to be intimately
linked. Naturally, it is impossible to see the transformation of Pakistan
in a positive direction without the democratisation of its Army, whose tentacles
are spread far and wide.
Sahay is a senior journalist
