Author: Khaled Ahmed
Publication: The Friday Times
Date: March 2, 2001.
It is at times difficult to say
who is formulating Pakistan's strategy. Over the past ten years, the state
has become so soft that strategic thinking seems to have become fragmented
between the army, the leaders of jehad and the clergy. But roughly, it
revolves around the threat of India, defence on the eastern border while
securing the western border through political accommodation, and getting
India to fulfill its pledges on Kashmir by using the leverage of international
opinion. Another aspect of the strategy is maintenance of special relations
with the Islamic world and creation of the possibility of moral and financial
support of the Islamic world to its India policy.
The 'threat of India' part of the
strategy is ambivalent in the sense that it has evolved from a genuine
fear of India as an early 'undoer' of Pakistan to become a strategy of
changing the status quo against a much superior adversary. The cold war
strengthened this strategy and Pakistan got enough quality arms to force
India to think in terms of a bilateral military symmetry. The wars were
fought to change the status quo and were started by Pakistan because India
as a status quo power did not need to start them. The apogee of this policy
was the Afghan war in which 'Pakistan defeated the Soviet Union'. After
this victory, Pakistan took on India for the third time, through jehad.
The question is who thought of the strategy of war in Kashmir? Was this
task performed on internationally recognisable lines ?
Who thinks of strategy in Pakistan?George
K. Tanham, a veteran ex-diplomat and a preeminent American writer on strategy,
wrote in his Pakistan's Strategic Thinking (Hicks & Associates Inc):
'Conducting research in Pakistan on security has many restrictions and
is not easy. The active duty military are forbidden to talk to foreigners
about security matters; this also applies to many civilian officials. Retired
personnel also have restrictions as to what they can discuss though they
appear to have much more freedom in such matters, and are always careful
of classified materials...A few academics and journalists are knowledgeable...'.
Why should the military be expected to know security matters and the academics
be consulted as an after-thought? In the US, strategic thinking is done
by civilian scholars in the think tanks. A look at RAND's history will
tell you that 'official' strategy evolved from the work of the non-military
scholars.
As far as strategy is concerned,
South Asia is still quite Byzantine. There is no White Paper on National
Strategy. 'Someone' is supposed to know what the strategy is. Why should
he say what it is? Wouldn't it be a violation of security to talk openly
openly about it? The advantage of this is that when strategy goes wrong,
no one becomes answerable for it. In 1965, we sent commandos into Kashmir
thinking the Kashmiris would join us, but they did not. Our strategy definitely
posited that India would not open a front across the international boundary.
When it did, no one was supposed to be responsible for the failure of strategy.
In fact, Pakistan covered up the issue by declaring the war a victory and
celebrating 6th of September as Armed Forces Day.
India's 'lateral' response to Kargil:In
1999, the same strategy was employed on Kargil. This time it was more credible.
Pakistan had the bomb and India simply could not cross the international
boundary without risking a nuclear war. India did not cross the terrestrial
international boundary, but it did something else: it moved its navy into
the ocean in such a way that it scared the Pakistani prime minister into
capitulating. Who had thought up the strategy without thinking of the sea?
The international boundary becomes uncertain in the sea and stops being
a boundary beyond the territorial waters. That the navy was not even consulted
on the Kargil Operation proves that no one had thought of it.
Tanham writes of the Kargil Operation:
'Pakistan once again has not engaged in careful, well thought out strategic
planning. There has been a tendency to think about a first step only, and
then to proceed to action or reaction. Rarely have the Pakistanis considered
what the enemy might do after their first step, and they have been caught
by surprise several times. Pakistan seldom states clear objectives of what
it wants to achieve, only very general ones, such as "to take Kashmir".'
The truth of matter is that any well thought out strategy would take into
account the long view, which doesn't go in favour of Pakistan. The writer
of this article had heard that one 'objective' of the Kashmir jehad was
to keep the Indian army engaged internally so that it doesn't put pressure
on Pakistan on the Indo-Pak frontier, but was shocked to hear it from Pakistan's
ex-foreign minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan during a private dinner.
The long view is negative for Pakistan:The
long view is supplied from the other sectors: the ulema connected with
jehad, the Urdu press, and the retired army officers. The leaders of jehad
frequently bolster the Kashmir strategy by saying that the Indian army
is breaking under pressure and will capitulate soon provided Pakistan did
not succumb to international peace initiatives. The Urdu press reiterates
the textbook view of India as an inherently inferior polytheist state unequally
matched with the superior moral and physical might of the Muslims. The
retired general explains how India is breaking up from within and would
soon be many states instead of one, and that Pakistan has to keep it under
pressure to assist the process of break-up. This goes to make up the minimally
coherent strategy of Pakistan.
The pillar of international support
in national strategy is associated with Kashmir policy: that while deniable
war goes on with the help of the militias, Pakistan would abstain from
formal war and lean instead on the strategy of enlisting international
support. This presupposes that India is on a morally weak ground because
of its violation of human rights in Kashmir. But when Pakistan went abroad
to enlist this 'international support' after 1990, it got very little of
it. No one went into why the world did not come to the help of Pakistan
even though it was offended with India. Had someone in the establishment
done any cold-blooded analysis, he would have discovered that the reluctance
related to Pakistan's internal developments. In 1999, the Kargil Operation
was staged with the idea that the world will come to the help of Pakistan.
If someone thought that Pakistan would get international support under
duress because of its nuclear might, he was indulging in a dangerous low-IQ
exercise.
The fragmented strategy-making on
Islam and India:The fragmented strategic thinking supplies the next bit.
The ulema and the retired generals posit that since the West is Christian
and since Christianity cannot be in favour of Pakistan, the West cannot
be expected to assist Pakistan in its just struggle against India. They
enhance this insight by further positing that the West, led by the US,
is in collusion with India to inflict harm on the Islamic state of Pakistan.
The US in particular wants to see Pakistan subordinated to the regional
hegemony of India. In an even higher flight of strategic fancy, the clergy
and the retired army generals, frantically supported by the intelligence
agencies, will posit a tripartite alliance between the US, India and Israel,
to harm Pakistan in particular and the world of Islam in general. An 'intelligence'
general recently put the 'final' definition on strategy by telling a scared
envoys' conference in Islamabad that 'not fighting with India would be
tantamount to living as shudras in South Asia'.
The army and the jehadi clergy seem
therefore to think that a permanent state of war would suit Pakistan. Both
are armed and have a vested interest in conflict. What might bother the
army today is that it has also to run the country's economy and may be
under the same 'heretical' pressure as the elected prime ministers were
when they tried to 'cool down' the jehad. This dilemma has not taken the
army in the right direction, but split it, the jehadis siding with the
dissident Islamists in the army. Conflict suits the jehadis as an eternal
choice. What would damage their cause is victory. A defeat would hurt the
Pakistani people but will actually make the jehadi clergy paramount in
Pakistan.
Can isolationism be a strategy?If
the strategy was to nurse good relations with the Islamic world, it has
become seriously dented by contradictions with Iran and Central Asia, both
located in close proximity. The rest of the Islamic world has lost most
of its leverage in the strategy because of war and economic decline. Iran
and Central Asia are offended because of the operation of another aspect
of Pakistan's strategy: keeping Afghanistan under Islamabad's influence
to avoid having a two-front situation. This has plunged Pakistan into deep
international isolation and rendered the original strategy quite useless.
Afghanistan which started as a paradigm of disorder in the region has passed
some of its disorder on to Pakistan. The fragmented strategists of course
interpret it as a positive development in the context of Islamic purity.
The real strategy expert, Samina Ahmed from Islamabad's Institute of Regional
Studies, expresses the following fears about what passes for strategy in
Pakistan ( Asian Security Practice, Stanford University Press, 1998):
'Pakistan's continuing to depend
on military power, both conventional and nuclear, and ignore the geostrategic
policy of its neighbourhood could bring serious repercussions, for Pakistan
has a history of conflict with India and the balance of power obviously
favours its much larger neighbour...The use of official propaganda, in
both domestic and international forums, to create hostility towards India,
for example, could make it extremely difficult to resort to diplomatic
bargaining, even if such a course should become desirable for Pakistan's
over-all security. It is becoming apparent that the new directions of state
policy in Pakistan are in fact creating new categories of threat, both
external and internal, while they fail to address the present security
risks to the Pakistani citizenry and the state.'
