HAVING lived for decades under the shadow of controversy about its professional orientation, the Pakistan Army now has the opportunity to evolve a new character compatible with modern times and the needs of new strategic situation.

This will require taking hard decisions. The army will have to decide whether it wants to be the “guardian of religious frontiers” or it wants to pay prime attention to the basic duty of guarding national borders.

To some there is no clash between the two goals. Pakistan is an ideological state where Islam plays a vital role in national life, and guarding its frontiers necessarily means a commitment to be at the front-most frontiers of religion. This may be true in theory. Practice has been different.

While it began as an heir to the British Army and maintained that non-ideological professional outlook, the Pakistan Army’s orientation underwent a significant change during late seventies and the eighties. Under Zia-ul-Haq a full scale programme to Islamize the army began. The general discipline of the armed forces, which levelled all sorts of ideological proclivities through strict institutional order, loosened. Symbols of personal piety became as important as professional hallmarks. Bearded officers proliferated.

That change in the character of the armed forces was also induced by the regional situation. The fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan was conducted in the name of Islam, and because Pakistan had a central role to play in that war, it suited the strategic goals and objectives of the then military leadership to emphasize the religious factor at home. That was the time when the term jihad gained currency in Pakistan’s military jargon.

Moreover, there were corporate gains to be made from playing the religious card: it deepened links with countries like Saudi Arabia and made it possible for the Pakistan army to solidify aid ties with the Gulf countries. Domestically, of course it fitted perfectly into Zia’s interpretation of Islam to his political advantage.

The cumulative effect of all these factors was that part of the army, which previously prided itself on being a national force inspired and motivated by the sole concern of guarding national frontiers, developed a psyche that transcended the country’s geography. Zia years spawned a whole generation of military leaders who actually saw the Pakistan army as the army of Islam rather than the army of Pakistan.

Throughout the nineties a tense debate raged between two schools of military thought: one, the minority, believed that the Pakistan army commitment was to all “Islamic causes”, and the other, the majority, believed that no cause was greater than the national cause.

The majority view prevailed, but there was no systematic attempt to settle the debate, and institutionalize its conclusions, as to whether religion should be simply a motivational force, or be allowed to influence the strategic goals of the army.

The famous failed putsch involving major general Zaheerul Islam, Brig Mustansar Billa, and four colonels during the tenure of General Abdul Waheed Kakar in the early nineties, illustrated the danger of this unsettled debate.

These officers tried to take over the army and overthrow the civilian government using the name of religion. One of the biggest concerns of the leader of the group, Zaheerul Islam, which, according to him, made him attempt the double coup d’etat, was the “non-Islamic character of the army leadership and their closeness to the West”. He saw himself as a purifier of the polluted echelons of power. He and his associates were caught, tried, punished and dismissed from service.

There have been other examples, too, of generals thinking themselves as soldiers of Islam. General (retd) Javed Nasir, former head of the ISI under Nawaz Sharif government is one case in point. General (retd) Hamid Gul is yet another. They reflect a military mindset that has rejected the original mandate of the Armed Forces of Pakistan: nationalist force designed to vigilantly guard national frontiers. They see an overarching role for the Pakistan armed forces that must be at the forefront of all battles involving Muslims.

While the operational policy of the Pakistan army has, fortunately, never been inspired by such grand designs, public expressions of lofty religious goals by individuals have incurred costs.

At home it has bred confusion about the professional character of the armed forces and the nature of their duties. The argument that many are making in Pakistan today as to why General Musharraf did not stand by the Taliban and instead joined the coalition is influenced by the turbid thought that somehow the Pakistan army is duty-bound to defend the weaklings of the Muslim world. Such unreasonable demands would not have been made on the army in the first place if it was accepted to be a purely national army with no transnational role and motivated essentially by nationalist rather than Islamic concerns.

Moreover, the minority view of the army being an Islamic force has been a handle in the hands of Pakistan’s detractors to batter the country’s image with. Using links between religious-minded military men with religious parties and groups, Pakistan’s critics have always put the blame of most of the wrongdoings of these groups at the Pakistan army’s doorstep.

The recent propaganda blitz by Indian journalists suggesting that Pakistan airlifted its officers from Kunduz, where Taliban along with foreign fighters were holed up, is a recent illustration of this fact. That the story refused to fade away despite emphatic denials by Pakistan and by the international coalition against terrorism showed how deep the international misperception is of the kind of role Pakistan army plays in conflicts involving Muslims.

The same misperception lies behind the ceaseless debate about “jihadi elements” in the Pakistan army ready to take over “nuclear weapons and share the nuclear technology with other Islamic states.” The pre-conceived notions dominating this debate have been so strong that facts like Pakistan’s impeccable track record of nuclear controls, and the negligible numbers of the “jihadis in uniform” are not factored at all. The diplomatic complications that the debate has caused to Pakistan are for all to see: for years Pakistan has spent precious time and energy trying to dispel this impression and justify its credentials as a responsible state.

Much of this can change if General Pervez Musharraf builds on the momentum that is already visible towards redefining the role of Pakistan’s armed forces in the context of religion. He is uniquely poised to re-establish the parameters of the professional tasks of the army. The environment is already conducive. Those who had any illusions about the practicality of espousing transnational causes now know the possible costs of such ambitions in the shape of what could have happened to Pakistan if it had decided to side with the Taliban. The influence of conservative generals has been rolled back. A new generation of army leaders is in control. The time is ripe to refocus the military mind on nationalism rather than pan-Islamism.

WHAT appeared to be some sort of a calculated ambivalence about the post-Taliban Afghanistan emerged from an extended interaction with a number of visiting Chinese scholars representing the China Association for International Friendly Contact at a recent seminar at the Area Study Centre, Central Asia, Russia and China of the Peshawar University.

The Chinese ambivalence might have been a combination of muted relief over the reversal of the Taliban’s aggressively radical Islamic order and an apparent anxiety about the shape of things to come in that strife-torn land. The relief over the dismal fall of the Taliban without any resistance, whatsoever, was, in no way to be taken as a support for the Northern Alliance to succeed it.

During the talks, a reference was, made to reports alleging Pakistan’s role in stirring up trouble in Xingiang. However, China would not attach any credence to the reports. Whatever trouble had erupted there may not be attributable at all to the Pakistanis but to some non-Pakistani elements. As a preventive measure, however, China had deployed troops along its western border.

To a persistent and direct reference by Pakistani participants to China’s role as one of the ‘main’ supporters of the Northern Alliance through the Soviet-Afghan war and subsequently its recognition of the Rabbani government (1992-1996), the Chinese response could be interpreted either way — as yes or no. It was couched in terms of circumstantial exigencies.

Little exception was taken to China’s ideological support to the communist (quasi-communist) Shola-i-Javedan (Eternal flame) predominantly Maoist in orientation and Shitam-i-milli (Oppressed peoples) parties. Both had been up in arms against the royalist / republican groups as much as the foreign invader.

What came out, loud and clear, from a close and animated discussion revolving round the ‘exfiltration’ of the Taliban from Kabul may well be summed up in two words: good riddance. Depending on how the situation develops in the near future, China might want to retain a ‘working relationship’ with the regime in Kabul without in any way compromising its close, historical links with Pakistan. The same would be true of the Pak-Afghan relations. ‘No future government of Afghanistan can (or should) avoid Pakistan’s involvement.’ Pakistan, in the past, had a key role to play in Afghanistan and would continue with it in the future.

China’s principal concern and effort would be to preserve the integrity of Afghanistan as one country ‘at all events.’ China would want the UN to play a ‘much more active’ role in Afghanistan than its present one. There was a mention of the kind of role China would want the UN to play in Afghanistan.

To the question as to what role China would like to play in creating conditions conducive to the formation of a ‘broad-based’ government in Afghanistan, China’s main concern is to prevent the fragmentation of the country along ethnic, sectarian or geographical lines. Let there be no outside intervention as far as possible. Nothing would be more offensive to the Afghan psyche than any attempt at foisting an imposed order on them, no matter how veiled.

Besides Afghanistan, the minds of the Chinese scholars revolved round two main questions: first, How the ‘revived interest’ of the US in the area was likely to influence Pak-China relations? The question was raised mainly in the context of the projects of ‘strategic’ importance like the development of the Gawadar port and the Coastal highway now in hand.

The second question asked repeatedly and pointedly pertained to Pakistan’s internal security and the capacity of the government to keep it under control. They would even go to the extent of pointing to a possible threat to President Pervez Musharraf’s own person. Our answer, of course, was that there was none we could see. It would hardly seem to satisfy them considering the number of times they kept on raising this question in different words.

The writer in a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army.

THE war against international terrorism, with Afghanistan currently its main theatre, has defied most predictions. When it began on October 7 with intense US bombing, there was an assumption that the Taliban regime would collapse quickly. It could not possibly endure the destruction wrought by so many high precision bombs. But Taliban endured for more than five weeks.

The Taliban’s seeming endurance reactivated those experts — talking heads as they are sometimes called — who had said all along that the US had taken on a foe hardened by history. These analysts brought back the memory of the ignominious retreat of a British contingent that lost all but a surgeon and the equally humiliating withdrawal of the Soviet troops a dozen years ago. Even the tough military officers conducting daily briefings at the Pentagon paid tribute to the resilience of an unpredictable foe.

The foe was, indeed, unpredictable. With an unexpected display of lack of resolve, it surrendered the capital of Kabul to its enemy and then went on to beat a hasty retreat from all but two cities — Kunduz and Kandahar. Kunduz also fell after the Arab-Afghans were persuaded to leave the city. The only pocket of resistance was in a mud fort in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif where non-Afghan soldiers had been imprisoned. These prisoners staged a bloody revolt against their captors and, in turn, became the target of a heavy aerial onslaught by the US.

The sudden collapse of the Taliban have brought to the surface some sharp differences among the allies who had been quickly assembled under the umbrella put up by America. Pakistan was unhappy that the United States had not kept its promise of keeping the Northern Alliance out of Kabul. Britain was not pleased when the Northern Alliance did not allow it to send a large contingent of its commandos to secure the cities in the north, including Kabul. The French wished to establish their presence in Mazar-i-Sharif but, once again, were stymied by the new rulers of Kabul.

The Europeans wanted the US to pay attention to the important task of peacekeeping once the main objectives of the war — the destruction of al-Qaeda and the elimination of Osama bin Laden — had been achieved. Washington, having learned from its unhappy experience in Somalia, did not want to get into a messy programme directed at keeping the peace in such a war-loving country as Afghanistan.

Some senior British ministers — notably ministers Gordon Brown and Clair Short — wanted the world’s rich countries to commit large sums of money for helping the globe’s poor citizens. They wanted to see the war in Afghanistan fought not just in the context of international terrorism. They were also concerned that poverty and extreme deprivation in many parts of the world made it possible for terrorists to recruit workers for pursuing their causes. Assault on the bases of terrorism, capturing and punishing the terrorists, and giving a strong message to all governments that by harbouring terrorists they too were promoting terrorism was one way of dealing with this scourge.

The other way was broad-based economic, social and political development. But that needed money — in fact, a great deal of it. Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed the mobilization of $50 billion directed at addressing the problem of global poverty. Washington, however, was not interested. It was not prepared to do any deep reflection on the causes of terrorism — whether the attacks of September 11 were perpetrated by people made desperate by the poverty they saw in their countries, or made resentful by the unrepresentative nature of the regimes that governed their countries or, again, angered by the visible plight of the Palestinians.

It was in this confusion of objectives and purposes and means for achieving them that the international community began to think about the task of reconstructing Afghanistan. Nobody pretended that this was going to be an easy task. As is the wont of international workers, the precise nature of the task was to emerge from a series of meetings in which agreement — if not total consensus — was to be sought on the final objectives of the programme of economic reconstruction and how they were to be achieved. The first conclave of interested countries — twenty-two in all — was held on October 20 in Washington. It was opened by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, who promised that this time round, “not only the US but the whole international community, will not leave the Afghan people in the lurch, and not walk away as has been done in the past.” Alan Larson, his under secretary, revealed that the US was “very focused on quick hitting projects that can aspire hope that the international community is able and ready to help people live better lives.”

The Washington meeting was called quickly. Its purpose was to have potential donors to Afghanistan catch up with the fast moving events on the battlefield. Much more thought went into planning the meeting in Islamabad, held a week later. Since the Islamabad meeting was convened at the same time as the meeting in Bonn, Germany, it did not receive much media attention. The Bonn meeting was sponsored by the United Nations to bring together four Afghan factions to work together to devise a power sharing arrangement. It was felt that such an arrangement had to be in place before the donors to Afghanistan could commit funds for the country’s reconstruction.

The Islamabad meeting brought together not only the governments willing and eager to help but also the international financial institutions who were to play important roles in developing and overseeing the implementation of the programmes aimed at the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan. Large sums of money were talked about. There was an assumption that the faction leaders of Afghanistan will be tempted to work together if they are in sight of the billions of dollars worth of assistance being promised.

However, it was made very clear to the participants that this money would become available only if the Afghans managed to do two things — evolve a reasonably representative system of governance and keep peace, in particular, in the cities. That this was the condition of western support was also mentioned explicitly by the US representative at the opening session of the Bonn gathering.

How much money was on the table? There are no firm commitments; only rough calculations on what Afghanistan will need to get back to some form of a functioning economy. In developing some idea about the scope of the effort the international community was prepared to mount, all they had to do was to look around as they travelled through the newly liberated lands. Or watch the Afghan landscape on the TV screens as more and more western news people turned their cameras at the destruction left by a quarter century of deep conflict. The task before the aid givers was to pull Afghanistan out of the Stone Age and bring it into the 21st century. This task was to be accomplished in no more than ten years. Could one estimate the cost of this gigantic and unprecedented effort?

In putting together the estimates, development experts looked at the past experience of work in post-conflict situations. The example of Mozambique was used. That country had also been devastated by a civil war in the 1990s and it had also been helped by a group of donors to bring back health to a devastated economy. The effort to rebuild Mozambique lasted for five years and the cost to the international community was estimated at $6.5 billion, or $400 per person.

Translating this to the situation in Afghanistan meant an expenditure of $11 billion for a population of 27 million. Afghanistan, perhaps, needed a larger amount of resource flow. One fourth to one fifth of the Afghan population had been displaced and some four to five million were living outside the country’s borders in Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia. Refugee rehabilitation can be an expensive undertaking. Also drawing on international experience, some experts came up with higher figures. Post-conflict reconstruction of East Timor cost $700 per head of the population; the on-going effort in Gaza had cost $1,500 per person.

If these were the right orders of magnitude, a multi-year programme in Afghanistan could cost the international community between $20 billion and $40 billion. All these staggering amounts — they are large enough to keep the attention of the Afghan factions focused on reconstruction but would be enormously difficult to manage. If the programme is to last for five years, the international community may be pumping in $2 billion to $4 billion a year into Afghanistan. Taking the lower figure implies $75 per head of the population per year. If this sum materializes, it will be one of the largest economic reconstruction efforts ever mounted in human history.

What would this effort mean for Afghanistan? What impact will it have on the neighbouring countries — in particular on Pakistan and the countries of Central Asia? Would it be possible for whichever government finally settles down in Kabul to handle such a large effort devoid as it is of institutions necessary for managing even a rudimentary economic system?

The third question needs the most attention since without a functioning set of institutions it would be exceedingly difficult to put this operation in place.