April 7, 2002

LT General (retired) Kamal Matinudin is one of those army generals, who, in the past few years, decided to take up the pen after leaving the gun. One wonders if it is a concerted effort by the armed forces to encourage one of its own kind to enter the rather complicated world of research and analysis to present views more in line with military thinking, or purely a personal choice, or a combination of the two. Having read most of his works, one went to see him with some amount of scepticism about what he would offer. However, what came as a pleasant surprise was that he was far more open while discussing issues on which he was circumspect in his writings.

A man with polite manners, Matinudin reflects the culture of his birthplace, Lucknow. Getting his commission in October 1947, he enjoyed a 36 years long career with the army as an artillery officer. The fact that he had served as an instructor at the Command and Staff College, Quetta and at the National Defense College, Rawalpindi possibly explains his comfort with academic activities. He also served in senior positions as the Vice-Chief of General Staff with General Tikka Khan and later at the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) before retiring from service.

Afterwards, he served as an ambassador for five years and later as the head of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad before finally taking leave from government service and settling down to writing books and contributing regular articles in newspapers. So far, he has authored four books and co-authored a fifth published by the University of California Press, Berkley. His latest academic venture is a book on Nuclearization of South Asia published by the Oxford University Press.

I remember meeting him the first time in 1994 when I had gone to interview him regarding the working of the JCSC and had found him to be a conformist. He had only said what was safe to say and what was common knowledge for anyone working on military decision-making. His books share the same attitude and flavour. For instance, his books on Afghanistan or the nuclear issue present material and analysis that is commonly available, in fact, already exhausted by a number of analysts working on these issues.

Interestingly, while writing his latest book on the nuclear issue General Matinudin missed any reference to the strongest works available on India’s nuclear programme or nuclear deterrence written by Raja Menon and Ashley Tellis. He attributes this mistake to the long processing time taken by the Oxford University Press in publishing a book that deprived him the opportunity of including these works as well. Moreover, given the author’s experience with the army, one had expected him to provide a sophisticated analysis of how Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence would work or what are the possible calculations or scenarios of conflict.

One comes across a similar dearth of in-depth analysis in his other works as well. His book on 1971 crises, however, could be rated as his best work for which he had taken the pain of visiting India as well and digging out material. The impression one got after talking to him at length was that he has a much stronger hand in evaluating military operations. His comments on the 1965 war almost tempted one to encourage him to write his analysis of the conflict.

Despite the disagreement with his analysis, one would still want to engage him in a dialogue to understand his perception on some key issues and events related to military history and operations. In fact, one gets this feeling that a discussion is a better way of getting the most out of this experienced general. While responding to questions he was far more candid and explicit about military matters. He definitely said more than what he has written in his books. Although it is not possible to reproduce the entire one-and-a-half-hour interview, I have selected some of his responses to questions I had asked to improve my own understanding of how the army works in Pakistan.

Q: Do you see a gap between strategic, operational and tactical planning in Pakistan?

Kamal Matinudin: First of all, we shouldn’t compare our army with the British or the American. We are hardly an army in that sense. We are a small outfit. We have got little room for maneouvre. We have got no reserves whatsoever at our disposal. We react to the enemy and at times the reaction has to be immediate. The British and American armies are large operating in large spaces. Mistakes are made and corrected, commanders are changed, and things start getting back to normal. Here, wars are short — fifteen days duration. There have been many times in Pakistan when decisions have been taken on tactical basis and the overall strategic environment has not been taken into account.
 

Q: How do you see Kargil?

KM: It was planned as a tactical battle where the strategic environment was not examined.
 

Q: Why didn’t we think about the reaction of the international community while planning Kargil?

KM: We didn’t assess the reaction of the international community. I spoke with General Pervez Musharraf. He thought that by occupying these heights and with the enemy suffering casualties, it (India) would come to the negotiation table, and according to him they almost came to the negotiation table. Nawaz Sharif had gone to China and on his way back was supposed to stop over at Delhi and sign some sort of an agreement on Kashmir. The objective of Kargil was to force India to the negotiation table and this, in fact, has been our aim since 1947 (to force India to talk).
 

Q: Then why didn’t Nawaz Sharif go to India?

KM: According to General Musharraf this did not happen because the hawks in India overtook the doves.
 

Q: You have written in your book that Kargil was Pakistan’s response to Siachin, but can one compare the two events since South Asia had not gone overtly nuclear when India invaded Siachin?

KM: The situation at the time of the invasion of Siachin by India’s General Chibber was indeed different from Kargil. However, it is because of this nuclear threat that people or commanders begin to believe that they can carry out limited operations without the threat of an all-out war. This is a dichotomy of nuclear deterrence. This was one of the reasons that we went into Kargil thinking that this would not end in an all-out war. It was because of nuclearization of South Asia that they could undertake a military adventure.

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