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December 19, 2004
The army’s mindset
Stephen Philip Cohen traces the changing mindset of the officers of the Pakistan Army
Every year, throughout Pakistan, there is a search for approximately 320 young men between the ages of 17 and 22. The ones chosen succeed where almost 15,000 fall: they are to be cadets in the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) at Kakul. The selection process has several stages: an initial interview and written test narrows the field to about 7,000 hopefuls; a medical examination, a review by the Services Selection Board, and an intensive three-day examination and interview procedure then yield the successful candidates.
Of the 350 who entered the Pakistan Military Academy in 1979, approximately 275 graduated. Those who have not retired are among the army’s 900 brigadiers and full colonels. Of these about 70 will go on to become major generals in the fighting branches (about 20 major-generals are in the technical arms), and no more than 20 of these will receive a third star — assuming the rank of lieutenant-general and becoming one of Pakistan’s nine corps commanders or senior staff members...
In terms of their ethnic and linguistic background, the 1979 cadre was about 70 per cent Punjabi; the Northwest Frontier contributed 14 per cent, Sindh nine per cent, Balochistan three per cent, and Azad Kashmir 1.3 percent. A small percentage of them were ‘Mohajirs, whose parents or grandparents had migrated from India and were, like General Musharraf, Urdu speakers. The percentages have not changed significantly over the years, although there have been slight increases from poorer provinces and districts. The heavy representation of Punjabis reflects the sheer size of that province, its military traditions, and its higher educational standards.
Armies are total institutions that mould the beliefs of their members for life. Thus the views and policies of most officers who have gone through “the system” — and in Pakistan the PMA is the only entry point into the system — are highly predictable. The collective views and assumptions of a particular generation of officers are formed by the curriculum of the PMA, the Staff College at Quetta, and (for the brigadiers) the National Defence College in Islamabad. These institutions provide a lens through which the officer views politics, strategic issues, neighbours, and even Pakistan’s future. The social and class background of these officers, their ethnic origins, and ideological predilections are also important in shaping their worldview, as is their allegiance to the corporate identity and interests of the army itself.
Significant events also influence the outlook of an officer corps, especially its younger members. The 1947 partition and the defeat by India in 1971 influenced two different generations of officers in Pakistan. The “lessons” of these events were passed along to new officers in the army schools, clubs, and officers’ messes. The present crop of brigadiers had their own formative experiences. Some were involved in the embarrassing Kargil miniwar; all were caught up in the 10-month mobilization in response to the Indian buildup in 2001-02, and a few served on detachment to special service forces or with the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), working with irregular forces in Afghanistan and Kashmir. All were first hand witnesses to 10 years of wobbly democracy from 1989 to 1999, and almost to a man they were relieved when the army ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup on October 12, 1999.
The promotion system ensures continuity in the social and ideological makeup of the army. Promotion beyond the rank of major is by merit; the system is supposed to winnow out the unfit and advance only the best officers, but the process does give personal, family, or other connections a chance to play their role, especially at the higher ranks. As in most bureaucracies, senior officers tend to select and promote younger officers who are like themselves. This not only ensures that the changing biography of the Pakistan Army officer corps can be traced over successive generations, it also displays remarkable continuity.
British generation
Three distinct groups of officers received their initial professional training in the British Indian army and had served in combat by the time of partition. They constitute the long-departed British generation. Some had entered the army in peacetime and received their training at Sandhurst (in the United Kingdom) or (after 1932) the Indian Military Academy (IMA), at Dehra Dun. Ayub Khan belonged to the former group, and his friend and successor as commander in chief of the Pakistan army, Mohammed Musa, to the latter. It is often assumed that the Sandhurst-trained officers were superior soldiers; however, there is substantial evidence to indicate that the IMA officers were better qualified and more professional in their outlook.
All prewar officers and wartime-entry officers have long since retired, although a few members of this generation, such as Lieutenant General Yaqub Khan, have stayed on as influential advisers, key members of the Establishment. This generation of officers left an important legacy: they were responsible for founding and commanding the major training and educational facilities of the new Pakistan army, and for shaping the army itself.
The Pakistan Army retained the basic structure of the old Indian army, and most of the new Pakistani officers continued to see their British predecessors as professional role models. Because there were no qualified Muslim officers, initially the position of commanders-in-chief and many other senior positions were filled by British officers who stayed on; this was especially the case in key training institutions. One of these, the Staff College (at Quetta), was intact, but a military academy had to be constructed, and Pakistan sought and received extensive assistance from several foreign countries, notably the United States, in creating a basic infrastructure.
Because Jinnah cared little for military matters — he told the first commander-in-chief of the Pakistan army, Sir Douglas Gracey, to run things together with Liaquat Ali Khan — and because the first two chiefs were British, the possibility of turning the Pakistan army into an “Islamic” army was never seriously considered. However, some young Pakistani officers admired the “liberation army” model of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) and early on there was an aborted coup, the Rawalpindi Conspiracy of 1951, influenced by revolutionary ideas. At this stage, few had any interest in applying Islamic theories or doctrine to army organization or strategy, and the British (and then American) advisers serving with the army frowned upon both a politically radical or ideologically motivated army.
American generation
After Pakistan joined the Baghdad Pact (later Cento) in 1955 and developed close ties with Iran, Turkey, and the United States, a new generation of officers emerged. Three things set the “American generation” apart from its predecessors and successors.
First, its members were fully exposed to the American military. Many of them received training in America or from Americans, whereas their predecessors had received most of their professional training from the British in India and Pakistan; subsequent generations of Pakistanis (with a few important exceptions) were entirely trained in Pakistan. The American connection led to a complete revision of the army’s structure, the addition of an American-equipped armoured division, four infantry divisions, one armoured brigade group, and support elements for two corps.
Along with American equipment and training came American military doctrine and approaches to problem solving. While the infantry remained unchanged, armour, artillery, and other technical services and branches (especially the air force) were strongly influenced by American practices. In artillery alone, more than 200 Pakistani officers attended American schools between 1955 and 1958, and there was an important American contribution in the form of periodic visits by American nuclear experts to the Staff College in Quetta.
As the official history of the college notes, a 1957 visit by an American nuclear-warfare team “proved most useful and resulted in modification and revision of the old syllabus” to bring it into line with the “fresh data” given by the team. Present-day Pakistani nuclear planning and doctrine is descended directly from this early exposure to Western nuclear strategizing; it very much resembles American thinking of the mid-1950s with its acceptance of first-use and the tactical use of nuclear weapons against onrushing conventional forces.
Another important contribution was American philosophy. After long emphasizing caution and the conservation of men and material, Pakistanis were exposed to mechanization, the lavish use of ammunition, and an informal personal style. To be “modern” was to emulate the Americans in their breezy, casual, but apparently effective ways. It took the Vietnam war to demonstrate that the American approach might not always work; this lesson, plus the virtual end of the US-Pakistan military relationship by the early 1970s, led to a renewed search for a particularly Pakistani strategic and organizational style.
Second, officers of the post-independence generation had no adult experience with India and did not know many of their Indian army counterparts — except when they met abroad at foreign training institutions or worked together in UN peacekeeping operations. As a group, they acquired an exaggerated view of the weakness of both India and the Indian military. For this generation the 1965 war was a shock, and some came to believe that a conspiracy in Pakistan was responsible for the failure to achieve a clear-cut military victory. Needless to say, the events of 1971 were utterly devastating and intensified the habit of conspiratorial thinking.
Third, officers of the American generation had an exaggerated estimate of their own and Pakistan’s martial qualities, with some believing that one Pakistani soldier equated ten or more Indians. This seriously distorted the army’s professionalism. The “martial races” myth, developed by the British in the nineteenth century, grew out of European theories that jumbled racial, climatic, cultural, and religious notions. The British used the idea of a militarily superior “race” to keep Indians out of the officer corps and to avoid recruiting from many Indian castes and regions said to be non-martial and hence unacceptable for recruitment. Pakistan adopted it as a way of demonstrating to foreign supporters and to Pakistanis themselves that a small amount of assistance to Pakistan could offset the Indian behemoth. If one Pakistani equalled ten or twenty Hindu Indian soldiers, then Pakistan could overcome the disadvantages of its apparent size and resources, and, if necessary, the Pakistan army could challenge India.
America’s on-again, off-again relations with Pakistan and its periodic flirtation with the hated India had a deep impact on this generation of Pakistani officers. They had no doubt about their enemies but were less certain about their friends. As realists, they were aware of the difficulties of alliance with the Americans; on a private level, however, many retained affection for the country that was so intimately involved with their professional and personal development.
Pakistani officers even today replay for Americans what is taught in the military schools: that there had been a historical “friendship” between the United States and Pakistan, and it was the Americans who had abandoned Islamabad. They dismiss as “compulsions of state” Pakistan’s deceptive behaviour regarding its own nuclear programme, recent revelations about the nuclear and missile links to North Korea, and Pakistan’s support for Afghanistan’s Taliban.
Had the United States not abandoned Pakistan, they argue, such activities would not have been necessary. Increasingly, Pakistan’s problems are blamed on conspirators: the devious Indians, the liberals and Zionists of American politics, or their own politicians.
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