TERRORIST attacks are becoming a horrible reality in Pakistan. Things become scarier each time there is an attack involving a sensitive organisation.

Such an attack always raises questions about the vulnerability of the common man. If the armed forces are not safe then who is? After all, this is one organisation which has expertise in the subject of violence and spends huge resources on maintaining its strength.

The Wah Cantt incident in particular raises questions about the vulnerability of sensitive installations. Was there a breach of security with the Taliban penetrating close to or inside the facility? Are there others who might attack again? Such a penetration is likely to make the armed forces more exposed to outside threats. Perhaps the answer to the military's growing vulnerability lies in the way its affairs have been managed especially in terms of the careful indoctrination of a selected few that then began to slowly and gradually influence other parts of the organisation.

I remember meeting Lt Gen Abdul Qayyum when he was chairman of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) towards the end of the 1990s. He had proudly presented me with a book that he had compiled during his stint in Saudi Arabia. The book contained the general's religious interpretations of matters ranging from the manner in which men and women should bathe to the way they should pray. The book was given as a gift to all visitors and distributed amongst the staff as well. This was not just an act of piety on his part but the sum total of his faith.

It was also under the famous Lt Gen Qayyum that about 1,000 odd arms manufacturers were inducted into the POF for converting the illegal small arms and light weapons manufacturing community at Darra Adam Khel. Qayyum would proudly introduce visitors to a bunch of unhappy looking men from the tribal areas who found themselves out of sorts in a far-flung area in a regimented environment that they were not used to.

The Defence Export Promotion Organisation that allowed the private sector to market their weapons internationally through the government institution further expanded Qayyum's work. The underlying idea, in both cases, was to monitor and eventually curb weapons production. However, both parties got the various concepts of conversion wrong.

Technically, defence conversion is meant to find alternative employment and opportunities for former soldiers and combatants. In this case, the idea was to stop illegal production in the country's tribal belt. Conversion might have worked better had the government tried to become the main buyer of some of the products made at Darra Adam Khel without expanding their technical capacity which it did by inducting these men into the factories.

Darra Adam Kkhel is known for its gun-making cottage industry whose technological and production capacity grew during the 1980s Afghan war. This is when high-tech small arms and light weapons came to the site for refurbishment, teaching the manufacturers to produce for profit. The original Soviet AK-47s, which initially used to sell for over Rs65,000, dropped in value to about Rs12,000 due to the increase in illegal manufacturing.

The 1980s also changed the ethos of Darra Adam Khel from being a centre of production that fulfilled the needs of the local population

to a place that would sell to anyone who could pay the price of the product. Towards the end of the 1990s the place had over 100 manufacturing units with a maximum capacity of 100 guns per unit. Thus, weapons proliferation began within the country. Arms also flowed to other parts of the region.

The government could have influenced the manufacturers by becoming their single-most important buyer. These products could then have been provided to the police or paramilitary, the idea being to exhaust the production capacity of the manufacturers and effect a gradual switch-over to other trades. Influence thus built could have helped convert arms that were illegally manufactured to products that were not.

However, Gen Qayyum had other ideas. The POF chairman probably did not think about the socio-cultural influences of the area or what the people could bring to the place because of his own ideological orientation. A glance at Gen Qayyum's publication might have revealed his ideological orientation to the military's higher management. Perhaps that was never the intent because the militants were always part and parcel of the strategic thinking of the armed forces or of the organisation in the tribal areas and Afghanistan.

Or perhaps the management did not consider Qayyum's inclination because he was not seen as influencing soldiers on active duty. This attitude, as it appears from Shuja Nawaz's latest publication on the Pakistan Army, is part of the larger thinking that segments of the military or its sub-organisations can be detached from the rest of the organisation to engage with the militants.

This tradition dates back to 1947/48 when Gen Akbar Khan made plans to occupy Kashmir with the help of tribal militants or limited segments of the army. The armed forces were only brought in to fight the battle once the conflict had erupted into a larger one between the two new states of India and Pakistan.

This pattern was to repeat itself during 1965 and then during the Kargil crisis. The question, however, is can this approach work without affecting the bulk of the armed forces? It is hoped that this is a question that many of the senior generals are able to ask themselves today. The empowerment of non-state actors through ideological means and support of the military has its cost which is eventually borne by innocent soldiers. We are today fighting a battle in which the ordinary soldier is targeted for policies not made by him.

The perceptions and attitudes of those men from Darra Adam Khel working at the POF is worth investigating. Besides the fact that these men were brought to work by an ideologically motivated commander, one cannot rule out the fact that these men might have been influenced by the pain and horror of the war being conducted in the tribal areas by external powers and their domestic partners. This is not to suggest that those men were definitely involved in the Wah incident but the fact is that the overall security of such installations has to be monitored carefully especially from the point of view of human resource management.

The audit of unsuccessful and successful operations and human resource management, which is highly problematic, must be reviewed carefully to contain the human cost of war, be it civilians or soldiers.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com