Army in Wonderland
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
The sight of medals gleaming
on khaki tunics so overwhelmed Alice that, a little
timidly, she asked the Cheshire cat: “Is
this the world’s best army?” With
a grin, he replied, “No. In wonderland,
soldiers are awarded a medal for every war they
lose.”
In reality, armies exist to win wars. This requires
knowing when to fight a war and when not to fight
one. Armies should have the means for deterring
conflict and the means for prosecuting it if deterrence
fails. When they do embark on war, they need to
have clear and attainable objectives. They should
be able to fight on short notice, conduct decisive
operations and terminate conflict on favorable
terms.
The Pakistani army aspires to a higher mission
than most armies, which is protecting the national
interest. This has led it to seize power from
civilians four times since independence. It has
also fought a dozen wars—including insurgencies,
insurrections and conventional wars. What have
been the results?
In the first war, fought in 1947-48 in Kashmir,
the objective was to wrest control of the state
by inciting a rebellion among the Muslim population.
The army used tribesmen to instigate the revolt.
After some initial successes, they began to loot
and plunder, forcing the army to initiate conventional
infantry action. But it came too late. The war
ended with only a third of the state joining Pakistan.
The second war took place in April 1965 in the
Rann of Kutch. It was designed to test Indian
military preparedness. Indian forces were outnumbered
and retreated. The army misinterpreted this to
mean that the Indians could not fight.
This emboldened the army to start its third war
in Kashmir with a guerilla incursion in August.
When this failed to spark an uprising, the army
uncoiled its mailed fist in Chamb with the objective
of capturing Akhnur and threatening the line of
communication with Srinagar. This led to a full-scale
war along the international border in September.
The conflict exposed a lack of coordination between
Pakistani armor and infantry forces, particularly
in the Khem Karan sector. The war failed to achieve
its objective and ultimately cost Field Marsh
al Ayub the presidency.
The fourth war was fought in 1971. GHQ failed
to quell a province-wide uprising in East Pakistan
that was triggered by General Yahya’s refusal
to hand over power to the party that had won the
national elections. Eight months into the civil
war, a full-scale war broke out with India. It
resulted in a quick and decisive defeat in the
east, where victory was not expected. But even
in the west, where there was parity of forces,
Pakistan lost 2,750 sq. miles and only gained
5 0. The war exposed Pakistan’s inability
to coordinate its land, air and sea forces. Yahya
was forced out of office by the military and later
blamed the defeat on the “treachery of the
Indians.”
The fifth and sixth wars were counter-insurgencies
carried out in the mid-1970s in Balochistan and
in the mid-1980s in Sindh. Both killed thousands
of people, inflamed inter-provincial tensions
and sullied the army’s image as a national
institution.
After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979,
Pakistan became a frontline state in the Cold
War. The CIA used the ISI as a channel for funding
and arming the mujahideen. The army successfully
prosecuted an insurgency that ultimately drove
out the Soviets in 1989. This was the seventh
war and it achieved its military objective. But
the war caused lasting damage to Pakistan’s
civil society.
The eighth war took place in 1984. India successfully
occupied the disputed Siachen Glacier in Kashmir
near the Chinese border. Pakistan’s attempts
to retake it failed.
The ninth war was an insurgency fomented by the
army in the early 1980s in Indian Punjab to create
Khalistan. The Indian army crushed the Sikh separatists
by storming their stronghold in the Golden Temple.
In 1989, there was an indigenous uprising in Kashmir,
giving the army an opportunity to supply arms
and ammunition to the militants. During the next
decade, the army fought its tenth war by proxy,
killing thousands in Kashmir. But it failed to
alter the Line of Control by even an inch.
To internationalize the dispute, the army injected
Pakistan’s Northern Infantry disguised as
guerillas into Kashmir in the spring of 1999,
triggering the eleventh war. They quickly occupied
several mountain peaks in Kargil. This tactical
success came to naught as Pakistan was forced
to withdraw under US political pressure. No one
came to Pakistan’s support in either the
Arab or the Muslim world. Not even China. The
war was a colossal misadventure.
A crisis with India in 2002 nearly resulted in
a major war involving a million troops, which
would have been the twelfth in history. Had hostilities
broken out, the Pakistani army would not have
lasted more than a week under a sustained Indian
onslaught. The war was averted by pressure from
Washington on both sides.
Continuing American pressure forced the army to
give up the proxy war in Kashmir and stabilize
relations with India. It re-oriented itself to
fight counterinsurgencies. Initially, these took
place in Waziristan. But new ones have emerged
in Balochistan. However, even when fighting rag-tag
forces, the Pakistani army has failed to achieve
its objectives.
While compiling a below-average scorecard, the
army has tripled in size since 1965, when it was
a force of 170,000 organized into seven divisions
and one corps. Now it is a force of 550,000 organized
into 22 divisions and nine corps. It is bigger
than the American army and the seventh largest
in the world.
So why does the army do poorly on the battlefield,
squandering individual acts of bravery and destroying
lives? The generals have enmeshed themselves in
civilian duties, the army chief doubles as the
president and key corps commanders double as provincial
governors. The army’s culture values loyalty
over military skill in the selection of general
officers. And there are many in the population
who suspect that the army only represents the
interests of the majority province.
Improvements will only occur once the writ of
a civilian government has been restored over the
army. Such a government would benchmark the army’s
performance against the world’s best and
institute changes, such as firing incompetent
generals, updating its war-fighting doctrine and
instituting new training programs. It will “right
size” the army and establish accountability
in military spending. In due course of time, soldiers
would return to soldiering and earn medals for
winning wars, not for losing them.
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