The Honor Brigade
By Askari Raza Malik
Major General (retd)
DHA-II, Islamabad
Disdainfully they allude to the military as ‘The Honor Brigade’ and believe that it is an irrelevant hurdle in achieving an everlasting peace in the subcontinent and South Asia.
The ‘boots’ and the ‘boys’ (the latter a favorite of some youngsters) are linked with every problem under the sun that plagues Pakistan. The subtlety of the campaign notwithstanding, its malevolence and agenda are too obvious to miss.
In their public façade they are the messengers of love for peace, human rights and all the conceivable higher values of life, that are the domain of the Divine and the exalted. The colorful variety of the op-ed and TV worthy ranges from the secular humanists, the human rights specialists and liberals, exulting in self-assumed role, proud and boastful. In their view the honor brigade, the ‘duffers’ deserve the ridicule, as they do not possess the capacity to think beyond bellicosity, jingoism and hate, the basest of human traits. As Mirza Ghalib could not discuss even the holiest without mentioning wine and the cup, no narrative of these intellectuals is complete without a theatrical reference to the Military.
In this world the good and the bad exist together. An idyllic world has never existed nor will it ever. It is to counter the evil that nations maintain police and the armies. The most advanced, educated and cultured, the flag bearers of liberty, truth and justice have men to fight to preserve their values. They train these men and prepare them to lay down their lives for the honor of their country.
‘Hagakure, the 18 th century Japanese book ‘asserted that bushido is really the “Way of Dying ” and that a Samurai must be willing to die at any moment in order to be true to his lord. His saying, “The way of the warrior is death” was a summation of the willingness to sacrifice, that bushido codified. HONOR is the key word in the training and expectations of this warrior.’
Dr James H. Toner, associated with the US Army, writes, “The preeminent military task, and what separates (the military professional) from all other occupations, is that soldiers are routinely prepared to kill….in addition to killing and preparing to kill, the soldier has two other principal duties…some soldiers die and when they are not dying, they must be preparing to die.” ‘Aggression and virility’ have always been ‘highly prized in soldiers’.
The buzzword in the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) is ‘Honor’. They strictly follow the honor code, no lies, no half-truths, no cheating, no pulling legs and shop from unattended ‘honor shops’. Where there are the Champs there are also the best losers who lose with honor.
In the units it is the honor of the unit, the Army and above all the honor of the country, its geographic and ideological frontiers, which must be safeguarded even “at the peril of my life”, the oath reads at the time of passing out from the academy. The ideals are the knight’s ‘chivalric code’ a ‘notion of honor and nobility,’ and Tennyson’s the ‘Charge of The Light Brigade’, “There’s not to reason why, there’s but to do and die; into the valley of death, rode the six hundred’; Iqbal’s “Mard-e-Momin”, and glorious examples from history of devotion, dedication and honor. These are the honor themes that stamp the soul and provide the impetus for the ultimate, to do and die. This is the mindset that is developed. Call it mind wash. The word honor is made to become the fountain of a soldier’s life and those who care to admit, become a national asset.
During World War II, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Gorkha regiments fought tooth and nail and won laurels fighting for the honor of their units and groups identities. Honor was the only driving force when there was no religious or national cause to feed upon.
This is the way the Honor Brigade is build. This is the way it lives and dies and this is the only way it knows. The Shaheeds are the icons of honor. Conversely a soldier who can take insult cannot be expected to face the bullets. That is the crux.
They are not barbarians. The martyrdom of a comrade is mourned as a family loss by all and sundry alike. They are compassionate towards their men. They keep them in good humor as they can ill afford to take a disgruntled man to the battlefield. They are truly professionals. That is why according to ABC News point; General Raheel Sharif tops the list of the best ten generals of the world today.
The elite force of the third largest army in the world looking helpless before a handful of terrorists for days was still cheered on. Our honor brigade has been continuously at war for over a decade without showing any signs of fatigue. The youngest officer to die in the war against terror, a few days after his passing out, mortally wounded, slumped against a rock with his hand half raised in the sign of victory just before he breathed his last signifies its resolve. In the honor brigade honor is the first and foremost. It is highly unfair to term this asset as a fault.
It is the Armed Forces that stand to lose more from war than anyone else. The war is no war games. It is a grim, bloody and gloomy business. If soldiers appear to be stubborn on the question of peace it is only because they want peace but peace with honor.
Nawaz Sharif deserves all the praise as according to Baber Sattar, “In Ufa Sharif bent over backwards to keep working with Modi”. Nawaz Sharif is a politician and he knows his job well. Politics is the second oldest profession and according to Regan it is not much different from the first. No one blames Nawaz Sharif for what he did. No one should grudge Raheel Sharif for not being able to act that way, as Raheel cannot become Nawaz overnight. Shehryar Khan the cricket chief has done even better than bending over backwards. He has repeatedly pleaded with and begged India for a cricket series. He could do that. Tauqir Zia would have never done it.
We train, mold and expect this poor honor brigade to live with honor and die for our honor. If we also expect it to beg for peace or publically endorse its begging, we are asking for two diametrically opposite behaviors of a person that is impossible to act unless he is a case of serious dissociative identity disorder.
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