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| Pak Army Exposed More and More | | | Anil Bhat (Retd) Col | 12/7/2011 12:19:18 AM |
| The Observer of 27 November 2011 published a report
by Jon Boone in Kabul and agencies citing a senior western official as claiming that the attack by NATO aircraft on Pakistani troops which allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and further deteriorated relations between US and Pakistan, was an act of self-defence. According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of 26 November morning, which forced them to return fire. The high death toll from this incident between two supposed allies suggested that NATO helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons. This "deadliest friendly fire incident" since the start of the decade-long war also prompted Pakistan to ban NATO supply trucks from crossing intoAfghanistan and to issue an order demanding the US quit the remote Shamsi airbase, from which the US has operated some unmanned drone aircraft. At border crossings, hundreds of supply trucks were reportedly stranded by the ban, with drivers fearing that insurgents/terrorists will take the opportunity to attack if they are not allowed to move.
Add to this memogate, which reportedly reflected President Asif Zardari 's apprehension that Pak Military was planning a coup in May this year after US forces killed Osama bin Laden.
If the exposures about the duplicity of Pak army and the notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) by Wikileaks were the first blow, exposures following bin Laden's killing came as the second major blow to the image and credibility of Pak both. Shortly afterwards, late Syed Saleem Shahzad's book 'Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11' (Pluto Press and Pentagon Press) became the third blow to Pak army and ISI, which resulted in the author's brutal assassination and 'Inside The Pakistan Army' (Pentagon Press) is like salt on sore wounds.
With a sub-caption on the cover reading 'A Woman's Experience on the Frontline of the War on Terror', Carey Schofield, the author thanks Generals Parvez Musharraf and Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as well as many other officers and soldiers for all the support and encouragement given to her for the few years that she spent researching for this book. However, her verdict on Pakistan army on the very first page of the book's first chapter titled 'The Question of the Pakistan Army', is bound to have caused much regret to the former and current chiefs of this army mentioned and many others, all the more so because this book got released in both in India in July 2011, barely two months after Osama bin Laden got killed by American special forces in Abbotabad.
And what Schofield has written on the first page is that Pakistan Army has never been entirely trusted by the West, as its role in the "war against terror has been seen to be as ambiguous as it has been central" and mentions some questions, which observers in India, US, Afghanistan etc. have dwelt on: "Has the Army's notorious ISI continued to support its long term allies amongst the Taliban, with or without the tacit consent of the head of state? Have elements in the Army siphoned off aid given them by the Americans to support the very forces it was supposed to be used to suppress? How strenuous or even sincere has the Army ever been in its attempts to round up Taliban fighters fleeing from NATO forces across its borders? To what extent has every element in the military machine been under the control of the head of the state?" Pak army has been dogged by these questions. Despite the protestations of successive Army Chiefs, Western officials have continued to brief journalists about the double dealing of Pakistan's Armed forces and the intelligence directorates.
Scofield's conclusions about Pak army are reinforced by Ralph Peters , a retired Army officer, journalist and bestselling author. who worked briefly with the Pakistani military and intelligence leadership during in the mid-1990s. An excerpt from his military report, which " Nobody in Washington cared" abou, read: "Your tax dollars are being used to help kill and maim our Soldiers, Marines and Navy corpsmen fighting in Afghanistan…
Over the past ten years, we've given the Pakistanis-primarily their military-over $20 billion in aid. What did we get in return? Our Pakistani allies hid and protected Osama bin Laden; they increased their support to the Afghan Taliban and its partner, the Haqqani terror network; they sponsored repeated terrorist attacks against India; they provided safe-haven bases on Pakistani soil for terrorists from a "rainbow coalition" of extremist organizations; and all the while they purposely whipped up anti-American hatred among the country's 180-million Muslims. Your tax dollars at work".
Pakistan's first dictator President, General Ayub Khan's bloodless coup was justified by citing that, given the years of chaos and corruption, the Army promised a 'sound, solid and strong nation.' He began by delivering growth and increased prosperity, helped by considerable economic assistance from the USA and great Britain following two beneficial defence treaties. In 1961 he initiated the process of creating a new capital, from Karachi, which was too far away from Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, to the new city ofIslamabad, just ten miles away.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Ayub Khan's Foreign Minister and rabidly anti-Indian encouraged him to adopt an aggressive policy. Following moves by the US to supply arms to India during its 1962 war with China, Bhutto also instigated a change in foreign policy which until then had been almost entirely pro-Western/US, to building diplomatic ties with China to strengthen Pakistan's position. in 1963 this policy shift culminated in the Sino-Pakistan Agreement, by which China ceded approximately 750 square miles of land to Pakistan, which acknowledged the sovereignty of China over large parts of Pakistan Occupied northern Kashmir. The pact is still not recognized by India, which disputes the legality of negotiating sovereignty over the disputed lands.
Bharat-Sanskrit for India-is the ever present threat that Pak army officers and men are indoctrinated to perceive and speculate endlessly on Indian intensions and capabilities, of how it opposed partition, and - as Pakistanis constantly recall, 'snatched Kashmir against the will of the people'. In the 1965 war (launched by Pakistan) over Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian Army reached the outskirts of Lahore. In 1971 India supported Bengali separatists (which Schofield does not mention, as a result of political suppression by West Pakistan government and oppression Pakistan's Punjabi-dominated army) and contributed to the breakup of the country. Quite apart from its military aggression, Pakistanis point out, the Indian national anthem itself refers possessively to Sindh in its second line:
'Thy name rouses the hearts of the Punjab, Sindh, Gujrat and Maratha.' The words of the anthem were written by Rabindranath Tagore in 1911.
In its early years the Pak armed forces' officer cadre comprised mainly sons of landed families and successful professionals, with almost all prominent families having someone in the Army. General Ziaul Haq's planned Islamisation of the army changed that trend resulting in young men conscious about following the Islamic religious regimen and also from less affluent backgrounds entering Pakistan's Military Academy. Having lost out to India in three conventional wars since 1947 - the third of which severed off Erstwhile East Pakistan - this Islamisation was part of Haq's larger plan of launching a much cheaper form of proxy war by export of terrorism to India.
Schofield one technical error is stating that President Parvez Musharraf awarded the Sitara-e-Pakistan posthumously in 1994 to William Brown (for raising the flag of Pakistan in Gilgit in 1947-considered an act of high treason against his own King-Emperor). This cannot be so as in 1994, Musharraf, was neither chief, nor president, but a Lt Gen heading military operations.
Barring this error, the author, despite praise for Pak army based obviously on official briefings, has written about its inner politics and intrigues and quoted senior officers who criticized it for lack of professionalism, which has plagued it ever since it got transformed from part of undivided Indian Army to the army of the newly formed Islamic Republic of Pakistan. One of them states "recurrent confrontation and collusion with politicians had blackened the army's reputation and had, arguably, hampered its military effectiveness" and that interventions of elected governments "distracted the army from its real job and damaged its image domestically. Civilian resentment at the scale of resources apparently devoured by the military was disturbing to younger officers and to soldiers." For all concerned with Pakistan, this book is a 'must read'. In fact, it would be worthwhile to have it translated into some more languages. |
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