A History of the Pakistan Army

Title: A History of the Pakistan Army – Wars and Insurrections
Author: Brian Cloughley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999 (First)
ISBN: 9780195790153
Pages: 384

India has a belligerent neighbour on her west, which fought with her in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. The army is the greatest institution of the Pakistani state. Occasionally, the army is the Pakistani state. India is posed as an existential threat to this Islamic state from the very beginning of its existence. The resulting paranoia helps the army achieve whatever privileges it want – money, land, control of industries, prestige and even civil power. The politicians and soldiers in Pakistan are locked together in a zero-sum game. If one party is weak, the other encroaches on its domain rather than keeping themselves functionally and healthily engaged. This book is a history of the Pakistani army from 1947 to 1997. Though written by an Australian author, it provides a fresh, local perspective as the author has close links to senior army officials in Pakistan. Colonel (retired) Brian Cloughley served in the British and Australian armies in Germany and other theatres. He was the deputy head of UNMOGIP in Kashmir in the 1980s and Australian defence attaché during 1989-94 in Pakistan. While working on this book, he hoped that the army was unlikely ever again to be used to suppress democracy, but this was exactly what came to pass in 1999. This book was published before the Kargil war and the subsequent military takeover of Pakistan.

Cloughley notes on many occasions that many Pakistani army officers are secular in outlook. But this salutary trait was fading away in the 1990s as quite a number of young officers were radicalized and easily swayed by fanatics who blare out against the West in general and the US in particular because they are the powers which stand between them and their ultimate goal of Islam’s takeover of the world. Whatever may be the personal preferences of its officers, the army as a whole used religion and Muslim bigots to the fullest extent against their enemies. The invasion of Kashmir in October 1947 was made by tribesmen motivated by religion and intent on destruction, pillage and rape (p.14). Not only that the Pakistani army did not feel any compunction, it actually encouraged the ‘irregulars’. The author talked to a nun who ran a hospital that fell victim to the tribesmen’s carnal lust and contents to merely record that her disclosure of how her colleagues were killed after inflicting ‘appalling indecencies’ was shocking. The incident is also mentioned in Collins and Lapierre’s ‘The Freedom at Midnight’. This book also shows how Pakistan descended into martial rule regularly. Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia ul-Haq are the three generals described in the book who held the nation in their palms. After this book was published, Pervez Musharraf also entered this list. In the early 1960s, the army had a high opinion of itself without having done very much except expand a bit and conduct some mediocre training with its new American equipment (p.56). A defence assistance pact was signed with the US in 1953 and the army was modernized.

The book observes the dismissive and haughty attitude the army harbours toward local politicians. In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Bogra attempted to introduce legislation to cut the size of armed forces, but had to withdraw it under pressure. Meanwhile, Ayub Khan was promoting his henchmen to senior army positions and consolidating his hold on power. The politicians were also corrupt and incompetent and the army was disdainful to them who saw them as more a nuisance than an essential functionary of the state. This book does not examine the issue of corruption in the army. This is not even presented as an afterthought nor an aside. However, appointments and promotions to senior positions were on grounds of loyalty to the chief, which is cited as a structural problem of the Pakistan army especially when the chief nourished political ambitions. Rarely did the army was held accountable by the society. One such moment was the abject failure in the 1971 Bangladesh War, in which 29 senior officers were shunted out in one go that included two generals, eleven lieutenant-generals and ten major-generals. 70,000 soldiers and 20,000 civil servants and military dependents were captured by India as prisoners in that war who were released only after two years. The author claims this to be a violation of Article 118 of the Geneva Convention.

The book reiterates the doubtful role of the US as a trusted ally of Pakistan. They supplied weapons, equipment, spare parts and training to Pakistan, but when the latter was engaged in an actual war against India, the US ditched them in view of the higher priority they accorded to their own international commitments. In 1965 and 1971, US cut off military aid in the middle of hostilities causing a shortage of ammunition and spare parts. India was not much dependent on the US, sourcing the material mainly from USSR and France. The coverage of 1965 and 1971 wars is exhaustive on the micro-scale with details of troop movements and field manoeuvres that are not interesting to general readers. In 1965, Pakistan scored some wins in the preliminary minor skirmishes in the Rann of Kutch and buoyed by this false sense of euphoria went ahead head-on with a futile invasion of India’s Kashmir state. The 1971 war was the culmination of decades of oppression and ill-treatment of the people of East Pakistan. Bengalis were regarded as inferiors by Pathans and Punjabis who had met them, especially in the military. Pakistani soldiers inflicted atrocities on Bangladesh that ‘beggared belief and its details confound description’ (p.150). Cloughley remarks wryly that the soldiers readily obeyed the orders and even relished them. He then provides a backhanded justification to the army’s brutality by describing instances where Bengalis had killed Pakistanis in a gruesome manner and concludes that ‘no one can understand how our fellow human beings could act in such a fashion’.

India is a very strong presence in the book as well as in the Pakistan army’s psyche. The attitude is usually one of contempt and hatred. Ayub Khan, as president of the country, informed his military chief that ‘Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows delivered at the right time and place’ (p.71). It seems the author also inculcated a part of this mindset, albeit in a minor degree. He runs helter-skelter to compile possible reasons for Pakistan’s rout in 1971 and comes out with a handsome list such as poor leadership of commander A A K Niazi and shortages of airpower, armour and manpower. One divisional commander was said to be spending ‘most of his time on the prayer mat’ (p.210). The causes of failure on the western front is even more exhaustive – poor planning, indecision about deployment, hasty and countermanded regrouping, inadequate or even non-existent coordination between formations, inability to seize the moment for exploitation, lack of cooperation between GHQ and Air HQ and bungling of movement control procedures. The list is endless but better skill and bravery of Indians does not even for a moment crosses his mind. The author generally employs neutral language and occasionally praises Indian troops precisely in those encounters which they had lost. Pakistanis had always considered themselves superior to Indians, so the defeat of 1971 in which half of the country vanished overnight into thin air was difficult to swallow. Expressing his poor opinion of India, the author remarks that ‘Indian officers are genial, comradely and good company when sure that the intelligence services were not looking over their shoulders’ (p.255). He goes on to comment that ‘India’s defence forces are large but their equipment is aging and attempts to design and manufacture advanced weapons were largely unsuccessful. Hence the threat posed by India is not as great as it appears on paper’ (p.339). This was his reading in mid-1990s. He also cautions India on domestic problems such as ‘violence by Dalits’ as an unsettling factor. Here, he simply echoes the Pakistani strategy to drive a wedge between various Hindu communities.

After the 1971 war, the remaining part of the book is a monotonous recapitulation of what happened in Pakistani politics beginning with the usurpation of Bhutto by Zia ul-Haq and ending in 1997 which envelopes the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Mujahideen resistance. The cursory narrative is in stark contrast to the fact that this was the period when Claughley had actually worked in Pakistan. The Kargil crisis is not covered, but Siachen is. The conspiracy angle of General Zia’s death in a plane crash is not examined. A notable aspect of this part of the book is that it is very shallow. The Islamization of the military which began under Zia is also given short shrift. Besides, readers smell occasional whiffs of white racial superiority in such descriptions as ‘the bureaucratic system created by the British with its checks, balances and counterchecks played into the hands of those given to laziness and manipulation’ (p.27). He is referring to the fall in standards after the colonial masters left. The book makes a sensational but long-discredited allegation against Morarji Desai, former prime minister of India, when he was an ordinary minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. The author claims that Desai was a paid agent of CIA (p.179). The inexplicable point is that even with such a highly placed source, the US could not deduce that India was planning a military incursion in East Pakistan. In another place, Cloughley calls him ‘a traitor’ outright (p.183). The foreword of the book is written by Gen. Abdul Waheed, former army chief of Pakistan. The author has good personal rapport with three successive army chiefs who invited him to attend military exercises and permitted him to freely engage with the top brass. However, the book does not bear witness to the author’s celebrated exposure with the army in bringing out any hitherto unknown fact.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star