Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  Writing in the same volume, Brig. Khalid Mehmood Akhtar (2002) echoes the view that India foments sectarianism and funds various sectarian factions to “destroy the very fabric of our unity” (45). Ironically, he excludes Iran and Saudi Arabia from his assessment, although those states funded Shia and Sunni sectarian militants, respectively. Brig. Asif Murad (2002) agrees with his fellow contributors that Pakistan’s internal challenges render the state vulnerable because they “offer India potentially fertile ground for exploitation through dissident groups” (82). Furthermore, he writes that “[India] is already investing heavily in this aspect and engineering bomb blasts and sectarianism covertly through its agencies, the most active being its Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)” (ibid). Murad believes that India’s “nefarious designs draw aspirations directly from their continued frustrating attempts to curtail freedom struggle in Kashmir” (ibid.). Lt. Col. Muhammed Nasser Raja (2002) accuses India of being “always ready to initiate steps, which undermine the solidarity and integrity of Pakistan,” and alleges that RAW has been “involved in many acts of subversion and terrorism inside Pakistan” (123). He predicts that Indians will seek to foment sectarianism, execute terrorist attacks to provoke communal riots, and provide as much military and financial assistance as possible to separatist elements. He even goes so far as to cast doubt on India’s reasons for its military mobilization in late 2001 after the “so called attack on the Indian Parliament” (124; see also M.T. Ahmed 2002; Javed 2002).

  The 2006 Pakistan Army Green Book was devoted to the subject of terrorism, reflecting the recent increase in terrorist attacks within Pakistan. The essays in this volume are generally of very high quality. Many of them address the current manifestations of internal security issues in Pakistan and recommend counterterrorism or low-intensity conflict approaches to countering these problems. Several stress the importance of using domestic law enforcement agencies in counterterrorism approaches and express concerns about their continued shortcomings and the failure of sequential governments to remedy Pakistan’s decrepit law enforcement and judicial institutions. At the same time, many articles rehearse the same flawed narrative, which traces Pakistan’s Islamist terrorism problem back to US involvement in the region in the 1980s and the support the United States and Saudi Arabia gave to mujahideen elements via Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. As noted in previous chapters, Islamism and Islamist militancy in Pakistan were fully developed prior to US engagement. Moreover, during the entire period of the 1990s, when the United States disengaged from Pakistan, Pakistan expanded its ties to Islamist militant organizations and redeployed them to help secure its interests in India and Afghanistan. Furthermore, many authors in this volume, although they concede that fissures exist in Pakistani society, focus on India’s role in exacerbating them.

  For example, Maj. General Athar Abbas (2006), who would later head ISPR, the military’s public relations agency, traces the “roots of extremism in Pakistan” to the “Central Investigation [sic] Agency sponsored War in the 1980s in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation” (10). He also argues that “some of what is happening in the country today can be treated as un-resolved outcome of the American-led war and Indian atrocities in Occupied Kashmir” (10). Maj. Gen. Muhammad Asghar (2006) similarly contends that Pakistan inherited “Hindu and Indian hostility right from its inception stage. … It lost half the country because of Indian machinations and faces massive Indian covert support to dissident elements in Sindh and Balochistan” (20). According to Asghar, the Pakistan Army, with its nuclear weapons, “now stands as the most visible instrument of ensuring [Pakistan’s] physical survival as an independent, sovereign state” (20).

  In the same volume, Maj. Gen. Muhammad Farooq (2006) provides a sound account of the factors that contributed to sectarian violence in Pakistan, including different sectarian commitments, the rise of political Islamist parties, the Iranian revolution, and Zia’s efforts to Islamize Pakistan as a Sunni state. But he also places considerable blame on the so-called US proxy war in Afghanistan. Disregarding the fact that Pakistan lobbied the United States to support its effort in Afghanistan, Farooq depicts Pakistan as a passive instrument of US actions. As such, he laments, “Pakistan’s decision to be conduit and main supporter of the US resulted in influx of the large number of refugees and lethal weapons to Pakistan. While Iran supported mainly Shia Mujahideen groups during [sic] Afghan war, the America-Saudi alliance rendered help to the Sunni groups. This sponsorship had negative fallout on the sectarian harmony in Pakistan” (26).

  Farooq (2006) also adds India to the mix, explaining that “India remains the major challenge to Pakistan’s national security” because of its presumed “desire to undo Pakistan to establish a hegemonic regime in the region” (26). He believes that “the Indian factor … is the most potent challenge to Pakistan’s security” because it is “natural for the Indian intelligence agencies, especially RAW, to take full advantage of sectarian conflict in Pakistan as a revenge to ongoing freedom struggle in Indian Held Kashmir” (26–27). Despite the author’s understanding of the varied domestic drivers of violence in Pakistan, he believes that the groups attacking Pakistan have “close links with Indian intelligence agency RAW and other enemies of Pakistan” (30). Not only is this true, he argues, of the ethnic dissidents in Balochistan and Sindh, but also there is even a risk of the “Jihadi organizations falling prey to the nefarious designs of the enemy. … Thus sectarian divide, extremism, violence and terrorism presents a favourable playing ground to the enemies of Pakistan to play their nefarious game of making our inner front more vulnerable and exploitable” (ibid.).

  While many authors place the blame for Pakistan’s domestic ills at the doorsteps of India or the United States, a few authors in this volume stand out. Maj. Gen. Muhammad Ashraf Tabbassam (2006) writes that “a large segment of society especially the religious parties had actively supported Taliban and were sympathizers of Al-Qaeda. A number of Jihadi organizations had also sprouted in the 80s/90s who were encouraged to extend their struggle in the freedom movement in Kashmir” (35). Because “these elements are deeply rooted in all the segments of society,” uprooting them will be a “major challenge for the Government” (35). But Tabbassam, too, ultimately blames outside actors for Pakistan’s problem, noting that “sectarianism also flourished due to external support to these organizations which remained unchecked over the years” (36). He also notes the “role being played by Afghanistan,” which “on behest of India has adopted totally a negative role vis-à-vis Pakistan. She has … also given free hand to the Indians to use [Afghan] soil for subversive activities inside Pakistan” (37; see also M. Y. Khan 2006).

  The 2008 Pakistan Army Green Book is dedicated to understanding Pakistan’s future conflict environment. The volume opens with an essay by Maj. Gen. Shafqaat Ahmed (2008), the former Pakistani defense attaché to the United States. He shares the view of numerous other Pakistani defense writers that “external forces, including India, have used their proxies from Afghanistan and Iran to create a hostile environment in [Balochistan]” (3). Ahmed, however, believes that India is a surrogate for what he suggests is a US Great Game Plan. In this capacity, India is “financing, training and supporting terrorists in Afghanistan to operate in FATA and border areas of Balochistan. Scores of Indian consulates operating in the near vicinity of Pak-Afghan borders is a clear indication of the same” (4). He further claims that India “continues to encourage centrifugal forces to accentuate/create vulnerability such as ethno-religious polarization, economic disparities and foment dissident groups/forces” and cautions that “India has established ample foothold in Afghanistan and Iran, wherefrom it is supporting centrifugal forces in Balochistan and NWFP … [it] has the potential to support offensive low intensity conflict in Sindh and few other selected areas” (ibid.).

  Perhaps the most disturbing allegation in Ahmed’s (2008) essay is that the United States is “planning to divide [Pakistan] on ethnic grounds on the lines of
Iraq” (4). This was likely influenced by Peters’ (2006) article in which he argued for a dramatic redrawing of maps in the Middle East. This caused considerable distress in Pakistan because it was published in the Armed Forces Journal, which many in Pakistan believed reflects official US doctrinal and policy preferences. Ahmed contends that the United States, trying to gain access to the “lucrative energy resources of Central Asia,” may work to create “an autonomous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, comprising Pashtun regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the north” and a “greater Balochistan, comprising Balochistan Province and part of Iran in the south” (Ahmed 2008, 4; for a similar view, see Khan 2011). It would be tempting to dismiss these claims as the conspiracy theories of an insular paranoiac. But the author derives his authority to speak on American policy issues from his extensive interaction with Americans. What is perhaps most noteworthy about this article is its timing: it was written and published long before the later series of crises that brought the US–Pakistan military-to-military relationship to the brink of collapse.

  The 2010 Pakistan Army Green Book, which was the most recent volume at the time of writing, dilates upon information warfare.10 Durrani (2010) writes the lead article, which is dedicated to understanding Indian-backed psychological warfare. He explains that India’s efforts are devoted to Pakistan’s domestic audiences as well as international audiences, as discussed already. He claims that India’s efforts are intended to “disorientate people by attacking Pakistan’s cultural identity and the founding principles of Pakistan, i.e. Two Nation Theory” (4). It also aims to “weaken Pakistan’s internal cohesion” and thus to create a “lack of trust amongst the people” in the national leadership as well as sow seeds of conflict between the “people and armed forces and brand armed forces as rogue and warmongering” (4). Finally, it aims to break the will of “independent sovereign and defiant” Pakistan (ibid.). The author alleges that India’s intelligence agencies have invested widely in print and television media to “wage psychological war against Pakistan” (5).

  This belief that India deliberately invests in media instruments to weaken Pakistan is pervasive. Maj. Junaid Khan (2012) devotes an entire essay, titled “Living an Indian Influenced Life,” on this subject in Hilal. Khan laments that even though Pakistan was liberated from “British slavery and Hindu influenced living” even some 64 years later Pakistanis have been unable to “win freedom from Indian cultural domination” (28). He describes what he calls Gandhi’s modus operandi with which India has “no need to occupy Pakistan” because India can “occupy them culturally” (ibid.). Khan complains about how Indian music, movies, and television serials familiarize Pakistanis with the “ways and words of Indian prayers” and how Pakistanis find themselves spontaneously uttering these same “forbidden tunes” (29). Worse yet, these Indian media are a “poisonous capsule targeting our younger generation. In the garb of Hindi translated cartoons, not only our younger generation develops affinity to Hindi language, words, and customs” and become attuned to Indian (read Hindu) traditions, rituals and celebrations (ibid.). He cautions his readers to be mindful of these “Indian shadows” in their lives and notes that he fears “our children may wear ‘Sindoor’ [the red mark worn on the forehead] and greet each other with ‘Namastay’ [salutation in Hindi]. It will be a loss of religion, a loss of culture and above all a loss of identity” (ibid.).

  Conclusions and Implications

  There is considerable variance between scholarly accounts of Pakistan’s encounters with India and those offered by Pakistani military publications. Assuming that these publications are reasonably representative of the army’s strategic culture and its view of India, we can draw several important conclusions for the Indo-Pakistani security competition. The first is that the Pakistan Army clearly understands concepts like defeat and success in ways that differ from more mainstream understandings of these concepts. With the exception of the 1971 war, Pakistan does not see itself as ever having been defeated militarily. It is worth noting that some military writers even reject the notion that Pakistan was militarily defeated in that conflict either. For example, Gen. K. M. Arif (2001)—after deriding the performance of the Indian army in 1948 and 1965—boldly asserts that the “events of 1971 in East Pakistan were the result of treachery, not war” (249). For the Pakistan Army, Pakistan will be defeated only if it accepts India’s hegemonic position in the region and beyond. Since Pakistan can continue to resist India’s efforts to dominate it, despite having lost half of its country and territory in the 1971 war, it remains undefeated.

  Returning to Zionts’ (2006) concept of (unreasonable) persistent revisionism after a decisive defeat, it is clear that Pakistan does not view itself as defeated since it continues to resist India’s hegemony. Pakistan, as the anti–status quo state, wins by denying India the position of uncontested hegemon. This implies an asymmetry in requirements for victory. For India to succeed, it must dominate Pakistan and subject it to its will, but Pakistan will be victorious as long as it has not been defeated and continues to resist India’s will. A second insight from this literature is the dogged conviction of Pakistan’s defense establishment that India is fundamentally opposed to Pakistan’s existence, rejects the two-nation theory, and seeks every opportunity to undo history. Since the Pakistan Army has upheld Islam and the two-nation theory as its institutional ideology, the two states are thus locked in an existential conflict with no obvious resolution. Resolution of their security competition would imply that Pakistan must acquiesce to India’s hegemonic position, something the army is unprepared to do. Pakistan takes India’s conventional military posture as confirmatory evidence of Indian intent to harm Pakistan. As India increasingly focuses on a possible Chinese threat, and thus maintains a strong conventional force posture, this security dilemma is unlikely to ever disappear.

  Third, while many military writings are dedicated to painting India as a threat in perpetuity, much military literature is dedicated to denigrating India as an adversary. The conclusion to be drawn from these seemingly contradictory narratives is that India is an enduring threat because it remains steadfastly committed to subduing Pakistan but also that the threat India poses is ultimately one that Pakistan can successfully resist. Finally, according to these authors, Pakistan’s numerous domestic threats are fundamentally reducible to its external foes, principally India, whether it acts on its own initiative or on behalf of another unfriendly state, such as the United States. By linking the external and domestic threats, the Pakistan Army justifies its enduring conventional footing in face of growing domestic problems. This also allows the military to prevent other organs of the state from countering these domestic threats in a way that would erode or challenge the army’s primacy in Pakistan’s domestic politics. While these narratives are consistent and ubiquitous in Pakistan’s defense literature, they also appear in civilian narratives of India as well. This attests the degree to which the military discourse has permeated popular culture and the institutions of civilian governance.

  CHAPTER 7

  Seeking Security through Alliances

  Pakistani commentators—military and civilian alike—agree that Pakistan’s security challenges have always been framed with respect to India. Shahid Amin (2000), one of Pakistan’s most accomplished diplomats, concedes that the “over-riding motivation in determining Pakistan’s foreign policy has been the desire to safeguard the country’s independence and territorial integrity [from Indian designs]. … The quest for security vis-à-vis India has been an unvarying, and almost obsessive, dimension of Pakistan’s foreign policy from the beginning” (10). As I sought to show in Chapters 4–6, Pakistan’s fear of India is deep and existential. Pakistan’s security discourse frames the country’s struggle against India in civilizational terms, with India fighting to dominate—if not destroy—Pakistan and extirpate the two-nation theory. Pakistan, in turn, mobilizes its Islamic identity and the two-nation theory both to justify its independent existence and to r
esist India’s hegemonic aspirations.

  Pakistan began to seek international assistance, especially in building its military, long before it began its pursuit of nuclear weapons, forging alliances with the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and, intermittently, the Soviet Union (later Russia). Describing Pakistan’s three-pronged strategy in a piece in the Pakistan Army Journal, Zulfikar Khalid (1989a) wrote, “Pakistan’s trilateral strength is based on Islamabad’s association with the People’s Republic of China, the on-going relationship with the United States and the traditional relationship with the Islamic countries, headed by Saudi Arabia” (2). Pakistan relies on these relationships for general strategic positioning and, more specifically, for extracting civilian aid, military assistance, access to conventional and even nuclear weapons systems, and training for its armed forces. Pakistan has often played one country off another to extract even more benefits.

  In this chapter, I attempt to explain how Pakistan’s relations with China and the United States fit into its strategic culture.1 These are the most important partnerships Pakistan has forged, and between them they account for the majority of Pakistani military discourse on alliances. Understanding this chapter’s puzzle requires examining two separate historical records. The first recounts the objective actions and transactions comprising the substance of Pakistani relations with both the United States and China. (The facts of these interactions are knowable, even if they are difficult to come by.) The second is the record of how Pakistani military elites describe Pakistan’s relations with both of these countries when speaking among themselves or to foreigners. In many cases, there is a yawning gap between the empirical facts of these relationships and what Pakistanis say about them.