By Frank Schell on 5.12.09 @ 6:07AM
The world is depending on General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, whose
army might be as reluctant as the Shah's to fire at its own
people.
The Pakistan Army has profound links to the British Empire and
has Western antecedents. Yet its engagement on its own soil with
the Taliban, the antithesis of those values, has been sporadic at
best. Thus far, the Pakistan Army has fought just enough to keep
America at bay, but not enough to engage forcefully and dismember
the Taliban.
This reluctance of the Pakistan Army was well set forth and
explained in the
essay of George H. Wittman posted May 6, 2009, "Pakistan's
Time of Troubles," and perhaps this writing will add insights
The Pakistan Military Academy was set up after the partition of
India in 1947 to be like the British model, the Royal Military
Academy Sandhurst -- to train young sahibs to be gentlemen
soldiers and to pass muster. In Pakistan, the officer corps has
been traditionally an aristocratic profession. In terms of size,
the Pakistan Army ranks as the seventh largest in the world. It
is supported by the vested interests in Pakistan, particularly
those families that control the means of production and
distribution in the industrial and commercial provinces of Punjab
and Sindh.
The Pakistan Army has been an elitist institution, its cadre of
senior ranks directly ruling the country for much of the time
since 1947. Some officers have cultivated the bearing and
mannerisms of the pukka sahibs who begat them. Why then, with
their fundamentally and initially Western training and outlook,
do they seem to be mostly supine in the face of the advancing
Taliban?
The answer in part is the grand obsession with India. For over
sixty years, Pakistan has been an extension of its army, whose
purpose is to take on the Republic of India. Three major wars
have been fought since 1947 -- two over the Kashmir dispute and
one over the secession of East Pakistan and emergence of
Bangladesh -- plus there was an undeclared conflict in Kargil,
high in the Himalayas in 1999. This perspective may have
prevented Pakistan from seeing the greater enemy crossing and now
within its borders, or developing a major counterinsurgency
capability of its own. Moreover, the mujahideen have been useful
to the Pakistani military through their infiltration across the
Line of Control in Kashmir, causing the Indian Army to deploy
substantial resources against an asymmetric intrusion.
Not only that, the U.S. has had a foreign policy of convenience
in that part of the world -- like a 7-Eleven store high in the
Khyber Pass of Afghanistan. Once the mujahideen were no longer
useful against the Soviets, they were abandoned to then morph
into the Taliban, with al Qaeda in their midst. The Pakistan Army
leadership may well think that the American commitment to
Pakistan is a tenuous one, and it would therefore be unwise to
combat the emerging Islamist ideology.
Finally, the Pakistan Army, starting with General Zia-ul-Haq,
became Islamicized in the 1970s, along with the ISI, the
intelligence service. The bamboo, silver-tipped swagger sticks
with regimental insignia, foppish hair styles, clipped moustaches
and small pegs of whiskey have symbolically been replaced in some
part by Islamic austerity and a partial rejection of those
Western accoutrements. So in certain ranks there may now be some
emotional affinity for the bearded men in dusty pantaloons toting
AK-47s and RPGs in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
A lesson of modern history is that even the formidable and U.S.
trained army of the Shahanshah Aryamehr of Iran would not, at the
ultimate hour, stand and fight -- nor would it shoot at its own
people when the revolution came in the late 1970s. The Iranian
establishment and the foreign business and diplomatic community
were in denial, thinking all along that their Shah would be
strong. No matter what sophisticated armaments the Shah acquired
to be America's gendarme in the Persian Gulf, they were useless
against a new ideology.
This is not just America's fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda
-- who are seeking WMD and threatening Pakistan's existence as we
know it. The world is depending on General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani,
the highly credentialed Pakistani Chief of Army Staff who was
previously head of the ISI. From a working class family near
Rawalpindi, General Kayani holds a masters degree from the
National Defence College in Islamabad. His bio also indicates
that he is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Ft.
Benning and the Command and General Staff College at Ft.
Leavenworth. In the absence of badly needed credible civilian
leadership, it would then be up to the General and his commanders
to set the tone for what they believe is good for Pakistan.
The Taliban presence about 60 miles from Islamabad does not bode
well, and the Department of Defense should be reviewing and
updating contingency plans for possible intervention and seizure
of nuclear facilities in Pakistan, in the event that the Taliban
directly threatens the capital or that the control of nuclear
infrastructure appears endangered. But the most disturbing
question is this: if the mayhem comes, on what side would be the
critical mass of the Pakistan Army?
topics:
Pakistan, Taliban
