Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  Hassan (1990) suggests that a contributing factor in these defeats has been the hallmark of Hinduism, which he describes as the non-egalitarian structure of Hindu society and the resultant exploitation of the common man by elite Hindus. This exploited class then becomes the ally of India’s invaders. To prove his point he recalls that “history is replete with details of enormous booty that most invaders were able to amass from the vanquished kings and nobles whose people were living under famine like conditions” (51). According to Hassan, India has demonstrated “hopeless performance in protecting its own freedom and sovereignty”—despite the wealth of data to the contrary—and exhibits a “poor track record at projection of power beyond its frontier” (ibid.). To Hassan’s credit, he sometimes draws from contemporary Indian sources. However, he also draws from historical events that took place centuries ago to describe modern India as well as from more recent, but ultimately, Orientalist writings from the colonial era to buttress his claims about India and Hindus. For example, he cites a British historian, Sir Halford J. Mackinder, who wrote in 1922 that the Indian people are “less Warlike” (52). Elsewhere he cites Will Durant’s 1935 The Story of Our Civilization—Our Oriental Heritage: “military ardour and courage (are) not usually associated with India. … By universal admission the Hindus are gentle to the point of timidity, too worshipful and good natured, too long broken upon the wheel of conquest and alien despotisms to be good fighters” (53).

  Hassan (1990) also seeks to challenge Indians’ purported belief that their state is strong, especially in contrast to Pakistan, which is riven by various kinds of ethnic and sectarian discord. He dedicates an entire chapter to debunking the idea of Indian unity, whether geographical or social. Some of Hassan’s claims are strange. For example, he cites as evidence of India’s disunity the fact that the Muslims opted out of the Indian project and pursued an independent Pakistan. The problem with this argument is that many Muslims chose to remain in India rather than move to Pakistan. (Today, India has approximately 176 million Muslims compared with that of Pakistan’s 160 million. Thus, India is the second largest Muslim country after Indonesia [Pew Research Forum 2012].) Hassan also criticizes the imposition of Hindi as the national language, even though the imposition of Urdu was equally, if not more, problematic in Pakistan. Recall that Urdu had no “homeland” in Pakistan and that, at the time of Partition the majority of Pakistanis spoke Bengali. To buttress his arguments, Hassan mobilizes Indian scholars who are critical of Indian nation building. He is aware that if India were as unstable as he suggests it would have disintegrated long ago. He rationalizes the apparent inconsistency between his vision of a disunified India and the reality of India’s stability with the assessment that “the passive nature of the Hindu majority” has precluded the state from rupturing (Hassan 1990, 123).

  Drawing on his historical, social, and economic exposition of the Indian malaise, Hassan (1990) lays out what he believes to be India’s demands of Pakistan. First and foremost, Hassan believes, India wants Pakistan to renounce the two-nation theory, which would have the effect of “falsify[ing] the partition of India and also contribute to the consolidation of Indian unity” (228). Once this is done, there will be no “locus standi for a Pakistani claim to Jammu and Kashmir, rather Pakistan would have to hand over Azad Kashmir to India so as to allow the Kashmiri people to be united” (ibid., emphasis in original). Hassan argues, as have other Pakistani defense writers, that “India wants to be the arbiter of the ‘genuine’ need of Pakistan’s defence. Pakistan would obviously have to renounce its peaceful nuclear programme. … India would also be the arbiter of Pakistan’s internal problems ‘a la’ Nepal earlier and Sri Lanka now” (ibid.). This ultimately reduces to a simple formula: “Pakistan should exercise its sovereignty according to Indian desires” (ibid.). Hassan retains some credibility, however, in that he does cite Indian sources. For example, he quotes Jaswant Singh (a BJP politician who has held several cabinet positions, including Finance, External Affairs, and Defence), who wrote in 1989 that “unless Pakistan accepts India’s dominant role in Asia and its readiness to live in [a] friendly neighbourly manner there can be no peace” (ibid.). It is comments such as these that legitimize some of Pakistan’s deepest fears regarding Indian intentions.

  Hassan (1990) is not alone in reducing Indian actions to mere Hindu behavior. Brig. Jamshed Ali (1990) suggests that one cannot understand “the Indian dream of becoming a super-power” without first comprehending the Hindu psyche, which he believes to be “dominated by four obsessions”: “revenge for 1,000 years of enslavement by the Muslims;” “repudiation of the vivisection of Bharat Mata [Mother India];” “claim to the Indian Ocean territories as successors to the British Empire”; and, finally, “world recognition of India’s global role keeping with its size, location and performance” (100–101).

  Other writers seek to delegitimize India’s cause and motivation using the same methods. In 1966, Lt. Col. Mohammad Safdar Iqbal, for example, attempted to explain India’s poor performance in the 1965 war despite the “fact” that India had started the war. (Needless to say, this version of events clashes violently with the scholarly account of the 1965 war.) In Iqbal’s essay, Indian soldiers are caricatured as Hindus, in contrast with the Pakistani Muslim soldier:

  Whatever can be gleaned from the coverage given to this short and violent war … the main cause of failure of the Indian attack was that Indians had no cause to fight for. The Indian soldier had no justification to attack Pakistan. There was nothing that could keep the idea of war aglow in his heart. Nothing could convince his mind that the hardships of battle, the pangs of hunger and thirst, the merciless beating of hostile elemental fury and the extreme rigours and suffering, trials and tribulations and death and decay that had started with it, were worthy of noble ideals of human belief, especially to a people who had been brought up on the lofty ideals of “Ahimsa” ie, non-violence of Mr. Gandhi and neutralism of Mr. Nehru (8).

  In contrast, Pakistani soldiers are motivated by their tarbiyat (religious instruction), which enabled them to successfully defend themselves against the treacherous foe with honor and distinction, even though they were outmanned and outgunned by the Hindu forces.

  It is important to note that these perceptions of Indians are not restricted to military discourse. The report of the judicial Hamoodur Rehman Commission (2001), established by the Z. A. Bhutto government to investigate the loss of East Pakistan, is replete with similar language.8 For example, the commission’s account grants India a large and nefarious role in the East Pakistan crisis, in part by exerting influence over East Pakistan’s Hindu citizens. The report explains that, while the Hindu migration out of West Pakistan was nearly complete (with the exception of Sindh), “over one and a half crores of Hindus had continued to remain behind in East Pakistan. It was felt that this language movement was the outcome of their insidious influence. They were, particularly, exploiting the fact that most of the senior government officers then serving in East Bengal, were either from the Punjab or the United Provinces and most of them did not speak the language of the province [Bengali]” (31). The report acknowledges the intelligence challenges faced by West Pakistani military and civilian officials operating in East Pakistan; in particular it was impossible to recruit “a sufficient number of local agents from whom information could be gathered. In addition to this was the language problem. It is sad to reflect that nearly 25 years after the achievement of Pakistan it should be still possible to have this problem of communication” (89). The report dedicates the entirety of its tenth chapter, titled “Indo-Pakistan Relations,” to proving India’s malevolent intentions toward Pakistan.

  INDIA: THE EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL THREATS CONVERGE

  Pakistan has long been beset by an array of internal security threats. Most recently, since 2004 the state has been ravaged by Islamist terrorists who operate under the banner of the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, or TTP). But the TTP is only the newest player in
Pakistan’s violence market; it follows on the heels of the sectarian terrorist groups that have long attacked religious minorities in Pakistan and of the ethnic insurgents who attack rival communities and who are particularly active in Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Despite these internal security challenges, the Pakistan Army has insisted on retaining a conventional force posture that recognizes India as Pakistan’s primary military challenge.

  Since the middle of the last decade, the United States has attempted to persuade Pakistan’s army to adopt population-centric counterinsurgency, even offering to provide the Pakistan Army with military and paramilitary training as well as weapons systems to enable Pakistan’s armed forces to more effectively counter these domestic threats. But the Pakistan Army’s leadership has insisted on retaining its conventional orientation against India as well as a conventional approach to internal security operations as embodied by low-intensity conflict (Fair and Jones 2009–2010; Kronstadt 2010). American officials have been bewildered by Pakistan’s stubborn retention of its conventional orientation, since even a cursory review of recent South Asian history reveals that, with the possible exception of 1971, Pakistan was the initiator of every war with India. Not only are Americans perplexed by Pakistani belief in the existence of a threat from India, a status quo power, but they are also equally mystified by Pakistani insistence on prioritizing the possibility of a conventional war with India over the enormous internal security threats that have challenged the writ of the state via assaults on military, intelligence, police, civilian leadership, and the general public.

  A perusal of Pakistan’s defense literature cast some light on the reasons for the Pakistan Army’s steadfast commitment to a conventional posture. Pakistan has three arguments for maintaining its current eastward orientation. The first is that Pakistan responds to Indian capabilities and deployments, not India’s intentions. Pakistanis, pointing to the large conventional force arrayed on their borders, argue that Pakistan can observe only what India could do rather than what India wants to do. This is a classic security dilemma. India undertakes military preparations to protect itself from a future Chinese as well as an ever-present Pakistani threat. But these defensive preparations unnerve Pakistan and motivate it to take offensive postures in response. India in turn responds accordingly, and the cycle continues. Second, in Pakistan’s strategic culture, India always appears as the aggressor, making these capabilities even more deeply worrisome. Third, and most importantly, Pakistan attributes its domestic turmoil to Indian provocation.

  Pakistan’s defense writings are often straightforward, clear, and even sophisticated in their analysis of the varied fissures that pose innumerable potential threats to Pakistan’s coherence. However, most Pakistani writing on the country’s internal security challenges holds that these divisions merely have the potential for conflict, becoming active only as a result of the actions of “hostile external powers.” (This is generally a euphemism for India, although it can also refer to the United States, Israel, or, in the past, the Soviet Union.) By linking Pakistan’s internal threats to its external ones, the army justifies retaining its conventional posture, despite the groundswell of domestic security challenges.

  In many countries, internal security duties are the remit of domestic police forces. For reasons detailed at length elsewhere, while the army has demonstrated a selective interest in police reform at certain times under specific circumstances, it has resisted professionalization of the police forces, even though these forces are usually the most suitable for internal security duties. This resistance likely stems from the army’s professed belief that it alone can defend Pakistan from internal and external threats as well as from its awareness of the fact that civilian elites have heavily politicized the police force (Abbas 2011, 2012).

  Pakistani writing about Indian meddling in Pakistan falls into two main genres. The first, which has been covered at length, focuses on India’s supposed role in fomenting Bengali unrest in East Pakistan, which culminated in the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. This was a watershed event for the Pakistan Army, one that shaped its understanding of India’s destructive power. In fact, prior to the 1971 war, no authors in Pakistan’s defense publications blamed India for widespread unrest in Pakistan, with the exception of those who claimed that India encouraged Afghanistan to take provocative positions on the frontier and Pakhtunistan (see Chapter 5). The second genre specifically identifies India as the primary mover behind most, if not all, of Pakistan’s internal security menaces. One of the earliest pieces making this connection is a 1978 essay in the Pakistan Army Journal titled “The Pakistan Army.” The anonymous author of the piece rehearses the challenges of Partition to back his claim that India bears a long-standing hostility toward Pakistan and has attempted from the first years of independence to destroy its neighbor. Like many others, the author concedes that the 1971 war was indigenous in origin but argues that India exploited Bengali unrest to ensure Pakistan’s demise. After this debilitating experience, “today the Pakistan Army stands firm with a new confidence in its ranks ready to meet any challenges to the integrity of the nation. However, every Pakistani soldier must search his heart and remain vigilant against internal and external enemies lest we again fall victim to a similar conspiracy” (9).

  Despite the importance of the 1971 war and of India’s role in breaking up Pakistan, prior to 1989 essays blaming India for Pakistan’s internal insecurity were still rare. However, after 1989, they became increasingly commonplace. In 1989, Maj. Gen. Asad Durrani, who served as the ISI chief, wrote, “Pakistan remains a house divided against itself. If Pakistanis are unable to resolve their own domestic troubles, and particularly the fundamental question of national unity, the temptation of outsiders to meddle in the Country’s turbulent internal affairs may be uncontrollable.” Durrani continues on to argue that Pakistan’s internal challenges “are primarily internal weaknesses that are exploited by external aggressors” (11). Ghumman (1990, 28) cautions that “the delicate internal balance of Pakistan due to law and order, Pakhtoonistan and refugee problems, [has] the potential of being exploited by external factors through subversion, terrorism and insurgency. … Chronic political instability is again a matter of concern. The dissident elements and miscreants can be exploited by India and Afghanistan in their nefarious designs.”

  Many volumes of the Pakistan Army Green Book explicate, at length, the links between Pakistan’s external and internal threats. For example, Brig. Gul Muhammad, writing in the 2000 issue (concentrating on the role of the Pakistan Army in nation building), admits that Pakistan’s internal circumstances are worsening but claims they are “disproportionately exacerbated by external manipulation” (43). He forthrightly identifies the utter failure of “democratic experiments, near collapse of state institutions, rampant corruption, deteriorating law and order situation, ethnic and sectarian polarization” as significant foundational challenges but to this list of internal maladies he adds “the external manipulation which is adversely affecting the security landscape of the country” (ibid.).

  The 2002 Pakistan Army Green Book is entirely focused on low-intensity conflict.9 Although the volume went to press after the events of 9/11 brought international attention to al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants based in South Asia, the articles in the volume make only peremptory and passing references to this event. The various articles in this volume use very similar language and memes, suggesting that it was heavily edited for thematic and ideological continuity. One of the volume’s persistent themes is the extensive role of India in fomenting low-intensity conflict in Pakistan. This is extraordinary given that production of the volume likely overlapped with the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 2001–2002 following Jaish-e-Mohammad’s attack on India’s parliament and certainly with mounting US pressure to stem the infiltration of Pakistani Islamist terror groups into India.

  The 2002 volume opens with an essay by Maj. Gen. Muhammad Saleem titled “Low Intensity Conflict—Conflictual Fra
mework.” Saleem offers the fantastic argument that “LIC looms as the most viable and dangerous option. India, while ensuring that it does not cross a certain threshold to evoke a nuclear response from Pakistan, shall endeavour to wage this kind of warfare by fully exploiting the prevailing socioeconomic conditions” (1).

  Other articles offer variations on this bizarre theme. Brig. Muhammad Zia (2002) enumerates the various threats low-intensity conflict poses to Pakistan. He focuses on Pakhtun nationalism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the restless Baloch in Balochistan, and the prolonged political and economic instability in the Saraiki belt in the southern Punjab. While he notes that the Punjab has witnessed several kinds of urban terror, he argues that “most of these groups are foreign funded” and further that “whenever peace and tranquility seems to take root, Indian agents have been known to ignite sectarian tensions through terrorist activities” (34). According to Zia, Karachi, which has long suffered sectarian, ethnic, political, and organized criminal violence, by “virtue of its location enjoys strategic importance [and is] a target of hostile forces, particularly RAW” (ibid.). Zia attributes Indian intervention in Pakistan to the centuries-old philosophy of Chanakaya Kautilya: “peace can only be made with superiors or equals, the inferior must be attacked” (36). He maintains that “this philosophy remains evident behind every Indian overture on national and inter-national level [sic]. Till today, India has not accepted the creation of Pakistan as final and is always on the lookout to exploit any opportunity to undo history” (36). He further explains that India “has enunciated a multi-pronged strategy using Indian media, abetting political subversion, fanning sectarian violence and developing a terrorist network to undermine the logic of our creation and the legitimacy of the state” (36). Zia also sees an American hand in Indian designs. He believes that the United States has sought to develop a strategic relationship with India not only to create a counterweight to China and to exploit potential new markets but also to ensure that “a nuclear (and Muslim) Pakistan [be] kept under control, lest it [lead] the Islamic world towards the formation of a new powerful economic and military block in competition with and or antagonistic to the western alliance” (ibid.).