Despite this narrative’s staying power, it is simply inaccurate. Most important, it understates the duration of Pakistan’s involvement with nonstate actors generally and Islamist militants in particular. Pakistan has relied on nonstate actors to prosecute its policies in Kashmir since its birth in 1947. In that year, the nascent state mobilized numerous lashkars, or tribal militias, from Pakistan’s Pakhtun areas to invade and seize Kashmir, while the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir vacillated on whether to join India or Pakistan (Nawaz 2008a, 2008b). Furthermore, Pakistan’s efforts to employ political Islamists, and later Islamist militants in Afghanistan, began as early as the late 1950s. State-supported Islamist militants fought Bangladeshi insurgents in East Pakistan during the crackdown that spawned the 1971 war (Haqqani 2005). By the early 1990s, Islamist militants had seized the lead in Kashmir from ethnic Kashmiri insurgents. And while Pakistan is most known for instrumentalizing Islamist militants, in the late 1970s and early 1980s it also supported Sikh insurgents in India as well as other ethnic insurgencies in the northeast of India.
This chapter examines Pakistan’s use of proxy fighters in India, Afghanistan, and, in some cases, within Pakistan itself. The first section draws on the Pakistan Army’s professional publications to map the history of that organization’s conception of asymmetric conflict, variously described as jihad, guerrilla war, people’s war, infiltration, and the like. The second section gives a brief overview of the militant milieu in Pakistan, presenting evidence that as Pakistan unfurled its nuclear umbrella in the late 1970s, it ever more boldly supported militants in India and elsewhere. Finally, while most studies of Pakistan’s proxies focus on their utility in external operations, the third section presents a case study of one organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), to show how it serves not only external but also domestic goals.
Origins of Pakistan’s Use of Nonstate Actors
Cohen was the first to observe that Pakistan’s interest in proxy war may have been piqued by the training in counterinsurgency it received from the United States during the 1950s, when the two countries were formally allied against the communist threat (Cohen 1984, 2004). Although the defense pacts also applied to China, for reasons described in Chapter 7, Pakistan was largely exempted from participating in any US effort to contain Chinese communism. Pakistani defense writing of the 1950s suggests that engagement with the US military led the Pakistan Army to adopt important doctrinal shifts toward guerrilla warfare. Ironically, while the purpose of this training was to enable Pakistan to suppress and defeat insurgencies, Pakistani officers increasingly concluded that the army could successfully wage a people’s war, perfect the art of infiltration, or even develop its own people’s army as a second line of defense against India (Cohen 2004).
The Pakistan Army General Headquarters began publishing the Pakistan Army Journal in 1957. In its early years, the journal frequently augmented the indigenous contributions with articles from foreign military journals, especially those of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United States. In its first volume, the Pakistan Army Journal republished an article by Maj. C. H. A. East (1958) titled “Guerrilla Warfare,” which had originally appeared in the Australian Army Journal. East writes that “the aim of guerrilla warfare is to reduce the effectiveness of the opponent’s regular forces. It is achieved best when conducted behind enemy lines to further specific large-scale operations by regular forces” (58). He argues that three concepts must be carefully appreciated to prosecute guerrilla warfare successfully: terrain; political situation; and national conditions. The ideal terrain, according to East, includes mountains, especially with jungles and forests, or a flat area covered by swamp, jungle, or forest. Politically, guerrilla forces must enjoy the full backing of either their own or an allied government. This is necessary to ensure the requisite logistical support. They must also attract the political sympathies of the local civilian population, thus motivating the locals to provide them with loyal support. East explains that the civilian population in question should “possess a strong national desire for independence and a hatred of the enemy … [that] can be stimulated by propaganda, although this characteristic should be strong in areas which have been occupied by an aggressor” (ibid.). Finally, he suggests that the surest method of exerting control over guerrilla forces is to “provide the trained personnel and organization from the regular army to establish a formal guerrilla organization” (ibid.).
Since East (1958) was writing for an Australian military journal, his conclusions were meant to be relevant to his readership in Australia and perhaps other Commonwealth of Nations countries (of which Pakistan was one). But any reader familiar with the Kashmir dispute and Pakistan’s precipitation of the 1947–1948 war would immediately understand the applicability of this article to Pakistan’s Kashmir dilemma and thus its appropriateness for the pages of the Pakistan Army Journal. After all, Kashmir’s mountainous and jungle-covered terrain matched East’s ideal insurgent environment. Politically, guerrilla forces in Kashmir would enjoy the full support of the Pakistani state, including the military. Pakistan also believed that Kashmiri civilians would provide the fighters with moral and physical support and also that they were seething with hatred and resentment of their “occupier.” Finally, the Pakistan Army could provide the kind of training, organization, and oversight of guerrillas that East recommends.
One year later, the Pakistan Army Journal reprinted an article written by E. Downey (1959) for an American publication, Military Review. Downey, reflecting conventional military wisdom at the time, fears that “most Americans will think this discussion [of guerrilla warfare] boringly academic since, as everyone knows, we have a Strategic Air Force equipped with nuclear weapons capable of wiping out an enemy in a few short hours” (26). But he argues that the possession of nuclear weapons and the ability to wipe out an adversary does not preclude the need to plan for guerrilla war. After all, “no matter how destructive the war, conventional or nuclear, chances are something will be left after it is over” (27). Having justified the case for American defense planners to prepare for a “day-after” scenario, when the country may need to pull itself together and sustain a guerrilla war, the author presents the foe in stark ideological terms: the communist for whom “absolute brutality, or use of any means, is in accord with the grandiosity, even the unreality of Communist aims” (29).
Downey (1959) describes several aspects of the day-after guerrilla war Americans may need to wage to secure their sovereignty. First, American war planners must accept the possibility that such a war will be necessary and thus the need for a planned resistance. After all, “any society which has lost a war to protect its social values should have devised some means of continuing its culture in the face of an organized social change. The answer is a resistance movement: guerrilla warfare” (30). In Downey’s vision, the guerrilla organization is not only a military force but also a “transmitter of culture” (ibid.). He draws on the experiences of Communist China to derive lessons that will enable the United States to wage a protracted resistance without any outside help. In fact, only “guerrillas can operate in a country that is conquered by the enemy. Unlike a national army, they are not dependent upon supply bases and fixed communications” (33). Moreover, because they “choose the time and place of attack, they always hold the initiative. Melting into the countryside after an attack, they demoralize the enemy who faces a shadow army” (ibid.). Downey concludes with a call to develop a comprehensive theory of guerrilla warfare and to require training in guerrilla operations at US military institutions.
Downey’s (1959) article offers many insights into Pakistan’s security situation in the late 1950s. First, Pakistan faced (as it continues to face) a much larger Indian conventional army—thus, a day-after scenario, nuclear or no, could certainly have appeared relevant. Second, while overt nuclearization of the Indo-Pakistan dispute occurred decades after his article was published, Pakistan’s defense writing of the period demonstrated an interest in nuclear war, even
if the contexts of that conflict were theoretical or vague. Third, it should be recalled that India’s nuclear program began much earlier than Pakistan’s. Prior to independence, and with Jawaharlal Nehru’s support, India’s key nuclear scientist, Homi Bhaba, sought to “master the atom” because doing so “represented modernity, potential prosperity, transcendence of the colonial past, individual and national prowess, and international leverage” (Perkovich 1999, 13). Nehru’s official position was that the program would have only peaceful uses. He told the Lok Sabha (India’s lower house of parliament) in 1957, “We have declared quite clearly that we are not interested in and we will not make these bombs, even if we have the capacity to do so” (ibid.). While Nehru viewed military uses of nuclear technology with contempt, Bhaba had a different view and by the late 1950s was stating privately that he believed that India should build a nuclear weapon (ibid.).
Even though the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) was founded in 1956, it was for many years a ramshackle operation. In contrast, by 1959, the Atomic Energy Commission of India in Trombay had over 1,000 scientists working on civilian nuclear technology (e.g., nuclear energy to power India’s economic development). But India’s nuclear policy began to change in the mid-1960s following the Sino-Indian war in 1962 and China’s 1964 nuclear test. Nizamani (2000) describes this transition as a shift from a stance of “nuclear celibacy,” marked by the general absence of public discussion of nuclear weapons, toward one of “nuclear ambiguity,” in which the taboo surrounding weaponization “gave way to discussions about the potential deterrence value of nuclear weapons” (31).
Given that India’s scientists were speaking privately about the need to develop a nuclear bomb while its leaders publicly sought a civilian nuclear capacity, it is not improbable that rumors of these discussions reached the Pakistan military or the intelligence agencies. Thus, a conventional day-after contingency was relevant to Pakistan’s military planners, and also by the late 1950s Pakistan’s defense planners may even have been considering a nuclear day-after scenario. In either case, Downey’s (1958) vision of a war in which (as Pakistanis would have imagined it) Pakistani partisans would fight an Indian occupier both to secure Pakistan’s freedom and to ensure that its cultural values survived the period of occupation would have appealed to the army. Downey also offers thoughts on how a nation such as Pakistan could sustain a people’s war in Kashmir, in Pakistan’s view an occupied territory whose inhabitants must fight off the Hindu Indian occupier while retaining and transmitting Kashmiri cultural values (i.e., Islam and Muslim identity).
Throughout the 1960s, the Pakistan Army Journal presented the musings of Pakistani authors on topics such as the importance of infiltration, the need to develop a people’s army for both defensive and offensive operations against India, and, increasingly, the utility of people’s war. Several authors expand on the idea of infiltration as a “form of attack” (Akram 1964; El-Edroos 1961; Niazi 1964; Parker 1964). El-Edroos (1961), in the same way as the other authors, sees attack through infiltration as ideal for Pakistan because of Pakistan’s presumed conventional inferiority to India. Not only is infiltration a “form of attack [that] is the most superior as it achieves the maximum results with the minimum of casualties,” but also a “critical analysis of infiltration will indicate a technique of attack best suited to the native genius of our peasant-soldier and to our severely limited material resources” (3, 5). El-Edroos, in particular, places infiltration within the context of operations led by historical Muslim warriors, notably Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur Beg, also known as Babur.
Babur holds an important place in Pakistani history; he was a Central Asian conqueror and descendent of Genghis Khan and founded the Mughal Empire in South Asia. Although his tenure was short (1526–1530), Babur laid the foundations of a dynasty that persisted until 1857, when the British absorbed the remnants of the empire and overthrew the last Mughal ruler (Bahadur Shah II) because he supported the Indian partisans in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Babur is associated with consolidating an enduring Muslim political system in South Asia. For proponents of Hindutva (Hindu nationalists), the tenure of the Mughals (and that of the various Muslim dynasties that pre-dated Babur) “is at the root of the myth of a continuous thousand-year old struggle of Hindus against Muslims. … The myth of the Muslim invader and Hindu resistance has also been deployed to prove that Hindutva represents the true, native, nationalism” (Basu et al. 1993, 2–4). In contrast, Pakistani textbooks date the origins of the Pakistani state to this same period, and invoking Babur in this context would be particularly meaningful to a Pakistani reader. It is worth noting that the Pakistan Army has even named its Babur cruise missile after him—the Babur is also known at the Hatf (ISPR 2012).
In 1964, Brig. A. A. K. Niazi offered his own exposition of infiltration. As he notes in his autobiographical account of the 1971 war, Niazi was commissioned in 1937 and served with distinction as a lieutenant during World War II, commanding a platoon that fought the Imperial Japanese Army on the Burma front (Niazi 2009). Niazi rose to the rank of lieutenant general and served as the last governor and martial law administrator of East Pakistan. He was also the last unified commander of the Eastern Military High Command of Pakistan’s armed forces, and it was he who signed the instrument of surrender in December 1971, formally concluding the 1971 war and finalizing Pakistan’s loss of East Pakistan (ibid.).
Given Niazi’s time in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II, his 1964 discussion of infiltration reflects the effective use of the tactic by the Japanese and Germans, Italians, Chinese, and North Koreans (Niazi 1964). He explains that “infiltration implies by-passing of enemy posts by relatively small parties which penetrate deep and unseen into the defences and converge at a pre-designated objective” (3). He argues that when a military employs trained troops for infiltration, with careful planning and in optimal terrain, weather, and political conditions, it “will achieve much better results with far lesser casualties than any other form of attack” (4). Niazi describes the “battlefields of the future,” where infiltration will be most useful, as fluid and characterized by extended engagements. Units will be widely dispersed and not necessarily in contact with one another. This battle space will be “a heaven for infiltrating forces” (ibid.). In Niazi’s system, strategic infiltration entails identifying weak spots in the enemy’s defenses, breaking through enemy lines deep into the rear, and creating chaos among the opponent’s forces. Both regular forces and elite air troops can effectively infiltrate the foe in this way, and hilly, heavily wooded terrain (as in Kashmir) is well suited for such efforts. Tactical infiltration, like strategic infiltration, aims to cause maximum disorder among enemy forces while minimizing casualties, but it involves fewer troops and a shallower penetration of enemy lines.
Niazi (1964) expects that “small parties could infiltrate and lie down in the enemy area and remain there for extended periods if required … [and] could send or bring back valuable information about the enemy” (6). If large groups infiltrate enemy defenses, they should ideally “create another flank or … cover an existing flank” (ibid.). The infiltrating force can be used to contain or divert the enemy’s counterattack or even to deceive the enemy about the infiltrating army’s intentions. Alternatively, he proposes that the “infiltrating force may be the main effort and the deliberate attack merely a deceptive measure” (ibid.). Infiltration parties are ideally situated to conduct “harassing tasks,” which include blowing up targets (e.g., munitions dumps, bridges), changing sign posts, intercepting telephone lines and providing fabricated orders, killing senior commanders, creating panic in the population (even creating a refugee problem which complicates enemy operations), and attacking administrative headquarters and installations (ibid.). Niazi argues that Pakistani troops should train for counterinfiltration as well, since Indian planners may have similar expectations for the future battle space. He concludes his essay with a final appeal: while “more advanced nations” may no
t require an infiltration doctrine, “the adoption of these tactics by the lesser developed nations like ours is a compelling necessity. It should resolve the dilemma that we face to-day” (9).
While Niazi (1964) does not specify the dilemma to which he alludes, it is quite likely that he is referring to India’s moves to consolidate its control over Kashmir. Niazi served in the 1965 war, which took place less than a year after his article was published, as a colonel and commanding officer of the 5th Paratrooper, Punjab regiment, and was promoted to brigadier general during the conflict. As discussed elsewhere, the 1965 war began when Pakistan infiltrated irregular and regular troops into Kashmir in hopes of igniting an insurgency there and loosening India’s grip on the territory. That ill-planned effort failed to bring about a wider insurgency, although it did spark the second Indo-Pakistan War. Niazi also offers many salient insights into the troubles brewing in East Pakistan, where the Indians did indeed infiltrate Indian forces as well as infiltrating and exfiltrating Bengali partisans whom they trained to fight the West Pakistanis.
In the same year that Niazi (1964) published his article, then colonel A. I. Akram offered his own views on the values and merits of infiltration. Akram retired from the Pakistan Army in 1978 as lieutenant general and became a military historian and founder of the Institute of Regional Studies (funded by Pakistan’s Ministry of Information), serving as its president until his death in 1989 (Tikekar 2004, 34). His argument is similar to Niazi’s, in that he agrees that infiltration is a form of offensive maneuver, is most appropriate when enemy forces are dispersed, and is ideal for Pakistan because the enemy—always India—is superior to Pakistan in terms of manpower and war materiel. He adds, however, what he calls a “moral dimension” to this tactic, arguing that irrespective of how cleverly the Pakistan Army maneuvers, the “objective [e.g., enemy defensive location] must have so much physical and moral strength applied against it before it will collapse” (Akram 1964, 1–2, emphasis added). Furthermore, because of the inordinate risk posed to the partisans who have infiltrated enemy lines, “infiltration is an operation for one who has the courage of a lion and the cunning of a fox” (2). Later he stresses that the operation should be sufficiently robust to “make the moral crisis, created in the enemy’s rear, more effective” (4).
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