The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  Though the constitution of Pakistan established civilian supremacy over the military, the armed forces, and in particular the army, continue to dominate decision making in Pakistan. This has emerged largely because of its experience in running the country through successive military regimes and, to some extent, by the inability of civilian regimes to exhibit the political vision and will necessary to exert their constitutional control over the military. Current trends indicate that this situation is not likely to change in the near term. Swimming against the tide of history will be tough for a new government that is facing continuous sniping from the ancien régime.

  A dynastic political system and politics as family business continue to infect Pakistan. All this despite the clear defeat of some of the dynastic leaders in the 2018 elections and the reduction of others from the national to the provincial stage. Peaceful and successful elections help validate civil power, while gradual changes in the military high command structure, by an informed and engaged civilian leadership, offer a chance for the government to shape the future of the civil–military relationship. The force of personalities on both sides will determine the future path.

  The Shadow of India

  Yet the dominating issue facing Pakistan’s defence strategy is its continuing ‘no peace, no war’ relationship with its dominant neighbour to the east, India. 1 This historical rivalry continues to inform Pakistani military thinking to a great extent. And Pakistan’s military doctrine, which has long been based on defending Pakistan’s territory against an Indian attack in an effort to undo the Partition of British India in 1947, is now shifting to what is being called a ‘comprehensive doctrine’ to combat both the potential Indian capability to attack and weaken Pakistan and the growing threat of internal militancy and insurgency.

  As Pakistan’s former Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani asserted in his introduction to the restricted circulation army doctrine:

  The prevalent regional and internal environment is ominous of very complex, multidimensional, multifaceted direct and indirect [emphasis added] security challenges for the Army . . . The emerging asymmetry in conventional forces vis-à-vis the threat [India, a name that is never once mentioned in the document—author] (and avoidance of arms race) calls for harmonisation of all elements of national power, extraordinary commitment, ingenious planning, non-traditional thinking and decisive superiority in quality of leadership to ensure fulfillment of the army’s obligations. 2

  While India is not named in the doctrine, clearly the doctrine is aimed primarily at India while a new facet is added: internal militancy. The expression of continuing fear of India’s growing ability to use what the doctrine calls ‘coercive diplomacy’ retains the key elements of Pakistan’s conventional response and the development of its nuclear capacity to deter any Indian military threat.

  Its origins lie in the development of Pakistan’s successive War Directives that represent the expression of its government’s orders to the military for the defence of the country since its inception. Though secret, these directives have occasionally been mentioned and indeed in the post mortem on the lost 1971 war, when Pakistan ceded East Pakistan to India, leading to the birth of the independent state of Bangladesh, the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report refers to War Directive Number 2 that essentially enjoined the military to defend every inch of its borders with India. 3 This near-impossible task led to an approach under which the Pakistani leadership chose to defend itself in the west, and thought that strategy would keep India occupied and prevent it from encircling and taking over East Pakistan. It was a serious miscalculation that cost them dearly and led to the imprisonment of over 90,000 Pakistanis in Indian PoW camps in December 1971.

  In an elliptical and obtuse way, the new army doctrine also refers to sub-conventional warfare and points to the internal threats that have occupied the Pakistan Army in the past decade or so. But there is no evidence that there has been much debate of this aspect of its stance within the middle and lower ranks in the run-up to the issuance of the new doctrine. This document apparently was crafted entirely in army headquarters and reviewed only by the senior brass. It borrows heavily from language used in other military doctrines, ranging from the US and Britain to New Zealand. And its excessive verbiage adds to its opacity. No Urdu version is as yet available, so most of the lower ranks will not have easy access to it.

  The new doctrine does not explicitly discuss the imbalance in the size of conventional forces in the subcontinent. The numbers for both rivals are hard to pin down but provide a reasonable relative size. In 2011, India’s armed forces, with an army of 1.2 million, heavily outweighed Pakistan’s armed forces of some 610,000, and an army of over 500,000. 4 But on the ground, Pakistan’s armour at 2,656 was more than half the size of India’s 4,117 tanks, and armoured infantry vehicles or personnel carriers at 1,266 were close to India’s 1,786. India’s navy far outnumbers Pakistan’s, and in the air India’s 365 modern combat aircraft far outnumbered Pakistan’s fifty-eight. 5 Pakistan is estimated to have over 190 surface-to-surface missiles, while India has not released any data on its missile strength. What shifts the balance somewhat in Pakistan’s favour is the lack of readiness of the huge Indian military, and increasingly a hodge-podge of new equipment from different sources being inducted into the Indian armed forces that will exacerbate the logistical and communications and training problems bedevilling India’s military operations. Added to this mess is the dominant Indian bureaucracy that slows down the acquisition and induction of new weapon systems. But this advantage may not last for Pakistan, if mutual hostility remains the hallmark of its relationship with India.

  Despite the recent slowdown of the Indian economic growth, India has the reserves to invest in large defence purchases according to a 2013 calculation by SIPRI:

  Over the next decade . . . India plans to spend $150 bn modernizing, upgrading, and maintaining its military equipment. IHS Jane’s, the defence analysts, predicted this month [February 2013] that India would surpass France, Japan and the UK to become the fourth-biggest defence spender in the world by 2020 after the US, China and Russia. Over the next five years, the Indian defence budget would rise to more than $55 bn. 6

  This would make it some ten times Pakistan’s military budget. The Indian defence budget shows an average annual increase of 5 per cent. Pakistan’s budget follows India’s by a few months and it is likely that yet again, as Ambassador Marker predicted, Pakistan will get its cue from India and raise its defence spending to try to maintain some sort of equilibrium. Yet, it cannot be expected to maintain that equilibrium over the long term given the rising trajectory of India’s economic growth compared to Pakistan’s in the foreseeable future. Over time, India’s larger economy will allow it to use a smaller proportion of its GDP for its defence. Pakistan’s smaller economic pie will not afford it that luxury, unless it begins growing close to 7 per cent or more a year and cuts unproductive expenditures, including within the military.

  Pakistan’s military doctrine and planning also suffers from ad hocism rather than a predictable, repetitive and inclusive system for updating it, involving both civilian and military actors.

  The Process

  The reality is that the War Directive in Pakistan emerges sporadically rather than regularly from the military and is merely rubber-stamped by the civilian leadership. It is not built from the ground up as a routine. Meanwhile in India, the Ministry of Defence issues a new War Directive every five years, and service headquarters update their war operations instructions every two years or with a change in command. The legwork is done by the joint headquarters with input from the services and is presented to the Defence Advisory Board, a body of elders that is not duplicated in Pakistan.

  The last known War Directive in Pakistan emerged in 2000. When Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg inherited command of the army following the death of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in a plane crash in August 1988, he sought a new War Directive to update the Pakistanis’ thinking, but with no success. Beg laud
s a recent effort by the Senate to look at this issue:

  The Senate Standing Committee on Defence (SSCD) is presently [sic] engaged in devising a robust defence policy that is aimed at making policy guidelines for the parliamentarians’ with three objectives in mind:

  * To review current issues pertaining to defence;

  * To determine mandatory changes to the defence policy; and

  * To provide new policy guidelines for better national defence.

  Its intentions are noble, but it has started the exercise from the wrong end. The first step that it must take is to assist Pakistani government to issue the war directive, which lays down policy guidelines for the armed forces.

  War Directive (WD): A new WD is long overdue. Some of the main objectives it sets are:

  * The structure of Higher Defence Organization (HDO);

  * Level and size of the armed forces;

  * War stamina to be developed;

  * War objectives to be achieved;

  * Capability to be achieved within a given timeframe.

  After issue of the WD, the armed forces carry out in-depth studies to evolve the defence policy based on the available resources. Once the government approves it, they evolve a joint defence strategy and the strategies of army, navy and air force. 7

  Gen. Beg is right. I first heard Beg’s views on the War Directive while interviewing him in his office in 1990 when he bemoaned the strictures of the antiquated directive under which he was operating. There is no evidence to date of the results of the Pakistani Senate effort to update the War Directive. Nor should one hold one’s breath, given the lack of visible initiative of the Senate Defence Committee on such critical matters, which needs to be more of a guiding and overseeing entity. Despite some efforts by a few members of this committee to bring their oversight and investigation of the defence services and policies into the public eye, there has been resistance from the military, especially the army. The military wishes to keep the briefings in camera, according to Senator Mushahid Hussain, former chairman of the committee. And some topics are taboo, only on the basis of the preferences of the COAS. This makes the committee appear to be more of a cheerleader rather than a public watchdog. Among the many topics that the public was unaware of was the matter of the purchase by both the military and civil security agencies of so-called bomb detection wands that had been declared fake by the British authorities investigating their sale to Iraq and that were sold by a retired Pakistan Army officer to the government at enormous cost. They did not work. In fact, they were then sold under a local name to keep them separate from the name they were sold under internationally, even to neighbouring India! The committee needs qualified research and support staff to keep it informed and equipped to deal with complex and sometimes technical issues so it can perform its functions for the national good. As a result of these constraints on its operations, there has been no public discussion of the War Directive in parliament.

  During the Musharraf period, despite efforts by some of his commanders and the joint headquarters, he refused to open discussion of a new directive, dismissing such requests with the retort that ‘we know what to do’. 8 The unity of command for civil and military decision making in a single person (Musharraf) made this possible. In 2012, the MoD, run by a retired army general, began seeking inputs from the services for a new War Directive. The civilian Minister of Defence ‘has no interest’ in such matters, according to the then secretary. 9 He went on to state that the Joint Chiefs Headquarters helps provide coordination for this effort and supports the work of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet. The civilian authorities have not established any mechanism for studying or supporting decisions on military matters or broader defence policy. ‘The War Directive should be updated before doctrine is defined. Pakistan went in reverse order, with the army taking the lead on its new doctrine,’ stated a former defence secretary. It is possible that the new doctrine could lead to updating of the War Directive. But there are few signs of movement on this front.

  According to another former defence secretary, the new version is ‘already outdated, since it did not take into account 9/11 and its subsequent fallout for Pakistan’. An earlier effort in 2005–06 fizzled out after the Joint Headquarters tried to enlist support from the NDU in lieu of think tanks inside Pakistan. They then came up with a Joint Strategic Directive for the individual armed services to come up with their operational plans. That effort was completed in 2007 but never got formal governmental approval.

  Much of the focus was on high-level conventional defence. Nuclear policy began intervening in conventional defence policy by 2004. Musharraf had combined all his civilian and military functions by then. By 2007–08, the NDU had also begun including discussion of the nuclear threshold vis-à-vis India in its war games. The concept of combined deterrence emerged, informed by the experience of the 2001–02 escalation of tensions with India. Pakistan realized the value of dovetailing conventional and nuclear posture and plans. In its thinking, this led the US to lean on India to draw down its forward deployment during that crisis. The subsequent emergence of the new defence policy against India was seen as a response to the so-called Cold Start doctrine of India, now better known as the Proactive Strategy.

  Cold Start or False Start?

  India continues to publicly disavow the premise of Cold Start, that its forward-deployed Integrated Battle Groups could move rapidly into Pakistani territory, capture key cities and territory and make Pakistan sue for terms. Pakistan continues to see this as an emerging threat and considers the 1980s thinking that led to the Brasstacks exercise as a testing of the idea of such rapid combined manoeuvres designed to hit Pakistan at multiple points of vulnerability in a modern version of the German blitzkrieg. It countered with an offensive–defensive approach that was based on hitting India in response with a counter-strike and capturing key territory for itself. Its conventional riposte, based on a net-centric doctrine of well-planned counterattacks, was bolstered over time by the testing and development of a tactical nuclear capability by Pakistan (countered by India). This took the form of short-range so-called tactical weapons mounted on ballistic and cruise missiles, adding to the potential for a nuclear holocaust in the region with global consequences.

  The Pakistani army chief, Gen. Kayani, spelt out his view of the new strategy in January 2010 according to an official military press release: ‘COAS stated proponents of conventional application of military forces, in a “nuclear overhang” are chartering an adventurous and dangerous path; the consequences of which could be both unintended and uncontrollable.’ 10

  The army tested its new doctrine through a series of exercises or war games called Azm-e-Nau (Fresh Resolve). The third one in the series was conducted in the Cholistan Desert from 10 April to 13 May 2010, involving up to 50,000 troops, and even included a final segment that showed anti-aircraft gunners shooting down a drone.

  As mentioned earlier, Gen. Kayani also introduced what he considers a suitable riposte or deterrent to Indian conventional plans by shifting control of his key armour division from its base in Kharian, facing Kashmir, to the Gujranwala corps. In his view, this would blunt any Indian armour thrust into the Ravi–Chenab corridor of the Punjab plains, the traditional tank battleground of Sialkot and its environs. 11

  At the conventional level, despite the current disparity in size and growing disparity in the nature of conventional weaponry available to India that promises to give it overwhelming superiority over time, Pakistan operates on the assumption of ‘strategic equivalence’. Loosely translated, this means that Pakistani forces can blunt any conventional Indian attack and respond effectively by undertaking its own offensive actions into Indian territory. All under a nuclear overhang.

  Pakistan’s new army doctrine recognizes a wider spectrum of conflict that includes sub-conventional warfare in addition to conventional warfare that, in turn, includes low-intensity operations, conventional war and nuclear warfare. The latter is aimed at complementing c
omprehensive deterrence and adding to the combat potential of the regular forces, leading to a potentially heavy cost for any aggressor. Nuclear war is seen ‘only as a last resort’. 12 Moreover, while conventional warfare is to be conducted under the devolved authority given by the National Command Authority to the military high command, the decision to go to nuclear war can only be initiated by the civilian authority under ‘the exclusive right of the NCA headed by the prime minister’. But no one has any doubts that should India launch a serious and deep conventional strike into Pakistan, the army would take the lead in deciding how to respond rapidly, with or without formal approval by the NCA.

  Increasingly, Pakistan sees itself subject to potentially hostile activity from India, under the assumption that a sort of nuclear parity has led to maintenance of the status quo. So, it expects India (the unnamed South Asian foe in its new Army doctrine) to synchronize activities at various levels to: ‘subtly erode [Pakistan’s] . . . national resilience and force compliance’. India’s willingness to bear the cost of war will help define the intensity, scale and nature of any future conflict, according to this view.

  At the same time, Pakistan’s own calculations rest on the intensity of a nuclear exchange that would be Counter Value in nature rather than Counter Force. Potentially, ten major Indian urban centres and all seven of Pakistan’s major cities might be the targets in a nuclear exchange. The end result would be the destruction of large tracts of India and most of Pakistani territory, and the release of dust and debris into the atmosphere that would travel eastwards, eventually covering the entire Northern Hemisphere. In effect, Nuclear Winter could descend on the northern half of the globe for as much as six months. India’s own calculations may well mirror those of Pakistan.