Pakistan: A Hard Country (32 page)

The British land-grant system, derived from the Mughals but based on the new giant irrigation schemes of the ‘canal colonies’, has passed into Pakistani practice. It was intended most of al to provide a loyal and reliable source of recruitment of the Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers (VCOs), who constituted the backbone of the British Indian army, and under new names continue to play a key role in that of Pakistan. At a time when the officer corps was monopolized by the British, the native VCOs served as the essential link with the ordinary soldiers (col oquial y known as jawans – ‘boys’ or ‘lads’).

This remained true for a considerable time in the army of Pakistan.

The vast increase of officers of middle-and even lower-middle-class origin means that it is less so today, but the bulk of the soldiers stil come from traditional rural backgrounds, have often not travel ed far beyond their own vil ages, and find the rhythms, the disciplines and the technicalities of military life very alien. Though of course this is much less so than in the past, the Pakistani army stil makes the process of introducing them to military life a more gentle and prolonged one than in other military services, and one in which the Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and NCOs are central. This in turn is part of the belief in morale and the regiment as family which is central to the whole Pakistani military system – and, once again, is of critical importance today, given the issue of how far the military can be isolated from the feelings and passions of the society that surrounds them.

The idea of the regimental family has been tested in recent years by the army’s attempts to create a more truly national army by increasing the (previously tiny) numbers of Sindhi, Mohajir and Baloch recruits and reducing the dominance of north-west Punjab and the NWFP. This has involved, among other things, the creation of new military cantonments in Sindh and Balochistan, and a propaganda drive to encourage volunteers. As Lt-Colonel (retired) Anwar Awan told me: Twenty years ago a Sindhi in the infantry would have been seen as like a girl flying a fighter aircraft – absolutely impossible. But now we have three girls flying fighter aircraft, and more and more Sindhis are joining the army. So you see in the Pakistani military, nothing is impossible!16

In fact, the effectiveness and determination of this programme are difficult to judge. The military are extremely cagey about releasing figures for ethnic proportions in the military, while critics from the other provinces claim that the whole business is mere window-dressing.

According to Shuja Nawaz, who obtained internal army documents, 65

per cent of the army by 1990 was made up of people from Punjab (some 10 per cent more than Punjab’s proportion of Pakistan’s population), 14 per cent of people from the NWFP and FATA, 15 per cent of those from Sindh and Balochistan, and 6 per cent from Kashmir (reflecting the large numbers in paramilitary units along the Line of Control).17

It should be noted that ‘from Sindh’ is not the same as ‘Sindhi’, as ever since the British rewarded retired Punjabi soldiers with land grants in the new canal colonies in Sindh, Punjabi settlers there have contributed a disproportionate number of recruits. A more significant shift may be within Punjab itself, where more soldiers (and an even higher number of officers) are now recruited from southern districts that previously provided very few soldiers. Anecdotal evidence from conversations with military officers suggests that the change in ethnic balance over the past twenty years has been extensive enough to cause a certain amount of worry, both concerning future career prospects for military families from the Potwar region, and concerning regimental unity and morale.

The lt-colonel with whom I spoke in Buner told me that his battalion of the Punjab regiment contained roughly equal numbers of Punjabis and Sindhis (despite the territorial names of Pakistani infantry regiments, they are not based on deliberate recruitment from particular territories), as part of the general principle that no unit should have more than 50 per cent from one province, except Punjab – natural y.

The colonel is the sixth generation of his family to serve in the military, and his father was, like himself, an officer of the Punjab Regiment. The family are Awans from Chakwal in the Punjab – another classic military recruiting ground.

Echoing the views of other Punjabi and Pathan officers with whom I spoke, the colonel expressed unease about the effects of increased recruitment of Sindhis, both on the army and his own family: To increase the number of Sindhis and Baloch, we had to lower educational and fitness standards, because in those provinces education is less and poverty is worse. Perhaps this does not matter too much – we look after our soldiers’ education and health, and in the end 30th Punjabi wil fight for 30th Punjabi, not for anyone else – the old British regimental spirit is stil very strong with us. But I do feel that some important standards have been compromised, and that is bad and causes resentment.

Colonel Awan (himself another Potwari from Chakwal), who served as chief of the army’s training centre at Sukkur in Sindh, told me that: It was a great problem at first getting Sindhis to join, but now many are coming in – native Sindhis, not just local Punjabis.

And at first it is true that we had to go soft on discipline problems because of local culture. When Sindhis go to the local town twenty miles away, they say ‘we are going abroad’. The Sindhi soldiers used to rush back to their vil ages at every opportunity. But now there is no problem with Sindhi officers, and less and less with the men. And after al , if we have to compromise a bit on standards, stil we have to look at the wider canvas and think about the integration of the country. We also have to cast our net wider because the Potwar region itself is changing as a result of economic development, education, and people going to work in the Gulf ... The army is no longer the only road to get ahead, even for vil age kids from Chakwal.

Nonetheless, the tens of thousands of men (and some women) in the Pakistani officer corps make the armed forces Pakistan’s largest middle-class employer by far. In recent decades, it has also become perhaps the greatest agency of social advancement in the country, with officers original y recruited from the lower middle classes moving into the educated middle classes as a result of their service with the military.

One sign of this is the way that knowledge of English – that quintessential marker of Pakistani social status – improves as officers move up the ranks. To judge by my experience, the Pakistani military almost has a new variant of an old British army adage (about marriage): lieutenants need not speak very good English; captains may; majors should; colonels must. In the process, the officers also acquire increasing social polish as they rise.

The military therefore provides opportunities which the Pakistani economy cannot, and a position in the officer corps is immensely prized by the sons of shopkeepers and bigger farmers across Punjab and the NWFP. This al ows the military to pick the very best recruits, and increases their sense of belonging to an elite. In the last years of British rule and the first years of Pakistan, most officers were recruited from the landed gentry and upper middle classes. These are stil represented by figures such as former Chief of Army Staff General Jehangir Karamat, but a much more typical figure is the present COAS

(as of 2010), General Ashfaq Kayani, son of an NCO. This social change reflects partly the withdrawal of the upper middle classes to more comfortable professions, but also the immense increase in the numbers of officers required.

Meanwhile, the political parties continue to be dominated by ‘feudal’

landowners and wealthy urban bosses, many of them not just corrupt but barely educated. This increases the sense of superiority to the politicians in the officer corps – something that I have heard from many officers and which was very marked in General Musharraf’s personal contempt for Benazir Bhutto and her husband.

I have also been told by a number of officers and members of military families that ‘the officers’ mess is the most democratic institution in Pakistan, because its members are superior and junior during the day, but in the evening are comrades. That is something we have inherited from the British.’18

This may seem like a very strange statement, until one remembers that, in Pakistan, saying that something is the most spiritual y democratic institution isn’t saying very much. Pakistani society is permeated by a culture of deference to superiors, starting with elders within the family and kinship group. As Stephen Lyon writes: Asymmetrical power relations form the cornerstone of Pakistani society ... Close relations of equality are problematic for Pakistanis and seem to occur only in very limited conditions. In general, when Pakistanis meet, they weigh up the status of the person in front of them and behave accordingly.19

Pakistan’s dynastical y ruled ‘democratic’ political parties exemplify this deference to inheritance and wealth; while in the army, as an officer told me:

You rise on merit – wel , mostly – not by inheritance, and you salute the military rank and not the sardar or pir who has inherited his position from his father, or the businessman’s money. These days, many of the generals are the sons of clerks and shopkeepers, or if they are from military families, they are the sons of havildars [NCOs]. It doesn’t matter. The point is that they are generals.

However, hopes that this might lead military governments to adopt radical social and economic policies (as has occurred with some Middle Eastern and Latin American militaries) have never come to anything. Whatever the social origins of its officers, the military establishment is part of the social elite of the country, and – as has been seen – the armed forces control major industries and huge amounts of urban and rural land. Final y, most of the progressive intel igentsia – whose input would be needed for any radical programme – have always rejected al iance with the military.

The social change in the officer corps over the decades has led to longstanding Western fears that it is becoming ‘Islamized’, leading to the danger that either the army as a whole might support Islamist revolution, or that there might be a mutiny by Islamist junior officers against the high command. These dangers do exist, but in my view most probably only a direct ground attack on Pakistan by the US could bring them to fruition.

It is obviously true that, as the officer corps becomes lower middle class, so its members become less Westernized and more religious – after al , the vast majority of Pakistan’s population are conservative Muslims. However, as the last chapter explained, there are many different kinds of conservative Muslim, and this is also true of the officer corps. In the words of General Naqvi: Officers suffer from the same confusion as the rest of our society about what is Islamic and what it is to be Muslim. The way I have read the minds of most officers, they certainly see this as a Muslim country, but as one where people are individual y responsible to God, for which they wil answer in the life hereafter, and no one should try to impose his views of religion on them. Very few indeed would want to see a Taleban-style revolution here, which would destroy the country and the army and let the Indians walk al over us ...

Many officers stil drink, and many don’t. They don’t bother each other, unless people misbehave when drunk. So among those who drink, great store is set by being able to handle your drink, and not drinking on duty. There is no toleration at al for that. Liquor used to be al owed in the officers’ messes and clubs until Bhutto banned it. Now officers drink together at home, at private parties ...20

General Musharraf exemplified the kind of officer who was wel known to like a whisky and soda but was never (to the best of my knowledge) known to get drunk.

On the whole, by far the most important aspect of a Pakistani officer’s identity is that he (or occasional y she) is an officer. The Pakistani military is a profoundly shaping influence as far as its members are concerned. This can be seen, among other things, from the social origins and personal cultures of its chiefs of staff and military rulers over the years. It would be hard to find a more different set of men than Generals Ayub, Yahya, Zia, Musharraf, Beg, Karamat and Kayani in terms of their social origins, personal characters and attitudes to religion. Yet al have been first and foremost military men.

This means in turn that their ideology was first and foremost Pakistani nationalist. The military is tied to Pakistan, not the universal Muslim Ummah of the radical Islamists’ dreams; tied not only by sentiment and ideology, but also by the reality of what supports the army. If it is true, as so many officers have told me, that ‘No army, no Pakistan’, it is equal y true that ‘No Pakistan, no army’.

In the 1980s General Zia did undertake measures to make the army more Islamic, and a good many officers who wanted promotion adopted an Islamic façade in the hope of furthering this. Zia also encouraged Islamic preaching within the army, notably by the Tablighi Jamaat. However, as the careers of Generals Karamat and Musharraf indicate, this did not lead to known secular generals being blocked from promotion; and in the 1990s, and especial y under Musharraf, most of Zia’s measures were rol ed back. In recent years, preaching by the Tabligh has been strongly discouraged, not so much because of political fears (the Tabligh is determinedly apolitical) as because of instinctive opposition to any groups that might encourage factions among officers, and loyalties to anything other than the army itself.