Stray Reflections on Commencement of Writing
‘Pakistan Army Since 1965’

Maj (Retd) AGHA HUMAYUN AMIN from WASHINGTON DC describes the rather disinterested approach in Pakistan by observers and analysts to military affairs.

The first part of this book ‘The Pakistan Army till 1965’ was distributed free of cost to a vast cross section of people including retired and serving Pakistani army officers of ranks varying from captain to four star general. Some copies were sent to libraries both Pakistani as well as foreign and some copies sent to research oriented organisations. No feedback was received from Pakistani readers, a happening, which may be termed as a rule rather than an exception. I have been writing for various Pakistani military journals since 1989. The various articles, which I thus wrote, dealt with doctrine, military training, leadership etc. With the exception of four cases out of which three were letters written praising my articles in two lines by officers who retired as colonels or brigadiers and one in which a factual error inadvertently committed by me was pointed out by the late General Attiq-ur-Rahman. No letter was written by any officer critically analysing my articles. The same is true for the vast majority of articles published in various army journals and magazines. The trend in Pakistan since independence has been towards anti-intellectualism.

There are historical reasons for this anti-intellectualism. The irony is that the situation was not remedied after independence. Education in British India was aimed at acquiring degrees so that Indians could become lawyers doctors or government officials. That they surely did, in the process of which some acquired great wealth and also became political leaders, senior civil servants and prosperous middle class professionals. The intellectual basis of modern Europe’s success was the renaissance, the French Revolution and the Industrial revolution. During this period great progress was made in Europe in political thought, philosophy and scientific advancement. The Indo-Pak sub-continent was introduced to modern thought by the British by virtue of being colonial subjects of the English East India Company. Thus research intellectual activity etc were never important or of any consequence for the people of the Indo-Pak. On the other hand a mad rush towards acquiring rank and status, government jobs or political power by claiming to be champions of Hindu and Muslim rights plagued the Indo-Pak Sub-Continent! Once this mad rush for government patronage and jobs got an impetus from 1858, communalism became a major factor in Indo-Pak politics. This was since at this time the other parts of the world were talking about nationalism, socialism and political liberties. All the intellectual thrust of Indians was towards interpreting laws in communal terms! This was a Godsend blessing for the British colonial rulers! They encouraged communalism since it divided the Indians and ensured that they stayed away from dangerous ideas like war of liberation against the colonial state or from socialism or communism. The British very cleverly introduced parliamentary institutions, which enabled the leading Indians to divert their energy into harmless constitutional debates!

The fathers of communalism as an idea in Indian politics were Syed Ahmad Khan, Lala Lajpat Rai, Gandhi and the Jauhar brothers! The British on the other hand right from 1858 followed a subtle but brilliant policy, introducing parliamentary democracy as bait to divert the energies of the more prominent Indians!  A bait, which aroused ambition, whether based on ego, lust for glory, social recognition or material rewards! Peaceful yet heroic! Safe yet glorious! The double advantage of pursuing a prosperous law practice or business career or wielding feudal power while at the same time also being leaders of the subject Indians and the possible successors of the British Viceroys! Parliamentary democracy or its prospects once the British finally left India produced two distinct kinds of reactions, both of which helped the British and went against the people of the Indo-Pak Sub-continent! The leaders of the Hindu majority saw themselves as successors of the British Viceroys while the principal leaders of the Indian Muslims hypothesised that parliamentary democracy in independent India would mean Hindu ascendancy and Muslim subservience or more correctly all power in the hands of the Hindu politicians! The Hindu-Muslim question in reality was a ‘Hindu-Muslim leaders clash of ego’ question! It all started once the British introduced local self-government based on elections from the 1860s and aggravated more and more as leaders who were Hindu by accident of birth tried to sideline other leaders who were Muslim by accident of birth! Initially leaders from both the communities talked in terms of high sounding slogans like ‘Nationalism’ ‘Liberty’ ‘Democracy’ etc but became more narrow in approach once their religion became a psychological disqualification in being leaders of all Indians!  The fact that the vast majority of Indians whether Muslim or Hindu would remain poor as they were before 1947 and are in the year 2000 was not important for these men. The Congress and League were essentially bourgeois parties with a larger feudal presence in the league and a larger urban business presence in the Congress. Both these parties employed religion as a tool to further their party agendas, middle class business class or feudal on the whole and egoistic at the higher level!

Nehru was an atheist and a socialist, Mr Jinnah was a highly Westernised man, and yet both were great Hindu and Muslim leaders. Both the parties were instruments of business professional and feudal classes to achieve maximum power and both increasingly divided Indian society on communal lines simply because their leaders were essentially highly egotistical men! The irony of Indo-Pak history is the fact that modern Indo-Pak history is a story of clash of great men like  Nehru and Jinnah  who employed religion as a tool simply because they correctly albeit ironically realised that the people of the Indo-Pak were too naive to understand vague slogans like liberty or democracy and could only be galvanised or mobilised by raising religious slogans! In a more advanced Indian society Nehru and Jinnah may have been leaders of all Indians rather than only Hindu Indians or Muslim Indians! India, however, was like Europe around the time of the 30 years war and thus both these great men were forced by historical circumstances to be only communal leaders! Both wanted to be leaders of all Indians regardless of race or religion, but both were forced, thanks to the fire of religious communalism lit by glorified agitators or complex and outwardly impressive hypocrites like Gandhi to be communal leaders! Nehru was too sophisticated a man to be a Hindu and Jinnah was too enlightened a man to be only a leader of Indian Muslims. It was a twist of fate that both are today remembered albeit rightly as leaders of Hindu or Muslim India.

Thus while the other parts of the world intellectually as well as materially made great progress during the period 1850-1950 all the energies of the Indians at all levels were increasingly diverted into communalism; thereby ensuring that intellectually as well as materially the Indo-Pak Sub-Continent remained backward! History was written as Muslim or Hindu history, politics was practised as Hindu or Muslim politics and while Europe was experimenting with radical social legislation, all the energies of Indian constitutionalist were absorbed in debating representation on basis of religion! College or University education was important because it was a pre-requisite for government jobs or to practise in the law courts! Research teaching and writing were unproductive jobs since they did not enable a man to be a deputy collector or barrister or doctor! It was a mad race made further mad by frequent outbursts of communal frenzy, which increased as population increased during the period 1890-1940. All this helped the Britishers who had been traumatically shaken by the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 when a largely Hindu majority army had rebelled under Muslim leaders! The British were thus happier playing the role of judges resolving Hindu Muslim disputes rather than performing the more unpleasant task of facing a combined political movement of all Indians regardless of race or religion as in 1857, 1919 or 1922 ! This is the basis of anti-intellectualism in the Indo-Pak Sub-continent. It is more true for Pakistan since the Muslims were educationally more backward and relatively less true, yet still true and applicable to India too!

Pakistan and India have produced very few serious military writers. In Pakistan the situation is worse since an unofficial ban was imposed on military writing by various military usurpers who ruled the country for the greater part of its history. Unfortunately the larger number of men who joined the officer corps of both the Indian and Pakistan Army were from the relatively less educated or superficially educated classes of Indo-Pak society. There were some military writers in Pakistan like Attiq-ur-Rahman, Fazal Muqeem, Shaukat Riza and A.I Akram. Attiq-ur-Rahman wrote well but was more obsessed with more outward forms of military discipline and was more of a martinet and proper soldier than a military writer of depth. A man of impeccable integrity, a man of Honour and a most cultured and proper soul, Attique did not have any of the dynamism or subtlety of a Liddell Hart or Fuller. He was never remembered as an inspiring field commander but as a 100 percent proper soldier who was obsessed with military drill and haircut.As a retired officer he was obsessed with Golf Courses which he rightly regarded as a waste of time and effort. However, this was where his concern ended. He stopped writing after 1990 and thus retired from the army’s intellectual life at a time when the army needed a serious military writer. General A.I Akram wrote well but his books dealt with seventh and eighth century Arab Wars and had little relevance as far as practical utility in terms of modern warfare unit level tactics or operational strategy was concerned. General Shaukat Riza dabbled more with military writing but his writing lacked depth, broad outlook and dynamism. He was employed by Zia’s military regime to write a heavily doctored trilogy on the history of the Pakistan Army at a time when the man was semi-senile and sick. The resultant three books thus lacked depth of analysis, their only significance being, a collection of three rudimentary handbooks which provide basic facts about order of battle, broad outline plans and other basic details which untouchable low caste retired majors like this scribe cannot ever obtain access to through normal official channels available to any researcher in any civilised country! Major General Fazal Muqeem Khan stands out as the relatively most competent clearheaded and coherent out of all the above mentioned gentlemen. His books lacked strategic vision and a broad outlook but nevertheless were precise and forthright without confusing layouts which are hallmarks of all Shaukat Riza’s books. The unfortunate part about Muqeem’s writings was the fact that Muqeem wrote first as a sycophant serving general hopeful of getting the next rank and later as a retired general to please or at least cover up an all powerful serving prime minister. The positive aspect about Muqeem’s works was the fact that Muqeem was generally precise, correct and exact in analysing a fallen gladiator, a typical quality of all successful men, at least in the Indo-Pak Sub-continent, where a primitive historical state of civilisation and political system do not allow dispassionate, blunt critical and forthright analysis. This is relatively more true for Pakistan which has witnessed military rule or dictatorship in guise of democracy for the greater part of its history; I would say, for its entire history from 1947. Lack of critical analysis due to dangers of being labelled blasphemous is the greatest tragedy of history writing in all countries where Muslims live! Perhaps the reasons can be found in the fact that Christianity is 500 years older than Islam and may be in the year 2500 we in this part of the world will be writing history the way Europeans are doing in 2000! The problem with history writing in Islamic countries is lack of tolerance. Those in power are sacred figures by virtue of authority and totalitarian powers. Analysis or forthright analysis is dangerous in most cases and injudicious in many! Muqeem may have been an excellent historian in West Europe! But the question is that Muqeem was not willing to be sidelined or isolated or persecuted in a society, which does not tolerate criticism of those in the higher echelons of power! Thus each of Muqeem’s work although relatively better than others was a condemnation of the previous regime’s military efforts! Thus in his first book he criticised Liaquat the first Prime Minister for incompetence in the Kashmir War while raising Ayub to the level of a modern Napoleon. In his second major book Fazal rightly criticised Ayub for structurally weakening the army by encouraging sycophants and retiring relatively better officers who were perceived as likely political threats. Similarly Muqeem’s analysis of the 1971 war is reasonably balanced, but exonerates Mr Bhutto of all blame and also exonerates the Pakistan Army of the terrible genocide that it carried out in East Bengal in 1971. Shaukat criticises Bhutto since he was Zia’s principal political opponent but exonerates Ayub of all the blunders and the follies committed in the period 1950-1969!

A very learned gentleman who I hold in very high esteem by virtue of being a close friend of one of my dearest friends rightly told me to reduce what he called ‘polemics’ in the first volume of this history. A conceptual difference arises about the use of the word ‘Polemics’. The term has different meaning for different people and is unfortunately used in a sweeping manner to dismiss valid historical criticism! There is no denying of fact in stating that ‘Polemic’ may be an unpleasant figure of speech for a professor of English literature or a criminal error of conduct for a sycophant or a man of this world. The fact that polemics i.e.  ‘practice of controversial discussion’ is something, which is the essence of all historical writing, is absolutely undeniable and incontrovertible. The historian cannot be a diplomat in order to escape being branded as one who indulges in polemics. The historian has to indulge in controversy because there are no archives or source material in any library or records office in this world, which enable a research scholar to understand the innermost depths of human personality.  Every historian who wants to be loyal to posterity has to be polemical. History is but another name of a never-ending controversy! At some point in time or text all historians enter the realm of polemics! It’s a part of their craft or calling! I wrote an article for the Command and Staff College Quetta about two years ago. It contained some criticism about the higher organisation of the Pakistan Army. The article was surprisingly published since the Staff College was headed at that time by one of the most upright and intellectually honest generals of Pakistan Army; a rare commodity in a sub-continental army and I would say in any army of the world. In addition the staff college’s principal magazine’s editor at that time was one of the most dynamic and boldest colonels, (at least in my humble opinion), of the army! The colonel editor who twice risked his career by attacking the Quetta Police over an entirely honourable issue in 1979, and by refusing to supervise Degchas in a general officers daughter’s wedding in early 1987 was being posted out to command a tank regiment. Somehow he managed, or I should say was instrumental in ensuring that my article criticising the higher command organisation be published in the ‘Citadel’ magazine. The Editorial Introduction was, however, written by another colonel who succeeded him as the editor and belonged to the majority ‘go safe’ calculate a decade ahead ‘take no risk’ breed of career officers! The clever editor exonerated himself of all that I had said in the article by stating that ‘the article lacks documentation for certain controversial assertions’. The gentleman’s point was valid but this is what historical analysis is all about; i.e. dealing with controversy in face of fog and obscurity and lack of documentation! Who in this world can find documentary evidence for saying that many wars that this world fought were to satisfy egos of Kings, Presidents or Prime Ministers! That revolutions killed millions or that countries were divided simply because one politician did not want the other to be the country’s next Prime Minister or Governor General! So much for ‘Polemics’, bad word for professors, careful men, career officers, successful men! But one of the most essential tools in historians craft.