The Army’s Mosaic of Ideas-III

Columnist Col (Retd) ABDUL QAYYUM talks about the ideas that have shaped the growth of the Pakistan Army.

Our mosaic of memories, of men and events, is the matrix of our mosaic of ideas. Even those ideas which we gather in the abstract from study and reflection go through a process of selection as life experience confirms some, and rejects or modifies others. The ideas that survive do so not only because of their intrinsic quality and strength, but also what individuals and organisations make of them in practice. Any scripture, any constitution, any code written or unwritten continues as a living reality in the conduct of those who owe their allegiance to it. Conduct then, way beyond all formal declarations, is the true measure of the mosaic of ideas which dominate our hearts and minds. It is valid, therefore, to arrive at that mosaic (for the Army as an organisation) through an enquiry into the conduct (character in operation) of those who have helped to shape it. Since my enquiry is more by way of personal re-collection than any attempt at historical scholarship, I shall restrict myself to the directly known and such surmise as I may with reason attempt within the confines of my own observation and experience.

I have already written a little about Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Gul Hasan in this particular series. Earlier, I had written an extended essay on Zia-ul-Haq (DJ, 1997 - August, September, October). The last time I wrote was on Shaukat Riza (DJ, May 2000). As it leaps over the arches of the years, my mind refuses to abide by any chronological sequence. This is bad history but that is how memory operates. I follow the wind, I go where memory beckons; and like the wind, I come to rest “where it listeth”. Today I shall write a few lines about Agha Ali Ibrahim Akram.

I came to know General AAI Akram for the first time when I was a student at the Command and Staff College, Quetta (1963). He was our Chief Instructor (Colonel), having taught at that great institution for seven years even before we entered its portals. At the time, not many of us knew much about MINERVA and her owl (the latter being an object of great curiosity among our children). General Akram, however, remained the living repository of all that we associated with the mystique of the Staff College: its hallowed tradition of learning and conduct becoming of an officer, its call to professional excellence, its aura of “this emerald isle set in the silver sea “(the General Staff at the heart of the German Army during the days of its glory). Our adoration was certainly exaggerated with reference to both the isle and the sea, but General Akram lives on in my memory as our replica of Socrates roaming the gardens of the Academy.

Like the ancient cypress trees which to this day adorn our view of the main building, General Akram was a tall and slender man with the hint of a stoop, comely nonetheless as he walked in strides and stood ram-rod erect whenever someone approached him for a word or two. General Akram had an imposing presence, difficult to ignore or be unaware of, and he spoke in measured tones whether in the classroom, in the mess, or on the lawns of the college. Whenever he spoke, he turned full square to face the man he was talking to (a practice in imitation of the Prophet), looked him straight in the eye and took care to leave behind a word of wisdom, solace or inspiration as he walked over to someone else. My half-memory of Iqbal recalls two phrases: “NIGAH BULAND... SUKHAN DIL-NAWAZ”.

In the classroom or on the hill (TEWTs, tactical exercises without troops), it was a joy to have General Akram around. He was our friend, philosopher and guide in whatever we happened to be struggling with at the time: tactics, logistics, military history, staff duties or the ways of command. Still vivid in my memory are his lessons on the impact of time and space on the conduct of operations (‘future’ enemy, ‘present’ enemy); the selection of the point of main effort (SCHWERPUNKT, I learned to call it later) and the concentration of force (men, material and all the other resources of command: SCHWERPUNKTBILDUNG) for a decisive engagement; the lessons of history all the way from Changez Khan in the Steppes to Manstein on the Eastern Front; the art of writing an appreciation or the intricacies of decision-making when surrounded by the fog of war and the chaos of combat. Not all of it was directly relevant to the kind of wars that we were later to fight (1965, 1971) but much of it was good general education necessary for officers of our age and service. The serious flaws that emerged later (fatal in 1971) were in the domain of operational strategy and the higher direction of war at the national level, grave miscalculations in our assessment of the operational environment and the dangers inherent in hurling a conventional army into an unconventional war. No army trains for civil war of the kind and spread that we faced in East Pakistan and the tragedy that ensued was inevitable. Conflict - management at the national level is designed to prevent war and not to precipitate it. That is where we failed and the Staff College cannot the blamed for it. The NDC (National Defence College) now in place has its role cut out for it and hopefully it will turn out a stream of senior commanders more aware of the imperatives of war and peace as they interact with the civilian leadership at the top.

Not that the Staff College was without any flaws, even at its level and as we saw it. Towards the end of the course we were asked to write an essay of not more than 1,500 words on “My Impressions of the College”. I criticised the excessive stress on “minor SD” at the expense of substantial issues related to better staff work and management as an aid to more effective command. Without being pompous or cynical, I also submitted that the grooming of the military section of the mind presupposes the existence of a mind and that the Staff College needed to do more for the sharpening, broadening and deepening of our minds as a whole. General Akram, I know, took positive action on the first observation. On the second, I suspect, he was constrained by the mission of the college as formulated by our forefathers, with its focus on “Grade II”. Good soldiers are expected not to deviate from their mission even when opportunity targets come to view and I am not surprised that my recommendation cut no ice with them. Many years later, as a civilian teacher at the College (1974-77), I ventured to establish “Geopolitics” and “Logic and Scientific Method” as two full-blown disciplines within the accepted framework of the college syllabus. It was a case more of being tolerated than accepted and my venture was perceived as a para-military, quasi-military or even a non-military enterprize with only so much and no more of “Lebensraum” than what was already so graciously granted to it. Stephen Cohen held a different view in his now familiar book on the Pakistan Army and General Akram was not disdainful when he came to know of the effort that I had made.

In that distant essay written as a student way back in 1963, I had also complained about the vicious competition among us which vitiated the atmosphere of learning which the college authorities were so eager to promote. For too many of us the goal was not learning but to get a “psc” to our name, by hook or crook, as a passport to future promotions. I suggested the college do something about it. General Akram’s response was a two-sentence comment sprawling across the opening page of my assignment: “When God gave us the world to live in, He offered us no options. Make the best of it!” I have seen this virus grow into a raging disease in our army, fierce competition with others displacing our urge to self-actualisation, careerism replacing professionalism. Maybe, I had suggested, the Staff College should include in its syllabus a thorough study of Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” with self-actualisation as the goal of all individual endeavour. With so many years now gone by, I realise I was being simplistic. The roots of the problem go far back: to the Military Academy within the army, to our early schooling, to our first few years at home. What we fail to learn then by way of character and conduct we are not likely to recover in our later years. I’ll risk a wider digression here to quote a few lines from Robert Fulgham:

“All I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand-pile at Sunday school. These are the things I learned:

The Staff College, our graduate-school on the mountain-top, was a fine place to be in because of General Akram, but he had a hard time dealing with some adults who had not learnt their lessons in Kindergarten. During syndicate work I had my share of GOONGA PEHLWANS (not all from the Fertile Cresent) but they were less of a pain than the clever ones who had learnt to skip school long before they learnt to pose as officers. The Army has a problem here, not with the led but with those who would lead.

The Staff College insisted on hard work, an average of 10-12 hours on a normal working day. My son dismisses my memories with a shrug: “That’s below normal! At the James Madison (University, Virginia) we clock 70-80 hours a week.” I am still inclined to draw a line between work and madness, and I recall with joy the fun and frolic that also came our way. General Akram understood well that all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. He played tennis with us, was there at the Swimming Gala and the Meena Bazar, on the cricket ground and in the Squash courts, a smiling presence at money of our social gatherings. Like Mr. Catchpole (Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s jealous gibe notwithstanding), General Akram was the ideal “Headmaster”. In my mosaic of memories he remains synonymous with the Staff College.

General Akram was a sophisticated version of Shaukat Riza, more eloquent and imposing as a physical figure, less of an ascetic and lone ranger. He was a warmer version of Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, another man who aroused my Kindergarten “wonder” and with whom I have enjoyed a friendship deepening over the years as the ice melted. Gul Hasan may have found General Akram a little too “professorial”, but if he could smile with me (as he did) I reckon he also respected General Akram. It takes all kinds to make an army go, better when good opposites combine. “Tigers” alone do not make for a good army, as we have learnt at great cost. There are not just battles to be fought but also a war to win.

I saw very little of General Akram when he was GOC a Division and later Corps Commander in Peshawar, except for an occasional visit along with Parveen. I do not even remember the years, all smudged and hazy like the markings on an old talc. Earlier, when he was Military Secretary in the GHQ (two tenures or an extended one) he sent me for the German General Staff Course twice: the first time in 1965, when I rushed back in unnecessary haste to participate in a war which ended before I could get to my regiment; the second time in 1970-71, when I stayed on to complete my course through much pain and some high drama. When I returned, I went to the Staff College (Quetta) and some time later (I hope I have got the sequence right) General Akram left for Ankara for his last assignment in uniform as Pakistan’s Permanent Military Representative at Headquarters CENTO (Central Treaty Organisation). After retirement, General Akram took over as the first President of the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS), Islamabad.

General Akram steered the course of the IRS, from inception to maturity, for ten long years (1979-89), ably assisted by Brigadier (Retd) Bashir Ahmad who continues to this day as its Senior Fellow. It was to be General Akram’s last and lasting contribution to the cause of scholarship geared to a clearer understanding of Pakistan’s regional setting, particularly the complexities of a complex and powerful neighbour. The IRS is today, in my estimate, the finest institute of its kind with its regular stream of research studies, and those who keep it going know what they owe to its founder. After his death, I followed General Akram to the IRS for four years (1990-94) but never for a day did I sit on the chair that he used. I am glad I knew where I stood.

General Akram stands in the forefront of the soldier-scholars produced by the Pakistan Army of our day. His works on Muslim military history far from the shores of Pakistan bear testimony to the world-view (WELTANSCHAUUNG) that animated his mind and spirit. He may not have been a religious man by conventional standards but, like Syed Ameer Ali before him, he used history as a tool to arrive at his own understanding of “the spirit of Islam”. The scholarship is nowhere as broad and profound as Marshal Hodgson’s (his three volumes on “The Venture of Islam”, introduced to me by Sikandar Jamali), but the spirit that General Akram sought to discover showed in his person in numerous little ways, his cautious and sincere “imitation of the Prophet” in his manner of thought, speech and action. While he was at the IRS (and I was next-door in the Ministry of Information), we had many long discussions on the aberrations in our sub-continental Islam and the dangerous ways that we were sliding into for want of adequate thought and reflection. We saw eye to eye on many issues but even so, General Akram was not above self-criticism: “I did notice the anomaly which afflicts many of us (a reference as much to himself as to me): the inspiration is Quranic but the learning is Western; the textbook is the Quran but the teacher is the Western liberal.”