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

CONNECTING LINES

This attempt at a grasp of the dominant themes in the Pakistan Army's mosaic of ideas is running into difficulties. I have seen my daughter at work on a collage and I do not wish to force the pace. Hopefully, something of a pattern will eventually emerge and something of the wood will come to view as I go looking for the trees. No wood is all cedar and oak, whatever their individual size and spread; there is also much undergrowth and the equivalent of the Biblical bramble bush. They cannot and will not be ignored, but they can wait till I am done with the trees.

I go surfing the web of my memories in search of a few anecdotes which will add some life and colour to this otherwise forbidding exercise. Today, I wanted to write a few lines on General ATTIQUR REHMAN but I am halted on my tracks because I never came to know him as well as some of the others on whom I have already written (Ayub Khan, Gul Hasan, Shaukat Riza, AAl Akram, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan). Calling my personal diary to aid, I have been able to pluck out three pieces which shed some light on him (and some others, by way of comparison). They are reproduced below just as I wrote them at the time, without any change in tense, substance or composition. The fourth piece starts with General Attiqur Rehman but trails into some observations on the Army as it has developed since. This too is presented without any changes, not only as a labour-saving device but also as a stepping stone to the more comprehensive package of conclusions which are expected to emerge from this study as a whole. The four pieces follow.

LOOKING BACK AND FORWARD

Our effort at acquiring some insight into the mind-set of the Pakistan Army, its dominant tone and tenor, its proclivities, manner, mood and style follows a stream of free association as I recall my own years in the army (1950-1974 in uniform, 1974-77 as a civilian teacher at the Staff College). Since the object of our enquiry is not only abstract but also dynamic, the historian will no doubt want to proceed systematically from one phase to the next, watching out for the trends as they emerge in serial time. Stephen Cohen followed some such approach, not quite exhaustively, and his study ("The Pakistan Army") ends with the Zia period. General Fazal Muqeem, Hasan Askari Rizvi, General Shaukat Riza and some others have written much and in considerable detail, but not with that specific focus which I have here indicated: a history of ideas, not events or even issues but a portrait of the Pakistan Army's collective or "group" mind (as William Mcdougall prefers to call it. See his "The Group Mind", Cambridge University Press, 1921).

As I race through this review, with memory (not scholarship) as my guide, I have a feeling that the Pakistan Army is on the threshold of a momentous rearrangement of its mosaic of ideas with the advent of the MUSHARRAF era (now eleven months old). The AYUB era is gone (Generals Musa, Yahya, Hameed, Gul Hasan - all included in the time bracket 1949-72). General TIKKA KHAN's tenure (1972-76) was a period of "marking time", struggling to recover our earlier notions of a professional army. Zia-ul-Haq upset the apple-cart (1977-88), himself going into politics and leaving the army to grapple with its motto of "IMAN, TAQWA, JEHAD FI-SABLILLAH". Those who followed him (Generals Mirza Aslam Beg, Abdul Waheed Kakar, Jehangir Keramat - all within the time bracket 1988-1998) remained preoccupied with maintaining some stability, order and decorum right at the top while the army continued quietly at its own routine pace with its own routine activities. Come the Kargil episode, followed by that more bizarre episode which drew Pervez Musharraf into the vortex of power (October 12, 1999), the Pakistan Army is now embroiled in a bewildering variety of activities which Ayub could never have foreseen, which Gul Hasan would have turned his back on, which even Zia-ul-Haq took care to restrict to the minimum possible. Jehangir Keramat kept himself away from where even angels fear to tread, but Musharraf had no choice in the matter given that one bizarre night which changed "the scheme of things entire". For the Army, no less than for the nation, this is a momentous change. No one knows how things will go from here on but one thing is certain: the army can longer be what it has all along struggled to be, "professional" in isolation from the miliew in which it operates. I hope I shall have a little more to say about the past eleven months before I come to the Army's prevailing "mosaic of ideas" and what it portends for the future.

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1.         This was in Multan, the year 1967. Brigadier JAHAN ZEB was Commander 3 Armoured Brigade, and I was his Brigade Major (BM). General GUL HASAN was still GOC. 1 Armoured Division and General ATTIQUR REHMAN the Corps Commander. The brigade was called upon to run a sand-model exercise for the Corps Study Period: the armoured brigade in battle within the framework of the armoured division in its break-out operations, launched as the main punch of the Corps reserve.

I wrote the exercise, persuaded Brigadier Jahan Zeb to call it THE CALCULATING CAVALIER, assuring him that this would appeal to the Corps Commander. The Brigadier was, however, adamant that we change the name of one little township which lay in the path of the brigade's advance. We changed the name from REHAN (dear God, the Field Marshal's village!) to RAIHAN, phonetically still not far enough but the Brigadier agreed.

The exercise went off very well, I conducting the opening bit, some others the middle, and the Brigadier the concluding portion. At the end of it, the Corps Commander rose to comment on the major lessons learnt. He was, not surprisingly, to the point and brief, except when it came to his compliments on the title of the exercise. This was it: a cavalier was expected to be bold but not rash, cool, clear, calculating even in his madness!

"So, it worked!" said Brigadier Jahan Zeb. I did not disagree.

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General ATTIQUR REHMAN was the Corps Commander in Kharian (1969) and I was commanding 11th Cavalry (FF). It was the cat landing among the pigeons, when the Corps Commander announced that he would personally take stock of the physical efficiency of the units and their performance on the rifle range. The crew were to be picked at random.

At the Rifle Range the Corps Commander made his pick. He was grinning from ear to ear: "Well, Qayyum, what results do you expect?" "Disaster!" I exclaimed, "say, around 30%." Not acceptable, growled the Corps Commander, not at all acceptable. "But not unexpected," I added, "when you consider that they are tank gunners, tank drivers and wireless men, not PONGOS on the march with only a rifle to shoot with." The Corps Commander broke into peals of laughter.

When the results were in, the majority scored a little over 45%. "You must be very pleased?" quizzed the Corps Commander. When I told him I was, he broke into laughter again: "So am I! What more can I expect of RISALAWALLAHS!"

The Corps Commander left with a warm handshake and a pat on my back.

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3.         A general without a sense of humour is a forbidding animal. This is a statement of fact, not disrespect. I have known several generals in the Pakistan Army - some with a sense of humour, some humourless. An outstanding example of the latter category is General K.M. ARIF. He is dry, as dry as sun-dried apricots from Gilgit or the wind that blows through the TILLA RANGES in May or June. ! remember him because he is from 11 Cavalry (FF), the others I forget. They are easy to forget because they seldom smiled.

There was General IFTIKHAR. They called him General HAW-HAW because he had a hearty laughter. I was a very junior officer then and I heard him only from a distance, but I was glad to hear him laugh, always a ringing laughter, loud and clear. Of YAHYA KHAN's sense of humour I could tell you many tales, some in writing (later), some only orally. He was witty, sharp as a rapier and pointed, often very brief and very effective. General UMRAO KHAN, under whom I served in East Pakistan, had an earthy sense of humour, very wise, very simple, carrying the scent of a freshly plowed field.

I am not sure if our only five-star general, the Field Marshal AYUB KHAN, had any sense of humour. Probably not, because he did not smile when he accepted that title. General ATTIQUR REHMAN had a sense of humour, so did GUL HASAN, ZIA-UL-HAQ and even SAHABZADA YAQUB KHAN - each in his own unique fashion. Of Attiqur Rehman, Zia-ul-Haq and Yaqub Khan I have already told you a few tales - historically true and faithfully narrated. ATTIQUR REHMAN had a hearty laughter but his humour was very English, low-key, subdued, with a flair for a pun, amused when understood, not unamused when not understood. GUL HASAN has a wry sense of humour to this day, a naughty smile, an impish grin, the sparkle of the schoolboy in his eyes. It took me some time to laugh back at him but now that I understand him better, I find him exhilarating ZIA-UL-HAQ. I told you, was a man who could laugh at himself more candidly than any man I have ever known. Alas, few could laugh with him on a key as loud as his, particularly after he becamethe President/CMLA/COAS. His diplomatic smile aside, the SAHABZADA can be great fun when he opens up, intellectually tickled and emotionally on a thaw. He enjoys a good repartee and leaves you in no doubt when he says TUCHE.

My son MUNIER has a wonderful sense of humour, NAILA is a great mimic of everyone under the sun (including her two little daughters) and PARVEEN always looks at things sunny-side up. When Munier writes to us from Virginia, which is not too often, the last line always reads: "Keep smiling!" You don't have to be a general to learn how to smile, which is not to say that all generals can.

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4.            ATTIQUR REHMAN was a general of the old school, the kind that gave the Pakistan Army its British flavour during the first two decades after independence. They continued a tradition of hard work, a clear focus on the profession, a disdain for things extra-military, a passion for good order and discipline, a clean and well-regulated life within the confines of an enchanted world far from the madding crowd. Call it colonial if you please, but it had several excellences which the process of nativisation eventually destroyed. Had that process not been so enthusiastic as to be blind, driven by a hatred of all things associated with our former masters, we may yet have retained the good while discarding the bad. It was not to be. Slaves, even after they have been set free, cannot forget that they had once been slaves. That memory leads to queer aberrations in the handling of their newly won freedom. They whine, they carp, they criticize. Their freedom enables them to destroy even that which they cannot replace.

The nativisation of the army came in live waves, with the 1965 War and the 1971 debacle as the major watersheds. Prior to 1965, it was a decent peace-time army which pulled itself out of the chaos of 1947 and became a well-knit and disciplined organisation. It came to the aid of civil power in many distressing situations; fighting locusts, floods and wild boar to the control of refugees, smuggling, sectarian strife, the breakdown of civic order and whatever else. It earned the admiration of the people at large and some of it went to its head, as demonstrated by AYUB KHAN's  seizure of absolute power in 1958 and his unwarranted confidence in being able to clean up the place and put everything right. After an initial burst of success, AYUB KHAN's achievements and authority dwindled, with it the popular image of the army as the jewel in Pakistan's crown. The 1965 War should have opened the eyes of both the public and the army. It did not, because rhetoric replaced reality and a lucky stalemate was paraded as a victory of sorts. Eventually AYUB KHAN bowed out but YAHYA KHAN  continued to rule the roost, till he dragged the army with him to the humiliation of 1971. Every civil war is ugly but ours was unspeakably sordid because of the moral bankruptcy of the leadership at the top and at the popular level an unholy mix of verbal Islam and what ANWAR AHMAD called "coercion as an instrument of national cohesion". The great tragedy was not the 40,000 POWs who filed into Indian prison camps but the despicable conduct of an army towards a people whom it insincerely called its own. It was, above all, a moral failure of stupendous dimensions, far greater in magnitude than the political short-sightedness and the military incompetence. This was never acknowledged, within the army or outside, in consequence never examined, never atoned.

In many ways 1971 was a story foretold as early as 1965, the twilight years of the army's decline (1965-70) sliding into the encircling gloom (1971-77). Mr. ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO's vulgarisation and corruption of our national life made their inroads into the Armed Forces, paving the way for the rise of another military adventurer, civilian Bonapartism making way for its original version. Along with the army he led, ZIA-UL-HAQ forgot 1971. Whatever little of doubt or dissension that there may have been was erased by spreading the butter thicker on the army's toast. ZIA-UL-HAQ completed the nativisation of the army. It is now a truly national army, itself as corrupt as the nation to which it belongs.

I find myself unable to go into lamentations over this. Given the way we are, this is how it had to be. Two short wars miserably conducted and three long stretches of thoughtless martial law put their seal on the nativisation of the Armed Forces. Since 1988 it has been a headlong rush into disaster in the name of democracy. As an after thought also Allah and His prophet. We have oscillated, observes NAJAM SETHI, between the Benazirs and the Nawaz Sharifs, between kleptomania and megalomania: supreme characteristics both, I think, of slaves unable to rise above their past, incapable of governing themselves with any measure of decency. NIRAD CHAUDHURI reminds us that nations need leaders to lead them to destruction, no less than they need leaders to rise from the ashes. We have chosen our leaders with THANATOS  as our unconscious motivation, Gadarene swine all set to be pushed over the precipice.

I was talking to you about the army and to the army we return. Things have changed. Looking back, I find some consolation in the thought that we played with vigour, even if it was games we played on the playground or in the Ops Room. We did not expend our energies on plotting for a plot, acquiring acres of land and mansions all over. We did not think of setting up bakeries and indigenous Coca-Cola plants, within the unit lines or outside. We had never heard of Swiss banks and Habib Bank (Limited) reminded us off and on that our bank balance was dangerously close to going red. We served while we served, and we made no post-retirement plans for an ambassadorship to Brunei or an equally happy slot in the Fauji Foundation. We took one day at a time, as it came, and we were glad to be in the army, PONGO and RISALAWALA alike. When we retired many of us were in a fix but we took it in our stride, and talked of the good old days in the army when officers were officers and men, men.

Things have changed. I have a grandson in the army, a major doing very well but wanting to get out as fast as he can, not for reasons akin to mine but because his superiors are parasites, his colleagues adept in the art of rising without merit, his subordinates dispirited and disconsolate. He is not the only one of his kind, I know of many more. They cannot make their two ends meet. They lie awake in the dark, thinking not of tomorrow's Divisional Study Period but calculating the remnants of their DSOP fund. As you go up the ladder, the parasites multiply in both number and magnitude. As you look down, it is a sorry mess below, certainly not men at their best.

Just walk into the Armour Mess in Rawalpindi and see for yourself a sample of what the caste system has done to this army. The BRAHMINS (generals) live apart in five-star splendour, while the KASHATRIYAS (brigadiers and below) make do in their modest rooms in a row. There are gradations of modesty, of course, because there are men with lipstick on their collars (Brigadiers, Colonels) and others without (Lieutenant Colonels, Majors, Captains, Subalterns). The Brahmins too are class I, II or III. A look at the guard on duty and a sniff of the air will tell you who is in residence: two-star, three-star or, very rarely, four-star. The Brahmins and the Kashatriyas do not eat the same food, although they live in the same mess. I do not know if their mess bills are different. Maybe, yes; maybe, no.

Walk out of the Armour Mess and take a stroll down Golf Road, from the old Army House where Zia-ul-Haq lived in the mansion which is Mirza Aslam Beg's very own. You could, of course, start the other way round. No sweat, because they are mansions all the way, a crore or two plus - minus being of no consequence. I was in one of them for half an hour a year or two ago. I have yet to overcome my unease, my discomfiture, my disorientation as if I had entered the halls of Montezuma. If you want to be comfortable, joy down quick to Chaklala (III), past the villas, past the semi-detached houses, up the stairs and into our apartment in ASKARI (I). There will be no liveried bearers to serve you coffee and cake; but we do have tea in the house and I will make you a cup that cheers.