We are, let it be said, a bit belated in starting to open upon defence matters in Pakistan, and we must open more. If we want to improve our defence capability, the more we expose it to the search light of public opinion, the better. If the actions of the military are rational, professional and upright, they have nothing to fear.
If the nation participates enthusiastically in defence matters, we are likely to end up with lots of suggestions for improvement. But to ensure the precipitation of best results, politicians have to play alongside, an equally befitting role. Some essentials, which should have been decided long ago, but are over due to-date include:
a) The ideology of a nation always reflects the state of a people's mind, their emotions, hopes, aspirations, ideals and objectives and a subsisting will to realise them. The worth of ideology depends on the people's dedication to it and not on its rational or scientific demonstration. The inception of Pakistan was based on Islamic ideology, but a big gap between teachings and performance has created many doubts about our existing ideology.
b) Our national goals (to civilize, revolutionize, to survive or to become a great power) and cultural conceptions (Languages, dress, the personality and identity of Pakistan), need a better definition, and these in turn are likely to produce a clear (and generally consistent) world outlook. The talk of different nationalities, languages, cultures and even sects, all lead to centrifugal tendencies. All this does not create the right atmosphere for stability and the danger is that such divergent ideas are bound to creep into armed forces, if they are not there already. Such trends will surely lead to encroachment on our integrity, as they did in 1971.
c) In the same way, the living standard and exhibition of wealth by our rulers (Including an SHO, DC, politicians etc.) must be compatible with our state of economy. (Most Dcs and SHOs live in luxurious houses, therefore, it is no wonder that PM house was built with cost amounting to four years of health budget). It need not be unnecessarily stressed that if the great mass of the people is unhappy with important matters such as cost of living, galloping inflation, low wages, falling production and fewer employment opportunities, and at the same time our rulers try to break every record of American billionaires, then one must expect trouble at some stage.
Statesmanship of the highest order is required to put the matters right, and until they are, the country should not expect too high a standard from its armed forces. It goes without saying that a high degree of statesmanship is ultimately required, and the sooner the high standard can be reached, the better; particularly, if our armed forces are not as strong as their likely opponents.
For the nation building role, citizens' army may be formed into various corps according to the individual's background, experience, aptitude and national requirements. Every corp heading with possible list of jobs is a very vast topic with very large frontiers of its own. Exactly what can be done to improve these fields is much beyond the scope and space of the present work, therefore only a narrow beam over few corps is being thrown for the purpose of elaboration of the basic idea.
Agriculture corps: The country has a total area of 79.61 million hectares, out of which only 19.95 million hectares are utilised for crop production. At present there are about 10.69 million hectares which are lying as cultivate-able waste.*5
And at the same time country is spending thousands of millions of dollars on import of agricultural produce. The list of failures would include our short comings in adoption of farm mechanism, water management, storage facilities, certified seeds etc. but the most prominent would be better planning and hesitation in use of latest information. Citizens army being a huge reservoir of organised manpower could be of great help to teach as well as to work with latest techniques and equipment. Thus it could remove the existing hesitation and help save precious foreign exchange, in addition to making us self-sufficient. This Corps could also be utilised for eradication of water logging, land reclamation, fisheries and afforestation.
Health Corps: All indicators of the availability of medical facilities show unsatisfactory state of affairs. At present there is only one doctor for about 6000 persons and one nurse for about 18000 people. There is one rural health centre for about 270,000 rural people. 21% population has no access to any health facility even within five miles.*6
There is direct co-relation between material prosperity and physical health of a nation, and in case of Pakistan, to say the least, this co-relation is disappointing. Training and providing doctors, nurses, health visitors, hospitals, rural health centres etc. is a time consuming job, and the requirement is to do something immediately. One possible solution would be to quickly train personnel for the cure of ordinary (easily diagnosable and curable) diseases. This or some such solution would need organised manpower, and that is where the citizens army can play a vital role.
Many people must have and many more shall continue writing on such topics. Whereas its virtues cannot be denied, the urgency of the situation demands greater stress on ACTION (Why not divert the billion rupees from Social Action Program as an immediate starter). Too many follies of the past have left us with too many problems for the future. Lack of commitment to national ideology, low capability in science-based technologies, and lack of military education being the most prominent. Magnifying all such problems is the fact the our adversaries are powerful and have evil designs against us.
The situation is bad but is certainly better than Germany after first world war, Jews after Nazi massacre, or Japan after atomic attacks. If such nations could perform miracles, there is no reason why we cannot do the same. Also we cannot keep waiting for some Salah-ud-din Ayubi or Khalid bin Waleed. Everything has to be done today for our adversaries may not give us time till tomorrow.
Today we are being told that we must understand realities because we have relatively less area and less power. One wonders why Alexander, Napoleon, English and early Islamic forces never thought the same when they set out to conquer much bigger areas and targets. They were all human beings with something special. That something must have been Unity, Ideology, Clear aim, Will-power, Dedication, Enthusiasm, Diligence, Hard work etc, all of which are not beyond our reach. Perhaps taking the nation into confidence with some examples of sincerity will serve the purpose, or perhaps we all need to be reminded of Swinburne, when he said:
Not with Dreams
But with Blood and Iron
Shall a Nation be moulded at Last.
