NATIONAL SECURITY IS A NATIONAL AFFAIR

a) Military threats being more tangible are easier to define. Politically, these are also more convenient, if the public is to respond in a certain manner, make sacrifices, and accept emergency measures, all in the name of NS.

b) In earlier times, when the defence effort did not require massive mobilisation of national resources, internal deficiencies played a relatively less important role.

c) With the birth of many new countries, that are confronted with the challenges of nation building, elements of internal friction have assumed a greater significance in determining national power.

d) In the modern times, use of ideology and psychological warfare to subvert or influence the populace in the target country, has become more effective, and so have instruments like terrorism, that detract from a nation's war potential. Internal defence has therefore acquired a larger role.

a) In our initial days, despite the monumental task of nation building, only India and Kashmir figured in our security calculus. Afghanistan became important only when the Soviets occupied that country with over a hundred thousand soldiers.

b) The complexity involved in the geographic distance between East and West Pakistan, was far too often seen merely as an enigma of defending the two territories.

c) Perhaps only after the separation of the eastern wing, did we start thinking about the threats to national integration, about factors like socio-economic disparity for example. And perhaps it was only after the US aid ceased and we had to maintain a large military machine through indigenous resources, that the defence vs. development debate caught our attention.

d) Some of our internal turmoil led to unrest, even to dissident movements. But when Sindh, our soft underbelly, was rocked by political discord, we were forced to think about the need for political integration.

e) And of course as the world shrank, we discovered more threats; ideological, ethnic, narcotics, and indeed international terrorism. These are not only getting more refined, but can also reach out much farther. As the modern societies become more vulnerable to such threats, this being the information age, and because the conventional means are now more expansive, such means can be very tempting.

f) The nuclear dimension has further raised the stakes. Psychological and economic factors will now count for much more than before, because the people will now have to live under the shadow of a nuclear threat, and an arms race may extract a higher price.

Strategy is the art of making choices. We chose for us a defence strategy based on a strong and ready military strength right in the 1950s, possibly because of our alliance with the US. At that time, in view of a large and hostile neighbour and more importantly, since the military build-up was not taxing the domestic economy, it certainly looked the right thing to do. On the economic front, the support and the confidence provided under the security umbrella, and a sound policy, set the country on the path of solid growth. The Indian model on the other hand, that had clearly put development before defence, did not seem to be working well. For the deficiencies in defence, they dearly paid during their Himalayan conflict with the Chinese, and very nearly escaped disaster in the '65 war against Pakistan. Even their economic performance was not exactly making us envious. We thus seemed to be enjoying the best of both the worlds.

This policy however did have a flip side. It did not bring any tangible benefits to large areas of the country and to many segments of our population. The economic activity was concentrated in Karachi and in parts of the Punjab, and the military modernisation did good primarily to the traditional recruiting areas. In fact this lop sided growth adversely affected the process of national integration during our formative years. And when the US aid ceased, the strain on domestic resources to sustain the large defence machine, not only highlighted the risks of building a structure on unsure foundations, but also further exasperated the sense of deprivation of less developed areas.

Tactical mistakes are easier to correct. Errors of strategy take a long time to remedy, and what is worse, with the passage of time the damage multiplies and the course correction becomes that much more difficult. When the US military aid ceased as a result of the '65 war, the security environment was perceived to have altered to our disadvantage. A leadership schooled in responding to threats by counter force means, could only react by further expansion of the standing military force. The crunch that followed, brought our growing but nascent economy to a grinding halt. And with that a number of issues that we had so far succeeded in keeping under the lid, in an apparently secure environment, boiled over. We suddenly realised that our NS situation, that we had worked so hard to improve, was on a downward slide. The loss of East Pakistan that followed soon thereafter, delivered the coup de grace to the already slipping confidence in our ability to defend the core national interests.

Security is ultimately a state of mind. The loss of faith therefore, did us in many ways greater harm than the separation of the eastern wing. It became harder thereafter to restore confidence even when the things changed for the better.

Frequent military interventions in development of our political process had not helped in providing the country with a stable framework for national integration. Restoration of democracy in 1988, by best of our estimates, brought to end any future prospects of a direct military role. We rejoiced for a while, but when it turned out that democracy was no mantra, and it always took a roller-coaster course before it could deliver, our euphoria quickly turned into disillusionment. A people, who had felt let down often in the past, mistook this natural process as instability. It led to disillusionment and to loss of business confidence.

Similarly, we reacted to certain external developments with much less enthusiasm than could be expected from a more self assured people. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, there was little celebration here over this greatest miracle of the century. While some of us were lamenting all the ill effects that the liberation war in Afghanistan had wrecked on our country, the others became impatient with the events that followed. And of course we have a good share of such inbred sceptics, who believe that it was in the first place an American victory, that left the great Satan unchallenged to rule the roost.

The uprisings in the Indian Punjab in the mid 80s and in the IHK a few years latter, could have been seen as an improvement in Pakistan's NS environment. Instead, those of us who now firmly believe, that any good news is too good to be true, immediately got seized with the prospects of another round of Indo-Pak war. Nowadays they must be working overtime to chalk out a contingency plan in case the next round was accompanied by a nuclear fallout.

Obviously, if the people at large were also to sink to such state of depression, the state would be seriously handicapped in mobilising their support and potential for optimum results. What did we do wrong?

A committee on comparative politics of the Social Science Research Council in the United States, had once identified six areas of crises of political development in the new states. These are; the identity crisis, so well known in our context; the crisis of legitimacy, a corollary of weak or dictatorial regimes; the crisis of integration, so starkly manifested in our short history; the penetration crises, that involves the problems of a government in reaching down into the society and affecting basic policies, the crisis of participation, the extent of people's involvement in decisions that affect them, and the distribution crisis, that essentially relates to how equitably are the goods, services, and values disposed throughout the society. Well, we have a reasonable idea how far we have come in resolving these crises. We are well on the way to atleast settle the question of legitimacy, but movement on all other fronts has been painful. Whatever that may mean, in terms of improving the quality of life, building of a civil society, and creation of a conducive environment, our failure to resolve such core issues has certainly weakened the people's faith in the system.

For a long time, one had believed that the system was not much more than the people who ran it, and the rules under which it operated. That implied that if the right persons were found, and the necessary support provided, the system would function. In the meantime we know that even that might not work.

A system is programmed to produce certain results. But if the product desired is different, one would have to circumvent the norm, and the system in that case must prevent the movement in the undesired direction. If that happened often enough, then an intelligent system- and that is what a human based system essentially is- can reprogram itself. That is what seems to have happened in our case; our system can no longer move things forward. Our machinery can now only idle, if forced it might even give the illusion of a movement, but cannot deliver. Indeed, what must have also contributed to this universal no-go, are a large number of lateral channels that have been added by inductions to satisfy the political compulsion to provide jobs.

The inevitable consequence is, that nothing gets done, atleast not through the system. If one tries, the the system override gets activated. The people must therefore wait, the equipment must rot, and the opportunities must go slipping. The austerity can save millions, but the billions that can only be generated by mobilising the masses and the resources, are still missing.

Humans are still the most important bit in any system. While the latter provides the operating framework, it is the key personnel who steer it and take decisions. In this category of system managers, we seem to have run into another crisis, that of quality. Earlier in the paper we compared the Indian and Pakistani models to resolve the defence vs development debate. Our India-watchers could not have failed to notice the Indian emphasis on improving the quality of their middle and higher echelons of leadership. They must have concluded that it would be unwise to dissipate resources evenly across the wide Indian spectrum, and the effort therefore was applied selectively. Consequently, large segments of the Indian society remain poor, deprived and marginally trained, but the talented and the selected few get access to quality education. Around this core, the Indians are trying to build a modern state. The South Indian software miracle was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of the Indian thrust to create a class of excellence. This philosophy also fitted in well with their traditional class concept, that provides for a large suffering humanity, consoled by the enjoinment that the poverty was a condition of life. Ours being a more egalitarian society, we have a healthy disrespect for quality that smacks of elitism, and therefore we take pride in all things modest.

The ultimate arbiters of a country's security are its people. They will willingly defend it, if they have a stake in it, not necessarily in material terms. There are always men of means, who may not be raving patriots. But people who believe that they are important for the country, their part matters, and their contribution made a difference, fight hard to preserve their role and thus the system.

The traditional recruiting areas of the armed forces have grown into the most ardent nationalists, and many proposals dealing with improvements in our military system have advocated broadening the defence base, to facilitate greater integration.

To promote NS, the first and the foremost measure must be to get the people involved, and not only in the defence effort. Decentralise the system to ensure greater participation. That will also have the idling machinery moving. Our people may find emotional affiliations with abstract notions like the nationhood or beyond, but their livelihood comes from their immediate surroundings. The motivation to work within the community framework is therefore always more solid. Decentralisation thus optimally combines participation, recognition and tangibility of results. Add to that the prospects of smaller units inevitably competing with the rest, and we might have unleashed a synergetic process.

There must be enough expertise available in the country to combat our quality crisis. But in the short run, there seems no better solution than hunting heads to find the best men, and women, for some key jobs. Put them in-charge, provide all possible support, and demand results.

All our political governments have been extremely averse to the concept of a national security council. The usual reservations are; such a body might become a super government, it could amount to military rule by other means, what was it that this council could do and those elected for this very purpose could not; etc, etc. These are indeed the arguments of deficient minds. Such councils exist in the best of the functioning democracies, they grant the military only the barest essential role, and nowhere have the governments been upstaged.

In our case, the official apparatus is short on expertise on security matters, and the governments remain so deeply bogged down in the day to day affairs, that hardly anyone has time, inclination or the compulsion to ponder over the future. The NS must be considered in terms of the events that have yet to take place. A security matter that has already become live, would have to be handled differently. This then falls in the domain of crisis management.

It is no surprise, therefore, that our governments are usually engaged in managing crises. When it was time to think about crisis prevention or pre- emption, they were involved in resolving earlier complications. Our drift from crisis to crisis is thus inherent in our system. And when we have a crisis-and that is often enough- some from the government are understandably involved, but the rest of the apparatus gets paralysed, usually precipitating another crisis. Could we therefore expect from our yet non existent council, also to undertake crisis management? If the present state continued, we might soon be saddled with a super national security council.