Primary threat to Pak is from within, not India
SHAUN GREGORY, Nov 21, 2010, 04.35am IST
The Italian writer Dino Buzzati's most famous novel " Il Deserto dei Tartari" or The Tartar Steppe is the story of garrison troops at a remote frontier post. They are expectantly poised for the invasion of a Tartar army, which never comes, yet unable to go forward or retreat. It is, amongst other things, a powerful and thought-provoking meditation on the nature and futility of rigid military thinking. It is also, of course, an unintended metaphor for the Indian-Pakistan military stand-off.
Hostility towards India and belief in the reality of the Indian threat to Pakistan is woven into the fabric of every Pakistani soldier. This, first through the Pakistani state education system whose curricula inculcates a hatred of the Hindu "other" and glorifies the Pakistan Army as the saviour of the nation, and second through an outdated military training regime which builds on the child's prejudice and lays the foundation for a career of military service at the metaphorical remote frontier military post.
India is a bit like the Tartars. It has twice imposed military defeat on Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 and in neither case sought to assimilate, occupy or otherwise destroy Pakistan. The creation of Bangladesh in the latter war was Bengali-led and an inevitable working through of the inherent contradictions of East and West Pakistan; India did not press its advantage in 1971 over the rump West Pakistan despite Pakistan having lost roughly half its navy, one third of its army, and a quarter of its air-force. India did not seek to exploit its nuclear monopoly over Pakistan, after the nuclear test in 1974, to the detriment of the Pakistan state. Nor has India been involved in significant military action against Pakistan since 1971 except in response to Pakistani or Pakistani-backed adventurism, such as in Kargil in 1999. India has a "no first use" nuclear policy and in terms of casus belli "Cold Start" is reactive not pre-emptive.
The widespread Pakistani perception of the Indian threat to Pakistan is inculcated by the Pakistan Army for one central reason. That is, to legitimize the Pakistan Army and ISI's primacy in the Pakistan polity and thereby to justify the Army's claim to a huge slice of Pakistan's national resources. The perception of an Indian threat thus serves a purpose quite disconnected from the reality of that threat.
In a different context this perhaps would be a wasteful but essentially stable situation and the Pakistan army, like Buzzati's Fort Bastiani troops, would be able to grow old and weary, looking out across the border for an Indian Army that never came. But in the present context the fixation with the Indian threat gravely imperils Pakistan. Investment in the bloated Pakistan army distorts the Pakistan economy, denies millions of ordinary Pakistanis basic state investment in education, welfare, health and economic opportunity, and undoubtedly, as a result, fans the flames of Islamic militancy. The fixation with the Indian threat diverts urgently needed military spending in Pakistan away from investment in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism equipment and training in favour of India-centric expenditure. It dissuades the Pakistanis from diverting military forces away from the Eastern border to tackle the militant Islamic cancer in Pakistan's west, even as that cancer spreads and eats away at the health of Pakistan.
More dangerously still, the fixation with the Indian threat has persuaded generations of Pakistani Army and Intelligence chiefs to create or sustain and empower militant Islamic groups, in Hilary Clinton's words as a "hedge" against India. These groups now threaten the integrity and perhaps even the survival of Pakistan itself and function as the most likely mechanism through atrocities like the Indian Parliament attack in 2001 or the Mumbai attacks of 2008 of escalation to war between India and Pakistan.
The rebuttal of these arguments that India's large standing army is a material reality that has to be at the heart of Pakistan's security concerns is legitimate but misses two essential qualifications. The first is that India is no longer Pakistan's primary security challenge; that is now the terrorism and extremism of militant Islam. The second is that in military terms, capability does not automatically equate with intent: India's large standing army does not pose a threat to Pakistan per se any more than a large American or French army poses a threat per se to the UK. The issue of threat turns on perceived intent and once again we are back on Buzzati's battlements.
The peoples of India and Pakistan, the business and financial sectors of India and Pakistan, the sports, arts and media communities of India and Pakistan, all wish to see bilateral tensions eased and not even the most hawkish voice in India wants to see Pakistan fall into the hands of militant Islam. India has done much to ease tensions in drawing down some forces on its Pakistan border, in reacting responsibly to provocations such as Mumbai, and in working with Pakistan's civilian government to advance bilateral cooperation as far as possible, but India could do more. The main obstacle to further progress, however, remains the belligerence and strategic myopia of the Pakistan army.
The United States is poised once again to hand that same Pakistan army more than $2 billion dollars in a new five-year military aid package. Despite a few nods to the Leahy amendment in restricting which Pakistani military units can receive the aid (on grounds that some Pakistani military units are suspected to have been involved in torture and extra-judicial killings) there is precious little in the bill which will give the US genuine leverage either in terms of forcing the Pakistan armyISI to act against militant Islam within its borders or to persuade the Pakistan Army to shift its focus away from India and towards the internal and global threat of militant Islam. Strategic thinkers in Delhi could usefully assist the United States by giving further attention to how India might provide reassurance to Pakistanis of India's unthreatening intent.
Shaun Gregory is the director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit, University of Bradford, UK
Read more: Primary threat to Pak is from within, not India - The Times of India
Primary threat to Pak is from within, not India - The Times of India
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