Indian Defence Review

It is the seventh-largest nation, with the sixth-largest armed forces, in the world and an alarmingly growing nuclear arsenal. Yet, Pakistan stands at the edge of an abyss and the crossroads of its destiny as a nation state. Beleaguered by corroding Islamic radicalisation, including of its state institutions and a segment of its armed forces, near daily bouts of unprecedented violence perpetrated by those very elements it had assiduously nurtured in the past for terror activities in India and Afghanistan, a sham democracy, an economy on the brink of bankruptcy, centrifugal forces within its diverse ethnic regions and an international pariah for being the epicentre of global terrorism, Pakistan appears to be on the road to possible disintegration. It thus belies the “two-nation” theory to which it owes its birth, for secular India has nearly as many Muslims as Pakistan and in addition, all hues of the Islamic faith continue to flourish in India while most have been ostracised in Islamic Pakistan.

Weapons of mass destruction and terrorism go to make an apocalyptic cocktail, and thus Pakistans future worries not only the United States and rest of the West, but more importantly, the neighbourhood, especially India”¦

Envisioned by the Western-orientated Mohd Ali Jinnah as the promised homeland for Muslims of prepartition India, one that would grow into a liberal, modern and secular democracy, Pakistan, after 64 tumultuous years as a nation, is a far cry from the inclusive dreams of its founder and is now struggling to ensure its mere existence. “Failed,” “flawed” and “unraveling” are adjectives commonly bandied about to describe Pakistan these days.

Weapons of mass destruction and terrorism go to make an apocalyptic cocktail, and thus Pakistan’s future worries not only the United States and rest of the West, but more importantly, the neighbourhood, especially India, with whom Pakistan, separated at its birth in 1947, maintains unendingly a hostile relationship bordering on enmity. No nation on earth has perpetuated an uncalled-for, adversarial and unproductive relationship with its neighbour as Pakistan has done vis-à-vis India and, regrettably, on flimsy, delusive and imaginary grounds.

The U.S.-based magazine Foreign Policy and an NGO, The Fund for Peace, has ranked Pakistan 10th on the Failed State Index in a survey of 189 nations, with India at a respectable 87 and China, perhaps surprisingly to some, way behind India, at the 57th slot!2

Factors, Constants and Variables : The India Centricity

The raison d’être of Pakistan, since its violent birth, appears to be an implacable hostility towards India. For all its self-created and self-inflicted problems, India bashing is the most convenient fall-back option for India looms all over the Pakistani mind-set, in its policies, its geopolitical formulations and the centricity of its military and nuclear strategies and ambitions.

The absence of a stable and sustaining democracy in Pakistan and the fact that the nation is at the mercy of its formidable military machine make the task of improvement in Indo-Pak relations not a strong possibility at the moment.

Paradoxically, 1,000 years of common culture and a shared history have divided the two neighbours rather than uniting them, something for which a rapidly dysfunctional Pakistan may have to answer to posterity, especially its own coming generations. Pakistan’s animosity undoubtedly can be attributed to the baggage of history and primarily its own overambitious calculations vis-à-vis its larger, politically united and economically and militarily more powerful neighbour. Pakistan’s unquenchable thirst to be hyphenated with India in every global forum and every index of development or military power appears to be an uncalled for and unrealistic obsession.

Pakistan’s military misadventures, commencing with its failure to annex Jammu and Kashmir by force in 1948 and again in 1965 and its resounding defeat in 1971 at the hands of the Indian armed forces, leading to the break-up of Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh, and ending with its perfidy in 1999 in the Kargil sector, where it was once again thrown back by the Indian army, appear to have not chastened it towards reality but continue to haunt its psyche. On more than one occasion, different Indian prime ministers since independence have offered the hand of friendship, including the offer of a no-war pact by the present Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, but to no avail. The Pakistan establishment stubbornly has negated many Indian peace overtures, though some well-meaning people from its civil society and NGOs have been making encouraging efforts towards lasting peace with India.

The India centricity of the Pakistani mind-set is to most analysts the most significant factor in the evolution of Pakistan as it vitally affects other factors and variables involved in its growth. To any objective observer, it is more than clear that if Pakistan can get over its Indian obsession and an unrealistic Kashmir fixation, it will only be for Pakistan’s betterment. Way back in March 2005, on a five-hour visit to Pakistan after spending five days in India, the then U.S. president Bill Clinton advised General Musharraf, “You have to decide do you want Kashmir or do you want to save Pakistan. You cannot do both at the same time.”3

Pakistani people, its leadership and, importantly, the Pakistan army have to doggedly endeavour to detoxify their adversarial mind-set towards India for them to get out of their own downward spiral.

The vexed J&K issue can be resolved through mature negotiations, as India has officially stated many times in the past. Problems like the Sir Creek can be resolved easily as they are simply technical issues. As regards Siachen, Pakistan must not try to be extra smart and obfuscate the realities on the ground if it is anxious to resolve this issue. Militarily, India can no way vacate the dominating Saltoro heights in this region, as also it has to be conscious of the proximity of the Chinese deployments in the disputed Aksai Chin area and the developments along the Karakoram Highway, which abuts this region. The Siachen glacier is close to the Shagsam Valley in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), where Pakistan in 1963 had illegally ceded nearly 5,180 square kilometres of territory to China.

The absence of a stable and sustaining democracy in Pakistan and the fact that the nation is at the mercy of its formidable military machine make the task of improvement in Indo-Pak relations not a strong possibility at the moment. Nevertheless, Pakistani people, its leadership and, importantly, the Pakistan army have to doggedly endeavour to detoxify their adversarial mind-set towards India for them to get out of their own downward spiral.

The Pakistan Military and the ISI

The most powerful institution in the Pakistani state since independence, even in the smaller bouts of civil rule, has unmistakably been the Pakistan army. Nations the world over have an army, and as the saying goes, the Pakistan army has a nation! An eminent Indian strategic analyst, late K. Subhramanyam succinctly opined that “Pakistan has not only a tradition of military rule but also one of military conspiracies.”4

“¦Pakistans policies towards major countries, including India, the Kashmir proxy war, military modernisation, etc., the Pakistan army bulldozed its way, with successive Pakistan governments unable to defy the armys diktats

In the last 64 years of its existence, Pakistan has been under the jackboot for nearly 38 years under four military dictators, commencing with the self-styled Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who was Pakistani commander-in-chief from 1951 to 1958, before he finally overthrew the civilian government and established Pakistan’s first military regime, in 1958. In 1965, suffering from delusions of perhaps his military prowess and some U.S. equipment that had been doled out to them being members of the U.S.-led Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and then the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) pacts, respectively, Ayub launched Op Gibraltar and tried to wrest J&K by force, hoping for a popular uprising against Indian rule. Ayub Khan’s unrealistic dreams were adequately answered by the Kashmiri populace and the Indian armed forces, and the Pakistanis suffered a near defeat. Regrettably, India, owing to the Tashkent Agreement, had to return the military gains made in J&K across the Line of Control.

In 1969, Ayub was forced to step down and General Yahya Khan stepped in and remained as Pakistan’s ruler till 1971, having to leave in disgrace after Pakistan’s humiliating defeat in 1971 at the hands of the Indian armed forces. Subsequent to this debacle, Pakistan witnessed a spell of slightly over five years of civil rule under the charismatic, though maverick, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who initiated many reforms in the Pakistani armed forces to streamline its higher defence organisations and tried to rein in the unbridled powers enjoyed by the military till then. It was during Bhutto’s prime ministership that he launched Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Later, however, Bhutto was himself surprised when his own hand-picked army chief, General Zia-ul-Haq, not only overthrew his benefactor, once again proclaimed martial law, but also hanged Bhutto on trumped-up charges. Zia then ruled the country for 11 years, including 3 years as a civilian president with absolute powers, till his death in a yet-unresolved mysterious air crash in 1988.

It is pertinent to mention here that it was General Zia-ul-Haq who commenced the Islamisation of Pakistan society and many of its institutions, including, regrettably, of its armed forces—a step that has and will in the years to come prove rather costly, bordering on the fatal, to the stability of the Pakistani state. In addition, General Zia also promulgated the draconian Eighth Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution, under the garb of which duly elected civilian administrations could be dismissed by Pakistani presidents, normally in collusion with Pak army generals. “Zia introduced a structure in which the politicians were prepared to accept a political role for the military.”5 After General Zia’s violent death, General Aslam Beg endeavoured to take the Pakistan army out of direct governance, and it was in 1989 that the concept of the ruling “troika” emerged. The troika was an informal grouping that comprised the president, the prime minister and the army chief. Nevertheless, in matters of Pakistan’s policies towards major countries, including India, the Kashmir proxy war, military modernisation, etc., the Pakistan army bulldozed its way, with successive Pakistan governments unable to defy the army’s diktats. It is widely known that General Aslam Beg frequently interfered in Pak’s foreign policy formulations. One of the army chiefs after General Beg, the suave General Jehangir Karamat, though remaining away from his country’s internal political gambits, unlike most Pakistan chiefs, nevertheless stated with authority that “Can you ever imagine a Pakistani Prime Minister having the power to dismiss a Pak Army Chief.”6

“¦with increasing U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region following the 9/11 attacks in New York, General Musharraf had to tone down his anti-India rhetoric”¦

It was again in October 1999 that the Pakistan army was back in the business of running a hapless Pakistan when General Parvez Musharraf staged a coup in dramatic circumstances and ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. With the latter, Musharraf’s relations had dipped following the Kargil misadventure initiated by the wily general in Apr–May 1999 where, once again, Pakistan perfidy was seen by the world and the Pakistanis subsequently underwent grave humiliation at the hands of the Indian army. General Musharraf, in his initial years as the Pakistan ruler after banishing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, upped the ante in J&K by increasing terror activities in the state and elsewhere in India.

But with increasing U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region following the 9/11 attacks in New York, General Musharraf had to tone down his anti-India rhetoric and activities due to U.S. pressure after the latter’s military intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan. Subsequently, Musharraf did make some peaceful noises to marginally improve relations with India while sticking to his machinations of “running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.” Though the U.S. dubbed Pakistan as a “frontline state” in the fight against terror, General Musharraf continued with his duplicity in covertly supporting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda, and the anti-U.S. Afghani Taliban and the Haqqani network while extracting military and financial largesse from the United States.

General Musharraf, during his tenure, like his army predecessors, paid lip service to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. Nevertheless, with protests rising inside the country, especially regarding his efforts to silence the judiciary, including the removal of Chief Justice Chaudhary from the Pakistan Supreme Court bench, proved rather disquieting for General Musharraf. Also under tremendous pressure from the United States, Musharraf agreed to allow former Pakistan prime minister and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader, the charismatic Benazir Bhutto, to return from exile in London and fight the general elections. The rest is tragic history, for Benazir Bhutto was, as feared by many, assassinated soon after her arrival in Pakistan, when she was returning after addressing a mammoth rally in Lahore in October 2007.

Currently, the ISI is red faced, having been caught for its double-dealing ways and not having been able to explain the existence of Osama bin Laden since the last five years so close to sensitive Pak military establishments.

Though General Musharraf and the then Pak establishment vehemently denied the ISI and the establishment’s complicity in Benazir Bhutto’s violent death, lakhs of Pakistanis remain more than convinced of Musharraf and the ISI’s stratagem of removing an awkward albeit highly popular political opponent from their path, who surely would have returned to power had the elections been conducted. Benazir’s betrayal and brutal death symbolises poignantly Pakistan’s violent and unpredictable governance and the machinations of its sinister premier intelligence agency, the ISI. Finally, the machinations of the crafty general came to an end and Musharraf, owing to mounting impeachment pressure and with the reinstalled judiciary braying for his blood, had to resign as the Pakistan president and went into exile to the UK after the PPP under slain Benazir’s husband, Asif Zardari, came into power in October 2008. General Musharraf has been hyperactive in London since then, endeavouring to return to Pakistan for a larger political role despite the current dispensation in Islamabad threatening to jail him if he ever returns to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the ISI has been figuring prominently on the Pakistani landscape, reinforcing its sinister image all over the world, including in its own country, for fomenting terror in the entire region. The U.S. raid and the killing of the terror chieftain and the U.S. enemy number one, Osama bin Laden in May 2011, in his hideout in the Pak garrison town of Abbottabad, has exposed, once again, the ISI’s duplicitous attitudes of handling of terrorists on a selective basis. Currently, the ISI is red faced, having been caught for its double-dealing ways and not having been able to explain the existence of Osama bin Laden since the last five years so close to sensitive Pak military establishments.

The ISI, through its terror groups, frequently targets U.S. logistical convoys to Afghanistan moving through the two land routes inside Pakistan to Afghanistan

The ISI came into existence in Pakistan in 1948, and ever since has played a prominent role politically and strategically with uncommon deviousness, ruthlessness and independence, which perhaps no other country’s intelligence agency can even, dream about. It is commonly referred to as “a state within a state,” and former Indian national security advisor, the late J. N. Dixit, aptly called them “a rogue elephant.” It is Pakistan’s Fifth Estate and has been the cutting edge of Pakistan’s terror as a state policy in India and Afghanistan for decades. The Americans, in their close and long professional association with them, have all along known of the shadowy ISI’s double-dealing ways, especially of the ISI’s continued linkages with anti–U.S. groups in the Aft-Pak region. Drone attacks and ground actions by both Pak troops and covert U.S. actions against the holed out al-Qaeda elements or the Afghani Taliban in the restive badlands astride the Durand Line and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the Waziristan belts or the Khyber Pakhtunwa area have not been very effective owing to the ISI’s stratagem of “tipping off” terrorists and their leadership much to American chagrin. The ISI, through its terror groups, frequently targets U.S. logistical convoys to Afghanistan moving through the two land routes inside Pakistan to Afghanistan, to keep reminding the United States of the ISI’s indispensability to the United States, which remains helpless owing to its logistical compulsions.

It is pertinent to note that ISI’s intense involvement in the domestic politics of Pakistan is a direct fallout of the dominance of martial rule in Pakistan since the 1950s. The power the Pakistan army has wielded in its country finds a natural resonance in the instrument of its “dirty tricks,” the ISI, and thus it is more than a coincidence that many Pakistan army chiefs have been former DG ISIs!

“¦the main preoccupation of the ISI and the Pakistan military is India centric and it sees the Afghan Taliban as tools to influence events and limit Indias role in Afghanistan”¦

The ISI continues to maintain very intimate links with myriad terror organisations it has helped raise, sponsor, fund and, train like the Jamaat-ul-Dawa and its terror affiliate, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohd (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), the Sunni terror outfit Sipahe-Sabaha, the Afghani Taliban, anti–U.S. warlords like Gulbuddin Hekayatmar and the Haqqani network in Afghanistan, besides many others. Its links with Osama’s al-Qaeda are too well known to be related. The Mumbai blasts–accused David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana, during court hearings recently in Chicago, have only confirmed the ISI’s intimate links with the LeT and its masterminding the November 2009 Mumbai blasts. The ISI strongly feels that all these terror organisations are part of its strategic assets to be employed against India, Afghanistan, the United States., inconvenient Pakistani journalists (many having been killed, including recently Saleem Shazad), other liberal members of Pakistani civil society, et al. The recent assassinations of liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer and minorities minister Bhatti can be traced to the nexus between Islamist hard-line groups and the ISI. It has failed to realise that its myopic terror-infested policies are primarily affecting Pakistan’s image abroad and wrecking its own stability inside. Those Frankenstein monsters it raised to execute its evil agendas in India and Afghanistan have now come back home to roost and Pakistani establishments and innocents are now suffering from near-daily blasts triggered by those the ISI had raised. The ISI HQ in Rawalpindi itself, apart from some of its offices in the provinces, have been targeted by Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) elements. Most Western analysts opine that the main preoccupation of the ISI and the Pakistan military is India centric and it sees the Afghan Taliban as tools to influence events and limit India’s role in Afghanistan while utilising its indigenous terror outfits for India-specific terror activities.

Pakistan-China: Staunch Allies and a Strategic Embrace

One of the most enduring international relationships in the last many decades has been the China-Pakistan partnership. Pakistan was the first Muslim nation to break relations with Taiwan and recognise the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1950. Nevertheless, it joined the American-led military pacts the next year, namely the CENTO and the SEATO, which were established by the United States to contain the communist threat posed by the Soviet Union and the PRC. Being in the Western camp did not inhibit Pakistan from developing “an all weather friendship” with China over the years, which has sustained it militarily, economically and strategically.

It is pertinent to note that both during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, the Chinese made only diplomatic noises in favour of Pakistan and nothing more.

In an interview on 29 July 2009, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Lou Zhaouhi, talking about Pak-China relations stated that “. . . We are truly good neighbours, close friends, trusted partners and dear brothers. When China was in difficulty caused by the western blockades in the 1950s and 60s, it was Pakistan which opened an air corridor linking China with the outside world. In the 1970s it was Pakistan which served as a bridge for the normalization of China-US relations.”7 Alluding to the close ties between the two countries, recently Chinese president Hu Jintao expressed that relations between the nations were “higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans.”8

Immediately after the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, Pakistan and China had signed the Sino-Pakistan Frontier Agreement on 2 March 1963, wherein Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 square kilometres in the Shaksgam-Muztagh Valley in POK to China. Since then, the Pak-China nexus has gone deeper, manifesting itself in diverse forms of cooperation especially in the military, missile and nuclear fields. Till 1965, being a member of the SEATO and the CENTO, Pakistan got much of its military hardware from the United States. However, the United States imposed an arms embargo owing to the Indo-Pak War in 1965, driving Pakistan into the Chinese arc of influence via its military hardware for Pakistan. During this period, Chinese military technologies were rather inferior to that of the West. But the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 made Pakistan a much sought-after ally of the United States, and the U.S. military pipeline opened up once again, ostensibly to aid the mujahideen and Pak elements fighting the Soviets, though the aid and equipment were used by the Pakistanis to bolster their military machine against India—a pattern often repeated by Pakistan till date.

The mid-1980s saw the Chinese economy taking off, and Pakistan was generously rewarded by the Chinese for its efforts to help thaw U.S.-China relations, especially the visit of the then anti-India U.S. national security advisor Henry Kissinger, to China in 1970. Somewhere, Pakistanis take comfort in the adage “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” However, it is pertinent to note that both during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, the Chinese made only diplomatic noises in favour of Pakistan and nothing more.

The Chinese are now endeavouring to extend the connectivity of this highway right up to Gwadar Port. The Chinese will subsequently be able to transport cargo and oil to and from the Pakistani ports”¦

In the last two decades, China and Pakistan have cooperated with each other in several joint-venture weaponry projects as also Pakistan has received equipment like the JF-17 Thunder fighter jets, K-8 Karakoram advance trainer aircraft, M-11 missiles, air defence radars, T-85 tanks, Al Khalid Main Battle Tanks, Babur cruise missiles, F-7 aircraft, F-22 frigates, and small arms and ammunition besides the Pakistan armed forces’ receiving on favourable terms and as outright aid several weapon systems for the three services. Pakistan’s entire missile weaponry is of Chinese and North Korean origin. In addition, China is the largest investor in the Gwadar Deep Sea Port, which is strategically located at the mouth of the Straits of Hormuz. “Why is China investing so much, even at the cost of earning global opprobrium as an irresponsible proliferator, and even at the risk of poisoning its relations with India . . . ?” To put it very simply, China and Pakistan have traditionally valued one another as a strategic hedge against India. “For China, Pakistan is a low-cost secondary deterrent to India and . . . for Pakistan, China is a high-value guarantor of security against India.”9

An ominous development that threatens to alter the existing security scenario in the subcontinent has been the expanding Chinese footprint in the Gilgit-Baltistan belt in POK. Noted South Asia observer Selig Harrison has stated that an estimated 7,000–11,000 soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were deployed in this region masquerading as engineer personnel. Harrison has termed these developments as the unfolding of “a quiet geopolitical crisis” in the Himalayan borderlands of POK. Understandably, both China and Pakistan have denied these reports and Pakistan has stated that a “humanitarian team” was sent by the Chinese to Gilgit-Baltistan to assist in flood relief operations. In addition to Pakistan, POK holds immense strategic importance for China to establish its strategic footprint in this region, especially the 1,300-kilometre long Karakoram Highway, which connects POK Northern Areas with Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province (home to the restive Uighur Muslims).

The Chinese are now endeavouring to extend the connectivity of this highway right up to Gwadar Port. The Chinese will subsequently be able to transport cargo and oil to and from the Pakistani ports of Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara in Baluchistan, thereby reducing its dependence on and the vulnerability of its oil supply to China from the Gulf via the congested Straits of Malacca. In addition to its improvement and widening, the Karakoram Highway has reportedly 22 tunnels that could be likely missile silos. Laying of rail lines along this highway is likely to commence soon. “Annual Report 2008–2009” of India’s Ministry of Defence has observed that “. . . Enhancing connectivity with Pakistan through the territory of J&K, illegally occupied by China and Pakistan, will have direct military implications for India.”10

From past and current trends in the Sino-Pak relationship, it can be surmised that China will continue to support Pakistan as an all-weather ally, especially against India and the United States. Nevertheless, China, with its growing global clout, will like to be seen as a responsible global player and thus will moderate Pakistan, to an extent, as its price for bailing Pakistan out economically and strategically.

To be continued…