Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [102]
It was not just the equipment, but also the cleanliness and general atmosphere of the hospital that were striking after some of the truly ghastly state medical institutions I had visited in Pakistan. And the effort needed to maintain both cleanliness and diligence in the middle of the South Asian monsoon will not need emphasizing to anyone who has lived through monsoons in the plains.
As the hospital commander, Brigadier Khalid Mehmood, in an interview on the same day, told me, ‘All this is so that when the soldier is fighting at the front, he knows that his family are being looked after at home. This is crucial for maintaining the morale of the soldiers, on which in the end everything else depends. This means not just medical services, but also education, and help with finding jobs when the soldier retires.’
The brigadier also exemplified the other family aspect of the Pakistani military. He is by origin an Awan from Gujjar Khan in the Potwar region of Punjab, still the most important Pakistani military recruiting ground, and his father, grandfather, uncle and father-in-law were all officers. Most of the wounded officers I met were also from families with previous military connections.
To create services and surroundings like this hospital, two things are necessary: a strong sense of collective solidarity and esprit de corps, with the dedication and honesty that this creates; and a great deal of money. Neither element can exist without the other. The Pakistani military is a striking institution by the standards of the developing world, and an absolutely remarkable one for Pakistan. Pakistani military discipline, efficiency and solidarity have repeatedly enabled the Pakistani military to take over the state, or to dominate it from behind the scenes. They have used this power in turn to extract enormous financial benefits for the armed forces.
However, the military’s collective spirit has meant that in general these resources have not simply been recycled into patronage or moved to bank accounts in the West, as would have been true of the civilian politicians. They have mostly been used for the benefit of the armed forces; and these rewards in turn have played an absolutely critical part in maintaining military morale, discipline and unity.
The effects have been similarly Janus-faced. The military has repeatedly overthrown Pakistani ‘democracy’, and the scale of military spending has severely limited funds available for education, development, medical services and infrastructure. If continued, this imbalance risks eventually crippling the country and sending Pakistan the way of the Soviet Union – another country which got itself into a ruinous military race with a vastly richer power. On the other hand, the rewards of loyal military service have helped to prevent military mutinies and coups by junior officers – something that would plunge Pakistan overnight into African chaos, and usher in civil war and Islamist revolt. As Tan Tai Yong writes of the British Indian army, in terms very relevant to the forces of Pakistan today in their fight with the Pakistani Taleban:
Clearly, the tasks of securing the reliability of the Indian Army did not merely pertain to military discipline and punishment; the maintenance of its social base – the soldier at his home – was equally, if not more important, as 1857 showed. One could plausibly argue that it was in the soldiers’ homes and villages, and not in the regiments, that the loyalty of the army was often won or lost. Similarly, the maintenance of the recruiting ground did not merely entail ensuring a constant supply of recruits. More than that, it demanded the safeguarding of the interests of the general military population – recruits, serving soldiers, pensioners and their dependants – as a whole.13
This is hardly an academic issue. Since 9/11, the Pakistani military has been forced into an alliance with the US which a majority of Pakistani society – including the soldiers’ own families – detests. At least until 2007 – 8, when the Pakistani