Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [109]
In 2007 – 8, this was beginning to cause serious problems of morale. The most dangerous single thing I heard during my visits to Pakistan in those years was that soldiers’ families in villages in the NWFP and the Potwar region were finding it increasingly difficult to find high-status brides for their sons serving in the military, because of the growing popular feeling that ‘the army are slaves of the Americans’, and ‘the soldiers are killing fellow-Muslims on America’s orders’. Given the tremendous prestige and material advantages of military service in these regions, this was truly worrying.
By late 2009 the sheer number of soldiers killed by the Pakistani Taleban and their allies and, still more importantly, the increasingly murderous and indiscriminate Pakistani Taleban attacks on civilians, seem to have produced a change of mood in the areas of military recruitment. Nonetheless, if the Pakistani Taleban are increasingly unpopular, that does not make the US any more popular; and if the US ever put Pakistani soldiers in a position where they felt that honour and patriotism required them to fight America, many would be very glad to do so.
INTER-SERVICES INTELLIGENCE, KASHMIR AND THE MILITARY – JIHADI NEXUS
The issues of religious orientation and attitudes to the US obviously lead to the question of the military’s links to Islamist extremism, both inside and outside Pakistan. These links are obvious, but their origins have sometimes been misunderstood. The Islamists were initially intended to be tools, not allies; and the goal was not Islamist revolution as such, but to further Pakistan’s national interests (as perceived and defined by the Pakistani military and security establishment), above all when it came to attacking those of India.
A common definition of tragedy is that of a noble figure betrayed and destroyed by some inner flaw.22 The Pakistani military is in some ways an admirable institution, but it suffers from one tragic feature which has been with it from the beginning, which has defined its whole character and world view, which has done terrible damage to Pakistan and which could in some circumstances destroy Pakistan and its armed forces altogether.
This is the military’s obsession with India in general, and Kashmir in particular. Of course, Kashmir is by no means only a military obsession. It was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who once said that ‘Kashmir must be liberated if Pakistan is to have its full meaning’, and Pakistani politicians share responsibility for encouraging ordinary Pakistanis to see jihad in Kashmir as legitimate.23 Nonetheless, both the military’s prestige and the personal experiences of its men have become especially focused on Kashmir.
Speaking of the average Pakistani officer of today, General Naqvi told me:
He has no doubt in his mind that the adversary is India, and that the whole raison d’être of the army is to defend against India. His image of Indians is of an anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim, treacherous people. So he feels that he must be always ready to fight against India.24
Pakistan was born in horrendous bloodshed between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims; and, within two months of its birth, fighting had broken out with India over the fate of the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir. This fighting has continued on and off ever since. Two out of Pakistan’s three wars with India have been fought over Kashmir, as have several smaller campaigns. These include the bitter, 25-year-long struggle for the Siachen Glacier (possibly the most strategically pointless fight in the entire history of human conflict) initiated by India in 1984.
The vast majority of Pakistani soldiers have served in Kashmir at some point or other, and for many this service has influenced their world view. Kashmir therefore plays for Pakistan the role of an irredenta, and has joined a long historical list of