Despite repeated wars, both conventional and unconventional, the psychology of Pakistan’s Army continues to remain an enigma to India.
Their planning and analysis is not solely a military subject, since it impacts Pakistan’s society deeply and, therefore, its politics and policies across the spectrum. In the process, India continues to get singed by overt as well as covert means deployed by GHQ Rawalpindi. As we mark the 25th anniversary of India’s victory in the Kargil War, it is worth pausing the revelry to pay greater attention to the Pakistan Army’s psychology.
Only a deeper analysis of its psychology can help us better understand how a professional organisation repeatedly makes the same errors of judgement at the regional level but continually succeeds with its domestic policy.
The fact that the army is the biggest player on the domestic stage is beyond any doubt or debate. It has maintained this position since the birth of Pakistan as a political entity in 1947 and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. It cannot be wished away, no matter how lowly the army’s image sinks, for it reemerges repeatedly.
Return to centre stage
The current moment is one of those where the army has returned to centre stage despite severe political knocks in the hustings. Its once overtly-groomed poster boy, Imran Khan, is now a jailed bête noire. And the once-jailed, and much-abused Sharif family is now occupying high political office, for the umpteenth time.
Military benefaction at its beatific best; the army pulled off an electoral coup with minimal collateral damage. A quarter of a century ago, on this date, the Pakistan Army was at one of its lowest points—defeated from a winning position, isolated, and humiliated.
One of its foremost generals likened the Kargil defeat to a humiliation greater than the loss of East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh.
Lt Gen Ali Kuli Khan Khattak (retd.) did, of course, have a major axe to grind against his coursemate and the prime mover behind the Kargil disaster, General Pervez Musharraf. The latter had superseded Khattak to become the four-star Chief of Army Staff. Musharraf immediately set out to undo a humiliation of more than a decade ago, whilst he was still a Brigadier.
In the process, he reused a formula that had already failed three decades ago, underlining the institutional psychological flaws.
As then-Commander 323 Brigade, late Pervez Musharraf lost vital and prestigious territory to Indian onslaughts at murderous heights in June 1987.
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A quest
All territory is militarily vital but when it has been named Quaid-e-Azam (father of the nation), it develops a prestige of its own. Sitting atop a 450 metre ice wall, the aura such a place exudes is unmatched. Except, when doughty Indians dethrone those sitting inside the ice bunker with an audacious daytime assault. That humiliation, though, did not prevent then-Brigadier Musharraf from attending the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies, London. In India, he would have been booked.
He carried this humiliation up the channel, and as the Director General Military Operations, he proposed a Kargil-type plan in the early half of the 1990s. Benazir Bhutto recalled being briefed, and rejecting the plan as outrageous. In addition, Bhutto pointed out that, despite what she sees as its focus on tactical victory as opposed to strategic vision, the army leadership understands that the Pakistani military’s success depends on competent political leadership. It is “appreciated by the military high brass that wars are not won just on military skills, but through diplomatic, political, and economic initiative.”
Hence, Pakistan Army is on a constant quest for a domestic political leadership that can help secure its elementary corporate interests, among which is an essentially adversarial, but militarily manageable, relationship with India. On the domestic front, it can take the knocks, and still re-emerge as the winner. But on the regional pitch, defeats are difficult to ignore, especially given that defeats have always been at Indian hands, and warfare invariably based on the same formula that has been repeatedly bested.
The late great psychologist Norman Dixon, in his book ‘On the Psychology of Military Incompetence’, said this for First World War generals, “Lack of imaginative leadership… underestimation of the enemy, delusional optimism”.
All of this, however, does nothing to take away from the fact that the Pakistan Army will invariably spring back to regaining its place as the centre of gravity. So it makes sense to invest in a greater understanding of that institution, its motives, and its psychology. In 1998, when Pervez Musharraf was elevated to a four-star rank, the South Block was abuzz locating the profile, as written by his Indian coursemate at RCDS. Sustained reading of that profile, by all parts of the Government of India, may well have helped New Delhi deal better with the various crises as they subsequently unfolded.
Manvendra Singh is a BJP leader, Editor-in-Chief of Defence & Security Alert and Chairman, Soldier Welfare Advisory Committee, Rajasthan. He tweets @ManvendraJasol. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)