The Pakistan Army Officer Corps, Islam and

Strategic Culture 1947-2007

Mark Fraser Briskey

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

UNSW School of Humanities and Social Sciences

04 July 2014
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
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Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Briskey

First name: Mark Other name/s: Fraser

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty:

Title: The Pakistan Army Officer Corps, Islam and Strategic Culture 1947-2007

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis examines the use and mmipulation of Islam as a fu1m of identity and important elemmt of the strategic
culture of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps between 1947 and 2007. Despite the ethnic and cultural d:isparifus within
the population that made up the new nation of Pakistan the Army has continued to rely on a rump of Punjabi and Pakhtun
Officers who have relied on Army interpretations of Islam fur identity. The thesis al'>o argues that the Army from its
outset has consistently conflated notions of the discredited'Mmtial Race' theory and Islam as the basis of the Army's
superiority in comparison to other armies - Imst notably the Indian Army.

Apart from the relationship between 'Mmiial Race' and Islam the thesis al'>o draws links between Islam and a
number of other significant influences on the A1my. An important method of understanding the role of Islam in the Officer Corps
is argued as usefully being understood through the prism of 'strategic culture' themy. Strategic culture theory highlights the
relevance 'of an organisation's history. In particular the theory argues the importance of major 'strategic' shocks and disasters
upon an organisation.. In this way the thesis argues that the tribulations of pmiition and the first Kashmir War of 1947-48,

the 1965 War and above all the 'strategic shock' suffered in the Army's humiliating defuat to India in 1971 were influential in
shaping an Army culture in which Islam was prominent.

The thesis concludes that in a titre period when Western or other Asian powers may consider it anachronistic to
call upon a religion and an uncompromising belief in a deity to provide an advantage in combat, there are Officers in the
Pakistan Army in the last decade of the twentieth centUiy and in the first decade of the new centUIY who hold these belie£;
as innate truths and an essential element of their Army culture.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in
part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property
rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Mi films to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral
theses only).

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ii
 Abstract

This thesis examines the use and manipulation of Islam as a form of identity
and important element of the strategic culture of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps
between 1947 and 2007. Despite the ethnic and cultural disparities within the
population that made up the new nation of Pakistan the Army has continued to rely on
a rump of Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers who have relied on Army interpretations of
Islam for identity. The thesis also argues that the Army from its outset has
consistently conflated notions of the discredited‘Martial Race’ theory and Islam as the
basis of the Army’s superiority in comparison to other armies - most notably the
Indian Army.

Apart from the relationship between ‘Martial Race’ and Islam the thesis also
draws links between Islam and a number of other significant influences on the Army.
An important method of understanding the role of Islam in the Officer Corps is argued
as usefully being understood through the prism of ‘strategic culture’ theory. Strategic
culture theory highlights the relevance of an organisation’s history. In particular the
theory argues the importance of major ‘strategic’ shocks and disasters upon an
organisation.. In this way the thesis argues that the tribulations of partition and the
first Kashmir War of 1947–48, the 1965 War and above all the ‘strategic shock’
suffered in the Army’s humiliating defeat to India in 1971 were influential in shaping
an Army culture in which Islam was prominent.

The thesis concludes that in a time period when Western or other Asian
powers may consider it anachronistic to call upon a religion and an uncompromising
belief in a deity to provide an advantage in combat, there are Officers in the Pakistan
Army in the last decade of the twentieth century and in the first decade of the new
century who hold these beliefs as innate truths and an essential element of their Army
culture.

iii
 Acknowledgements

In undertaking this dissertation I was very fortunate in receiving the help and
generous assistance of many persons over a number of years. Firstly my great thanks
to Eleanor Hancock and Jeff Grey for their advice, encouragement and patience over
the course of the entire dissertation, and Craig Stockings for his motivation towards
the end of the project. I am also extremely grateful for the funding of my travel to
undertake research for this project on two occasions by the University of New South
Wales. I would also like to thank the examiners of this dissertation for their comments
which have made it all that more insightful. Additionally I want to thank Bernadette
McDermot, Rita Parker, Mark O’Neill and Emily Robertson for their discussions and
encouragement that helped this project along.

Many other people generously gave of their time, knowledge, advice and
guidance on various matters over the years. Thanks to the Burma Star Association in
the United Kingdom, Robert Lyman, Tom Bruin, John Randle, Patric Emerson, Tarak
Barkawi, Brian Cloughley and his wife Margaret for graciously hosting me at their
lovely home in France to avail myself of Brian’s encyclopedic knowledge of the
Pakistan Army. My thanks are also due to John Chiles, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema,
Kaushik Roy, members of the Pakistan-Australia Forum, the Pakistan High
Commission Canberra and those officers of the Pakistan Army in Pakistan such as
Brigadier Talat Munir who inspired me to undertake this project and unstintingly
gave of their time in steering me onto previously unknown troves of primary sources
and responding graciously to my queries on matters new and old.

Finally, but not at all least, special acknowledgment to my wife Helen,

children Flyn and Hannah for their love, enduring patience and kind understanding as
I pursued this project over a long period of time in Australia and overseas. I love you
all.

iv
 Table of Contents
Abstract....................................................................................................................... iiii

Acknowledge ments ..................................................................................................... iv

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... v

Glossary....................................................................................................................... vii

Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... x

Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter I Religion, Martial Race and Myth in the British Indian Army from
the late 19th Century to 1947 ..................................................................................... 22

Chapter II Turbulent Birth: the Pakistan Army ................................................. 54

1947 – 1951......................................................................................................................
Partition, division of the British-Indian Army, Kashmir, Islam and the
foundations of the Strategic Culture of the Pakistan Army...................................

Chapter III Independence and evolution: 1951-1958 .......................................... 91

Chapter IV Birth of the Praetorian State: 1958-1970........................................ 119

Chapter V War, Islam and Dis memberme nt: 1970-1971.................................. 142

Chapter VI Bangladesh, Bhutto, Zia and the Institutionalisation of Islam:

1971-1988 166

Chapter VII The Army and Islam in the ‘Democratic Interregnum’ 1988-1999
191

Chapter VIII The Anvil 1999-2007 ...................................................................... 222

Chapter IX Conclusion ......................................................................................... 251

Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 259

v
vi
 Glossary

Amir Commander, chief

Basant Is a February spring festival acquired from Hindu tradition that

was practiced and celebrated until recently by Muslims in
Lahore by kite flying until the advent of Islamism in the new
millennium

Bihar/Bihari Bihar and Bihari is not the identification of the people of Bihar
but is rather referring to the variety of Urdu speaking people
who migrated from India to East Pakistan after partition. In this
regard they were referred to as Biharis as a manner of
distinguishing them from Bengalis

Fiqh Islamic jurisprudence

Ghazi Warrior of the faith (in British times a ‘fanatic’)

Hadith Tradition (of the Prophet)

Hudood Islamic Penal Code

Hurs A Muslim Sufi community of Pakistan

Islam Submission

Jatha A body of armed Sikhs and/or war-party

Jawan Soldier

Jazirat-ul-Arab A Muslim reference to the Holy Land of the Arabian Peninsula

Jihad al-akbar The greater jihad (struggle)

Jihad al-asghar The lesser jihad

Jihad fi sabil allah Jihad in the way of Allah

vii
Jizya Poll tax levied on non-Muslims ‘Dhimmi’ monotheist ‘people
of the book’

Kafir Unbeliever, ungrateful for Allah’s blessings or apostate

Khalifa Temporal and spiritual leader of the Muslims (khilifa, caliph)

Khilifat Authority over the Muslim community, the Ottoman claim to

leadership of the Muslim world as inheritors of the Abbasid
title of caliph or khalifah of the khilafat. Also the religious
movement for restoration of Turkish Khilifat in India during
the 1920s

Khutba Islamic religious sermon

Lashkar Tribal war party

LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre of Military Archives

Malik A tribal elder

Mazar Is a word derived from Arabic usually referring to a shrine of a

Sufi saint or famous person in the Indian subcontinent

Maulvi Informal title of one with some degree of religious standing in

the community

Mohaarram Shia festival commemorating the martyrdom of Husain at

Karbala

Mohajir Migrant (e.g. those Muslim Indians who migrated to Pakistan

in 1947)

Mujahedin Muslim holy warriors

Mujtahid Muslim qualified to interpret Islamic law

Mullah Religious preacher

Munshi Indian language instructor who provided tuition for Officers in

order to pass required Urdu language examinations
viii
Nisam-i-mustapha System of order as in the time of the Prophet Muhammad

Pir Muslim holy man, spiritual guide

Pukka An adjective derived from Hindi (Anglo-Indian) meaning

‘perfectly done’ and/or ‘genuine’, first class

Quaid-i-Azam Great leader, the title bestowed on Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Raj Rule or reign

Razakars Armed volunteers

Sherwani A garment of South Asian heritage; a long coat worn

traditionally by aristocracy and popularised by Mohammed Ali
Jinnah during the Pakistan movement

Salwar kameez Salwar is a loose pyjama like trouser and a kameez is a long
shirt or tunic worn in Pakistan

Sifarish/Sifaarish In strict Urdu terms meaning ‘recommendation’ but in its

pejorative sense as ‘unmerited recommendation’

Sepoy Soldier

Shaheed Martyr

Shariah Islamic law

Sufi Muslim mystic

Sunnah Actions and conduct of the Prophet Muhammad

Ulama Formally trained Muslim theologians (Alim singular)

Ummah The community of Muslims in the world

Zakat Islamic alms tax

ix
 Abbreviations

BIA British Indian Army

BJP Bharatiya Janata Party (India)

COAS Chief of Army Staff

CGS Chief of General Staff

CMLA Chief Martial Law Administrator

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

DGMO Director General of Military Operations

DMO Director Military Operations

FATA Federally Administered Tribal Agencies

FSF Federal Security Force

ISI Inter-Services Intelligence

IWM Imperial War Museum

IOR/L/MIL Indian Office Records, Library, Military Department

OIOC Oriental India Office Collection

JI Jamaat-i-Islami (Islamic Society)

IMA Indian Military Academy

INA Indian National Army

JSPCTS Joint Services Pre-Cadet Training School Quetta

LT Lashkar-i-Taiba (Army of the Pure)

MI Military Intelligence

x
MQM Muttahida and/or Muhajir Quami Movement. A movement for
the political rights of those Urdu speaking migrants and
descendants who moved to Pakistan at the time of partition and
is based in Karachi

NAM National Army Museum, Chelsea

NWFP North West Frontier Province

PAGB Pakistan Army Green Book

PMA Pakistan Military Academy located at Kakul near Abbotobad

Pakistan. The P.M.A long course is so named because of its
two-year duration compared to the initial six-month training at
the JSPCTS in Quetta

PML Pakistan Muslim League

PPP Pakistan People’s Party

RAW Research and Analysis Wing (India)

SEATO South East Asia Treaty Organisation

UNCIP United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan

US MAAG United States Military Assistance Advisory Group

US MDA United States Military Defense Assistance

xi
 Introduction

It has been argued that ‘new’ South Asian military history has been
neglected. 1 A history of the impact of Islam upon the Pakistan Army is important for
our understanding of the evolution of contemporary security matters in south and
Southwest Asia and their global impact. Understanding the Pakistan Army and
understanding Islam as it relates to the Pakistan Army is also important in a current
era where globalised resurgent religion and fundamentalist approaches to religion are
significant. These concerns are doubly relevant where the applicability of
Huntington’s theory of the possibility of a clash of civilisations between the Islamic
world and the West remains contested. 2

A history of the influence of Islam upon the Pakistan Army Officer Corps is
particularly important when considered against Pakistan’s pivotal role in the first and
second decades of the twenty-first century as an ally in the US led ‘global war against
terror’. Pakistan’s support is especially important in supporting the efforts of a
number of western nations participating as members of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) attempting to stabilise Afghanistan, and prevent the return to
power of the Islamist Taliban regime formerly supported officially by Pakistan.
Considered alongside contested claims of the Army’s continuing support for Islamist
militant Jihadis makes an examination of the role of Islam in the Pakistan Army
historically and contemporarily important. 3 Western concerns on the role of Islam in
the Pakistan Army are not new, especially so since the beginning of the current
millennium where concerns about the nature of a ‘radicalised nuclear capable

1
Gyanesh, Kudaisya. ‘In Aid of Civil Power: The Colonial Army in Northern India, c.1919-42’, in,
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2004.
2
S.M. Thomas, ‘A Globalised God’, in Foreign Affairs, November/December, Vol. 89, No. 6. 2010,
pp. 93-102 & Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,
Simon & Schuster, UK Ltd, 1997.
3
Lois A. Delvoie, ‘The Afghanistan War: The Pakistani Dimension’s’, in On Track, Vol. 13, No. 4,
Conference of Defence Associations, Canada, Winter 2008, p. 31; Mansoor Moaddel, Islamic
Modernism, Nationalism and Fundamentalism – Episode and Discourse, The University of Chicago
Press, USA, 2005 & John L., Esposito, The Islamic Threat – Myth or Reality, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1995.
1
Pakistan Army’, and an Islamist mutiny within the Army have been the subject of
considerable debate. 4

The growth of popular journalism and scholarly works upon the Pakistan
Army, Pakistan and Islamic fundamentalism since the terrorist events of September
11, 2001 has been prolific. Despite the prolific nature of this literature there is little in
the way of sustained studies addressing the specific issue of the influence of Islam
upon the history of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps. Much of the material
concerning the Pakistan Army and Islam has to be drawn by necessity from works
addressing a broader cross-section of issues concerning the Pakistan Army.
Importantly, much of this material has to be carefully filtered in order to guard against
the disproportionate amount of contemporary commentary upon extremism and its
propensity to taint a dispassionate scholarly focus upon the impact of Islam on the
Pakistan Army since its formation in 1947.

This thesis will examine the history of the Pakistan Army between 1947 and
2007 and describe how Islam, though varying in its impact, has been a constant and
significant factor of overt and indirect influence. Islam has manifested its influence on
the identity and strategic culture of the Army from its very beginnings up to the
conclusion of this study in 2007 in which the Army had adopted explicit Islamic
philosophies for the conduct of warfare and ethical guidelines of the Officer Corps. It
is the contention of this thesis that the story of what impact Islam has had upon the
Pakistan Army has not been fully explored.

The most important original contribution made by this study is to provide a

new interpretation of the history of the Army and contribute to a greater
understanding of the Pakistan Army by examining the influence of Islam on the
Officer Corps from its inception in 1947 to 2007. Importantly, this thesis draws upon
the influence of the Army’s predecessor the British Indian Army in how Islam had
been an important factor in the ‘martial race’ identities of those Officers and soldiers

4
Bruce Riedel considers a number of scenarios involving a nuclearised, radical and anti-American
Pakistan in B. Riedel, ‘Armageddon in Islamabad’, in The National Interest, June 23 2009,
http://nationalinterest.org, retrieved 21 September 2010; A. Malik, ‘On the brink of an abyss’, in Dawn,
Newspaper, Karachi, 27 April 2009 & considerations of US contingency responses in ‘US has plans to
safeguard Pakistan’s nukes: report’, New Age, Dhaka, 12 November, 2007 & S.M. Hersh, ‘Defending
the Arsenal’, in The New Yorker, USA 16 November 2009, in particular Hersh’s interview of Indian
officials who claim the US is ignorant of intelligence concerning Pakistan Army Officers who wish to
lead an Islamic Army.
2
who would form the first generation of the Pakistan Army.

It is the objective of this thesis to contribute to a greater understanding of the

role of Islam in the Officer Corps by analysing the formal and informal sacralisation
of the Army and to identify the influence of this religious dimension on the Pakistan
Army between 1947 and 2007. This thesis considers the role of Islam as an important
influence together with a constellation of related factors that have helped shape the
Pakistan Army, such as: religious nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, martial race
beliefs, ethno-nationalism, military professionalism, and praetorianism as; well as the
management of Islam in Pakistan’s domestic and international politics.

Indeed the analysis of Islam and these other factors viewed chronologically
over the period 1947–2007 through the historical paradigm will be pivotal in
synthesising the conclusion to this thesis.

The thesis commences its exploration of the role of Islam by introducing and
contextualising the subject in two introductory chapters followed by six chapters that
consecutively address what the role of Islam has been in the Army. The time periods
encapsulated by each chapter represent significant demarcations in the history of the
Army and Pakistan. One concluding chapter then synthesises what the role of Islam
has been and how it has been manifested within the Army over this time period. The
thesis argues that the Army was influenced indelibly by inherited culture, concepts
and beliefs from the British Indian Army. Concepts such as martial race conflated the
Islam of the Army with the martial race indoctrination already imprinted onto the new
Army’s Punjabi and Pathan majority. Paradoxically, though Pakistan achieved
independence against Indian resistance the Pakistanis were dissatisfied with their
inheritance at partition and were outraged at India’s acquisition of Kashmir. Within
the Army this distrust was instrumental in propagating foundation myths and legends
of the Army’s and Pakistan’s origins being forged in adversity as a Muslim homeland
against near impossible odds and barriers presented by an irredentist and hostile
Hindu India.

The danger argued as emanating from India intersects with the tenuous
beginnings of the Army that was bereft of an identity, except for that acquired from
the cultural inheritances of the British Indian Army. Apart from these qualities the

3
Army was formed in the absence of any national tradition and formed as an Army to
defend a country with no historical precedent. In this way the thesis examines the
early and evolving use and manipulation of Islam as a form of identity and basis of a
strategic culture for the Army to adhere to. Despite the ethnic and cultural disparities
within the population that made up the new nation of Pakistan the Army would
continue to rely on an Islam for an Army and national identity. Furthermore, Islam
would become equated as the basis of the Army’s superiority in comparison to other
armies such as India.

The Army throughout its history would seek to promote Islam externally to
such nations as the US during the early 1950s as an integral part of a pious anti-
communist warrior character of the Army that made them superior soldiers.
Internally, the Army during the first decade of the twenty-first century would formally
establish Islam as the basis of a philosophy of warfare and ethics for the Army beyond
the ken of a number of practices instituted during the Zia Islamisation years. It is then
important to understand the nature of how Islam has historically been utilised within
the Pakistan Army and how the Army’s evolution since 1947 has been influenced by
its institutional inheritance from the British Indian Army. Ideas on ethnic recruitment
and martial race and their intersection with Islam contributed to the establishment and
evolution of the strategic culture of the Pakistan Army. Though this thesis addresses
the time period 1947 to 2007, the first chapter examines the Pakistan Army’s
immediate predecessor, the British Indian Army.

This examination is necessary because many of the first generation of

Pakistani Army Officers commenced their careers in the British Indian Army prior to
or during World War II, and up until the time of partition in 1947. This first
generation included such significant figures as General Zia ul-Haq who exerted
influence on the Army until the late 1980s. It is also important to have some
knowledge of the history of the British Indian Army in regard to its management of
religion, politics and ethnicity in the Army. While the Pakistan Army has significantly
involved itself in politics the British Indian Army did not, except for those occasions
when it acted in support of the ‘civil power’ to suppress riots and rebellions when the
civil authorities could not.

4
 In tracking the evolution of the impact of Islam upon the British Indian and
Pakistan Army this thesis considers the centrality of Islam to the Pakistan Army. This
study is situated alongside studies that have considered the role of religion and
conflict in forming national identity. Professor Linda Colley argued that the
experiences of the British wars against the French were indispensable to the birth of a
modern British identity through their conflicts with Catholic France. Likewise, in
certain aspects this study argues a similar process at least so far as the Pakistan Army
Officer Corps views its identity and strategic culture in Islamic terms compared to a
Hindu India. 5 Islam has manifested a pivotal role in the Army’s identity formation in
juxtaposition to what the Army has described as a Hindu India. Islam has been critical
in the evolution of both Army and Pakistani identity where Muslim identity was used
in an attempt to overcome ethnic and cultural factors. In reflecting upon Colley’s
study and especially her focus upon the importance of religion and warfare in the
manifestation of identity, this study like hers also brings together the important
elements of popular religious identity in Pakistan, being used to support strategic
ends.

Over the course of the following chapters the study also draws upon how
Islam has been present through the prism of Hassner’s ‘framing of the role of religon’,
in the Army’s theology, hierarchy, icononography, ceremony and knowledge in the
Army. 6 Chapters throughout the thesis note at different points how the Army in this
regard has at times equated religiosity with hierarchy in the Zia years, to the use of
inconography and ceremony in the earlier years when the Army was seeking to
establish an identity sometimes conflating Islam with inherited concepts from the
British.

The idea of an Islamic Pakistan also draws out competing arguments of those
whose Islam and whose nationalism the Pakistan Army represents and to whose
political ends they serve. The consideration of these strategic issues are more than
abstract considerations given the ethnic, cultural and religious divides in Pakistan, and
the Army’s role as a catalyst in fomenting these issues since the states establishment
in 1947.

5
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1992.
6
Ron E.Hassner (Editor), Religion in the Military Worldwide, Cambridge University Press, New York,
2014, pp.7-8.
5
 Methodologically this thesis relies upon methods of historical enquiry as well
as some theoretical perspectives in order to draw out and distinguish the nuances and
subtleties of the impact of Islam upon the Pakistan Army. Historical enquiry
encompasses the use of, “every kind of evidence that human beings have left of their
past activities”. 7 This thesis utilises archival records of government documents,
manuscripts, memoirs, letters, emails, published and unpublished PhD theses,
published studies and auto-biographies as well as oral history in the form of recorded
interviews held at archives and interviews with witnesses to these events to interpet,
analyse and provide a descriptive account of the Pakistan Army Officr Corps, Islam
and Strategic Culture between 1947-2007. 8 These sources wer interpreted by
Historical method with the application of critical history methods in evaluating the
production, authenticity, accuracy and bias of these written and spoken artifacts. 9

The terms ‘Strategic Culture’ and to a lesser degree ‘Ethno-Symbolism’ are

terms of elementary importance to this thesis and are important to define in order to
contextualise their meaning in regard to this thesis. It is also important to note that the
nature and veracity of these theoretical terms and the theory they propose remain
contested, especially ‘strategic culture’. 10 This thesis specifically notes for instance
how the Army’s strategic culture was transmitted through time and why certain
periods in the Army’s history were formative.

Strategic culture theory and descriptions of Islamic fundamentalism,

Islamisation, and extremism are key contextual concepts for this thesis, while the
theory of martial race shall be examined in the next chapter. Strategic culture has its
deractors as well as supporters witth positions being argued divergently from strategic
culture’s utility as, ‘a means for understanding what appears to be irrational state
behaviour”, and serving, “as a pervasive guide to action…from grand strategy down

7
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History 5 th Edition, Pearson Education, 2010, p.89.
8
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History 5 th Edition, Pearson Education, 2010, p.89.
9
Professor of History JohnTosh notes these historical methodsh. The Pursuit of History, pp.119-142.
10
Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4,
(Spring 1995) Johnston considers some of the problems within the different ‘generations’ of strategic
culture, including definitional problems as well as the explanation of inconsistency and other issues
such as perceived disjunctions between strategic behaviour and culture. Similarly, Johnston considers
why some periods in history are considered formative and others are not, as well as how the strategic
culture is transmitted through time.
6
to battlefield decision making” to those who see it risking being linked to, “simplistic
ethnic stereotyping…”. 11

A strategic culture can be defined as a theory that argues that there are
distinctive national styles in security and military affairs. There have been studies on a
number of strategic cultures, for example: Israel, Iran and France. 12 The provenance
of strategic culture effectively begins in the 1930s with Liddell-Hart’s theorising of a
traditional British way of warfare, while Booth appealed in the late 1970s for
strategists to be more conscious of their cultural context in their thinking. 13 The term
‘strategic culture’ it-self dates from the 1970s in Snyder’s explanation of Soviet
strategy. 14 Strategic styles influenced by the nature of the nation or ‘organisation’s
history, which has been involved in theat state’s defence and are influenced by major
shocks or disasters that occur to the state, society or organisation. 15 Booth’s definition
of strategic culture is also helpful,

…a nation’s traditions, values, attitudes, patterns of behaviour, habits, customs,

achievement and particular ways of adapting to the environment and solving
problems with respect to the threat or use of force. 16

The thesis considers these elements in how the Army’s strategic culture was
developed and influenced by significant events. This thesis will illustrate how events
such as: the formation of the Army from the Muslim elements of the British Indian
Army, the first Kashmir war of 1947–48, the 1965 war, the 1971 war and the
formation of Bangladesh, as well as other major events such as the Russian invasion
of Afghanistan, and the impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US have
influenced the role of Islam in the Pakistan Army.

11
Lawrence Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War, Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 5-10.
12
Gregory F. Giles, ‘Continuity and Change in Israel’s Strategic Culture’, Defense Threat Reductions
Agency, Comparative Strategic Cultures Curriculum, Contract No: DTRA01-03-D-OO17, USA, 2002;
Jennifer Knepper, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Iranian Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 27,
2008; Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine – France between the Wars’, International
Security, Vol. 19, No. 4(Spring 1995).
13
Sondhaus, Strategic Culture p. 3.
14
Sondhaus, Strategic Culture, p. 1.
15
Jeffrey S. Lantis & Darryle Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Bayliss, James J. Wirtz & Colin S.
Gray, Strategy in the Contemporary World 4 th Edition’, Oxford University Press, 2013, United
Kingdom, pp. 76-95.
16
Sondhaus, Strategic Culture, p. 5.
7
 History and experiences are important considerations in the evolution of
strategic culture… Another source of strategic culture is the nature of a
country’s….defence organizations. Myths and symbols are considered to be
part of all cultural groupings and both can act as a stabilizing or destabilizing
factor in the evolution of strategic cultural identities. 17

Faruqi has argued that in terms of its historical legacies that Pakistani’s, “regard
themselves as heirs to the Mughals of South Asia”, with such historical analogies also
to be found in non-Asian cultures such as the idea of Romanita in 19th and early 20th
century Italy in their quest to emulate their historical forebears the Romasn. 18
Chapter Two illustrates the belief in such historical legacies and myths with the
example of at least one senior officer involved in the first Kashmir war perceiving the
heritage of the newly formed Pakistan Army within the historic legacy of the Muslim
conquerors of South Asia.

This aspect of Pakistani strategic culture and the pivotal role of Islam, the
predominant place of the Army and the formative events of partition to this culture
have been explored by Pakistani scholars who note the Pakistani use of religion as a
tool of policy19 . The Pakistan Army scholar Fair in her comprehensive 2014 work
also devotes attention to the strategic culture of Pakistan noting the influence of the
British legacy in regards Pakistans strategic environment, martial races and
“instrumentalization of religious and ethnic differences”. 20 The contours of Pakistani
strategic culture have also argued by Khan and Lavoy, though these scholars’ purpose
was not to provide a sustained analysis of Islam or its role in Pakistan’s strategic
culture over the course of its history as this study seeks to perform, while Rizvi
importantly recognizes the impact of realism. 21

17
Lantis & Howlett, p. 81.
18
Ahmad Faruqi, Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan: The Price of Strategic Myopia,
Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, p.2. & Brian R.Sullivan, ‘The strategy of the decisive weight: Italy, 1882-
1922’, Williamson Murrary, MacGregor Knox & Alvin Bernstein, The Making of Strategy: Rulers,
States, and War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 311-313.
19
Ijaz Khan, Pakistan’s Strategtic Culture and Foreign Policy Making, Nova Science Publishers, New
York, 2007, pp.16-20.
20
C.Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, Oxford University Press,
New York, 2014, pp.24-27.
21
Hasan Askari Rizvi, ‘Pakistan’s Strategic Culture’, in Michael R. Chambers (Ed), South Asia in
2020: Future Strategic Balances and Alliances, Strategic Studies Institute, November 2002, USA, pp.
305-329; Feroz Hasan Khan, ‘Comparative Strategic Culture: The Case of Pakistan’, Strategic Insights,
8
 Historical experiences, perceptions of the adversary and a conception of self – the
determinants of strategic culture – are relatively permanent, but each crisis situation
may be totally or partly different…at times, the strategic cultural perspective and the
dictates of realism may lead to the same or similar policy measures. 22

Sondhaus argued that the role of supranational forces, such as Islamic

fundamentalism, had influenced Arab and other Muslim states such as Pakistan and
Iran. Sondhaus believes Islamic fundamentalism to have influenced these countries to
behave in a manner contrary to their national interest, and in this he sees the influence
of culture. 23

The theory of ethno-symbolism and nationalism developed by Professor

Anthony Smith usefully aids the interpretation of the history of the Pakistan Army
Officer Corps, Islam and its Strategic Culture. Ethno-symbolism and nationalism
theory consider the culture, religion and history of social structures.

…ethno-symbolists consider the cultural elements of symbol, myth, memory,

value, ritual and tradition to be crucial to an analysis of ethnicity, nations and
nationalisms…these same cultural elements have endowed each community
with a distinctive symbolic repertoire in terms of language, religion, customs
and institutions… 24

The value of considering this history of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps through
such a theoretical lens is important in the analysis of the role of Islam within the
Institution of the Army.

Islam is not a thing, but a happening subject to the whims and motivations of
people who make things happen. 25 The Muslim world is also not singular entity
though they do share a sense of transnational and cross-cultural unity known as the
Ummah and despite these differences as well as being divided into the two main

Volume IV, Issue 10, USA, (October 2005) & Peter R. Lavoy, ‘Pakistan’s Strategic Culture’, Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, Contract No. DTRA01-03-D-0017, 31 October 2006.
22
Hasan-Askari Rizvi, ‘Pakistan’s Strategic Culture’, in, Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army
War College, Carlisle, USA, South Asia in 2020,p.307.
23
Sondhaus, Strategic Culture, pp. 78 & 86-88.
24
Anthony Smith Emeritus Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics.
Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism, Routledge, London, 2009, p.25.
25
David Waines, An Introduction to Islam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p.1
9
groups of Sunni and Shi’i share belief in the Five Pillars of Islam. 26 Islam in the sub-
Continent formed a distinctive form since its inception through conquerors, mystics
and traders. 27

The fact that a number of Islamic Empires including the Ghaznavids, Ghurids,
Delhi sultanates and independent Muslim regimes that ended with the Mughals retains
a significant level of importance for Pakistanis and this belief will be noted over the
following chapters. 28 This thesis emphasizes the influence of Islam on the Army and
its influence in seemingly irrational operations such as Operation Gibraltar examined
in Chapter Four. The role of Islam in these major political events noted on the
preceding pages was an important locus of justification for the Army’s involvement in
conflict. In Pakistan, as with other Muslim states, Islam is varied and sometimes
elusively attached to political, ethnic and cultural expediencies and interpretation.
This is also a factor with this thesis where in later chapters it is evident that Pakistani
Officers pursue a diverse array of adherernce to Islam from moderate to extremist
beliefs. These beliefs are sometimes redolent of the great degree of diversity within
South Asian Islam noted more explicitly in the next chapter, as well as the difficulties
discovered in actually defining a Muslim during the Munir Commission Report on the
Ahmediyya disturbances in Lahore in 1953 discussed in Chapter Three. Green sums
up the difficulties for the historian in describing Islam,

Like any other large scale religious or ideological label, for the historian, ‘Islam’ is
only meaningful when conceived in terms of persons, institutions or discourses at
work in the social world. It is in this way that sense can be made of the different ways
in which religion operates in history: when ‘religion’ is seen in terms of contingent
human beings rather than in terms of fixed theological ideals – when made present in
living Muslims rather than when made abstract in a reified universal Islam. 29

With this definition in mind the objective of this thesis is not to focus upon
exegetical issues in Islam, but rather to look at the temporal reality of Islam for
Pakistani Army Officers and its impact upon the institution of the Army across the
period of 1947 to 2007.
26
Waines, An Introduction to Islam, p.2 & John L.Esposito, ‘Islam in Asia: An Introduction’, John
L.Esposito (Ed), Islam in Asia: Religion, Politics & Society, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp.11-12.*
27
Ira M.Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, p.466.
28
Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, pp.437-463.
29
Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the service of Empire,
Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 5-6.
10
 The terms Islamic fundamentalism and Islamisation shall be used in this thesis
and a working definition for these terms will be useful. It is important to acknowledge
that there are competing descriptions of such terms. One of these approaches tends to
describe these terms negatively, which Vincent argues implied,

…fanaticism, dogmatism, intolerance, anti-intellectualism, terror or extremism. This

sense can and does apply to many who would be described as religious, but it can
extend well beyond any overt religious connotation. Anyone can be excessively
narrow-minded and dogmatic. 30

While a more literalist theological description shall be used as the preferred definition
within this thesis,

Islamic fundamentalism alludes to contemporary political movements and concepts,

primarily antagonistic to ruling secular regimes, which aspire to institute some
Islamic state. The paradigm for this movement is sought in the earliest Islamic
political community established by Muhammad in Medina in the seventh century and
sustained by the Khulafah-i-Rashidun (the rightly guided caliphs) the four caliphs
who immediately succeeded him. 31

Apart from qualifying that the term fundamentalism has been defined in forms
that may differ from the above, it must also be noted that the terms ‘fundamentalist’
and ‘fundamentalism’ are rejected by many Muslims who prefer the terms ‘Islamism’
and ‘Islamist’ when referring to those who desire or advocate Islamic law and/or an
Islamic state. 32 All of these terms will be at times used in this manner throughout the
thesis. When referring to Islam in the thesis the connotation is upon moderate Islam
for whatever sect unless qualified by the aforementioned definitions and discussion of
fundamentalism or any other criteria.

While examining the forerunner to the Pakistan Army, the British Indian
Army, this thesis is limited to the study of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps. The
thesis shall not consider the Pakistan Navy, Air Force, Inter-Services Intelligence

30
Andrew, Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies – Third Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, USA, 2010, p. 261
and more generally chapter (10) Fundamentalism, pp. 261-292.
31
Sami Zubaida, ‘Islam, The People and the State: Essays on Political Ideas and Movements in the
Middle East’, Routledge, New York, 1989, p. 38, quoted in Sohail Mahmood, Islamic Fundamentalism
in Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1995.
32
R.K.P. Multani, Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia, Sumit Enterprises, New Delhi, 2007.
11
Directorate or the enlisted personnel of the Pakistan Army unless necessary to
illustrate the influence of Islam more generally within the military and intelligence
services of Pakistan. As others have written it is somewhat challenging undertaking
research upon certain aspects of the Pakistan Army not least because it is difficult
gaining access to internal Army publications and Army personnel and it is this very
difficulty in obtaining information that contributes to a vacuity of knowledge and
spawns misconceptions on the nature of Islamization within the Army. 33 This was
true for this study with the acquisition of a number of issues of the Pakistan Army
Journal and Green Book series proving to be problematic.

Use has been made of documentary, interview and oral history sources
collected in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, France and Australia upon
the British Indian and Pakistan Army. The documents are usefully considered in
conjunction with the interviews and correspondence conducted with a number of
British Indian Army veterans to elicit facts and perspectives upon the British Indian
Army and the evolution of the Pakistan Army. Interviews with former military
personnel deployed to Pakistan as military attachés or UN observers have also been
utilised. In one instance one source falls within a number of categories having been a
defence attaché posted to Pakistan, a UN Kashmir observer, author of two books on
the Pakistan Army, as well as being a South Asian security commentator for a number
of security publications.

A useful source for the later chapters of this thesis was the Pakistan Army
Green Book series published annually by the Pakistan Army Press Rawalpindi since
1990. The Green Book series address topical themes of importance to the Army and
include individual submissions by Officers whose work is sometimes critical of Army
doctrine, policy and methods. Successful submissions to the Green Book series are
adjudicated on the merit of their argument by Army editors. Each Green Book is a
substantial publication with usually over one hundred submissions of three to ten
pages in length that includes a biography of the submitting Officer, their photo, and
their essential service details, such as: date of commission, service function, military
interests and role at time of submission. A number of the Officers/authors of these
submissions can be tracked across successive Green Books as well as their subsequent

33
C.Christine Fair, ‘Has the Pakistan Army Islamized?, p.6.
12
careers in the Army, including Officers who assumed such pivotal roles as Corps
Commanders and Chief of Army Staff. 34 These Green Books were chosen because of
the wealth of primary source information on topics concerning this thesis as well as
their detailed biographies of Pakistani Officers. These books were acquired from
retail bookshops in Pakistan as well as from Pakistani Officers in Pakistan and
Pakistani Defence Attaches deployed in Australia.

In addition to these aforementioned sources the thesis has also drawn from
articles cited in the Pakistan Army Journal, Staff College Journal, National Defence
University Journal, Officers handbooks and some internal reports on Islam, such as
that encompassing philosophies of motivation, the role of Jihad and how Islam does
or does not impact upon issues ranging from training to strategic doctrine. The thesis
also draws upon commercial publications published in Pakistan for the military
audience such as the Defence Journal as well as the substantial body of published
autobiographies of Army Officers.

Sources for the early chapters of this thesis include interviews conducted with
British and Pakistani veterans of the British Indian Army, the papers and records held
by the Oriental and India Office Collection at the British Library and oral history
recordings of that library. The British Library was chosen specifically because of its
significance as the great repository of these records, as well as the Public Records
Office at Kew, the Imperial War Museum, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military
Archives and National Army Museums who similarly hold significant records on the
British involvement in India as well as appropriate documentary evidence of the
Army,.

The British and Pakistani veterans chosen were as representative as could be

obtained given the passage of time and the few living veterans still in a position to be
able to be interviewed. The British veterans were chosen with the assistance of the
Mr Robert Lyman author and former British Army Officer and the Burma Star
Association in the United Kingdom, while the Pakistani veterans were identified with

34
The submission guidelines for the Green Book were obtained and clarified separately from three
serving Brigadiers of the Pakistan Army.

13
the assistance of members of the Australia-Pakistan Forum, Pakistan Defence
Attaches to Australia as well as serving and retired Pakistani based Officers. Other
sources utilised include the oral history interview recordings of British Indian Army
Officers held by the Templer Study Centre at the National Army Museum Chelsea.
Sources were chosen with the assistance of the staff of the Templer Study Centre who
identified appropriate records in regards service, location and era from their oral
history series and written records.

The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at Kings College was also
visited to consult the private papers of the first two Commanders in Chief of the
Pakistan Army. Lord Ismay’s papers and correspondence concerning the division of
the British Indian Army in 1947 were also consulted at the Liddell Hart Centre.
Memoirs and papers held by the Imperial War Museum were also consulted. Later
chapters drew upon certain materials viewed at the Pakistan National Library and
comments provided by the Dean of the Pakistan National Defence University.

The aforementioned troves of information proved to be of the greatest value in

researching the subject of this thesis and believed to present a balance of perspective,
bias and breadth between the British, Pakistani and other sources. While there remain
no doubt additional Pakistani and Indian based military records that may be relevant,
as well as other resources globally, it is not believed they would present a
substantially different outcome than from what has been obtained with the primary
source and other records utilised in this thesis.

A review of the literature in which this thesis sits reveals that it has been
addressed by a diverse range of approaches by scholars and commentators of
Pakistan. A number of works are distinct histories of Pakistan in which the Army is
mentioned but is not the primary focus of the work. Other literature specifically
addresses the Army but can be sub-categorised as either distinct unit histories or
campaign histories that include some discussion of Islam in the Army. Literature can
also be categorised chronologically from work that considers: the era of partition and
formation of the Army, the post-formation era, the post-1971 era and the post-
September 11, 2001 era. The earlier era includes a vast array of work on Pakistan’s
wars and conflicts with India such as the initially clandestine 1947–48 Kashmir War,
while later work addresses the 1965 War and the shock caused by the loss of the 1971
14
War. Autobiographies of senior Officers consider these events from an equally
diverse range of opinions, including the justification, conduct and theory behind these
conflicts as well as the apportioning of blame. The post-September 11, 2001 era is
dominated by considerations of Pakistan’s role in the ‘Global War on Terror’ as well
as analyses of the Army’s established and alleged relationships with Islamic
fundamentalist groups.

Thematically then the work can be divided firstly into histories of Pakistan or
studies upon Pakistan in which the Army’s role is addressed prominently with or
without some reference to Islam. The second theme may be described as distinct
campaign histories or all encompassing Army histories in which Islam is not a major
focus. The third thematic group of work concerns Army autobiography in which,
dependent on the authors piety, the role of Islam in the Army may or may not be
mentioned, and lastly to specific studies on the strategic culture of the Army or the
inculcation of Islamic warfare in the Army.

Examples of the first theme include Cohen’s 1994 work updated in 1998, The
Pakistan Army 1998 Edition where he devotes one nineteen page chapter in this book
to Islam and the Officer Corps. 35 Cohen valuably explores Islam’s impact upon the
state and the application of Islamic principles within the military and how these
principles are inculcated into both strategic and tactical doctrine, though the study is
now dated. Professor Howard Schaffer and Terisita Schaffer, both former diplomats
to Pakistan provide an analysis of the cultural and identity imperatives of the political
and military elites. 36

Nawaz’s 2008 book Crossed Swords provides a comprehensive political and

military history of Pakistan including attention to the promulgation of Islam by
General Zia in chapter fourteen; while in 2010 he collaborated with Fair to produce a
work on the changing nature of the demographics of Pakistan Army Officer Corps. 37
Rizvi's The Military and Politics in Pakistan analyses the role of the military’s

35
Stephen Philip Cohen, The Pakistan Army 1998 Edition, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998.
36
Howard B. Schaffer & Teresita C. Schaffer, How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States, United
States Institute of Peace, Washington D.C., 2011.
37
S. Nawaz, Crossed Swords – Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within, Oxford University Press,
London, UK, 2008 & C.C. Fair & S. Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps, in, The
Journal of Strategic Studies, Routledge, Vol. 34, No. 1, February, 2011, pp. 63-94.
15
persistent involvement in politics while Brigadier Siddiqi's The Military in Pakistan:
Image and Reality argues the continuance of a British oriented colonial image by the
higher echelons of the Army. 38

Siddiqi’s argument is supported to an extent in Daechel’s Military

Islamisation in Pakistan and the spectre of colonial perceptions where he interprets
Islamisation and military rule in Pakistan as being a continuing manifestation of
Pakistan’s colonial roots. 39 Such studies underscore the importance of understanding
and contextualising the British Indian Army model which Fair’s study noted earlier
also emphasized the importance of British influence upon the strategic culture of the
Army which is explored in the next chapter.

Works consulted from the second theme included The Story of the Pakistan
Army, The Pakistan Army 1947–1949, The Pakistan Army 1966–71, Culture and
Combat in the Colonies: The Indian Army in the Second World War and Z. A. Khan’s
The Way it Was, which all provide some insight into the role of Islam in the Army. 40
Similarly, the studies by Cheema and Cloughley that focus on an organisational
history of the Army—including the narration of wars, battles and the leaders who led
them—are useful with Cloughley’s noting the impact of Islamisation during Zia’s
term in power useful from his perspective of having served as a defence attaché in
Pakistan during this period. 41

Within the third theme the autobiographies of a large number of Pakistani

Army Officers is available with those of Musa Khan, Ayub Khan and Qasim being
representative of this genre and include varying degrees of commentary upon Islam

38
Hasan-Askari, Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan 1947–86, Progressive Publishers, Lahore
Pakistan, 1987 & A.R. Siddiqi (Brig. Retd) The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality, Vanguard
Books, Lahore Pakistan, 1996.
39
Markus Daeschsel, ‘Military Islamisation in Pakistan and the spectre of colonial perceptions’, in
Contemporary South Asia (1997), Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.141-160.
40
Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949, Wajidalis Printers for the Services Book Club, Lahore,
Pakistan, 1989 & S. Riza, The Pakistan Army 1966-71, Wajidalis Printers for the Services Book Club,
Lahore, Pakistan, 1990; T. Barkawi, ‘Culture and Combat in the Colonies: The Indian Army in the
Second World War’, in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2, Sage Publications, London,
2006, pp. 325-355 & Z.A, Khan, The Way it Was, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, Pakistan, 1998.
41
Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, The Armed Forces of Pakistan, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2002 & Brian
Cloughley, War, Coups & Terror – Pakistan’s Army in Years of Turmoil, Pen & Sword Military,
Barnsley, United Kingdom, 2008 & Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army – Wars and
Insurrections, Oxford University Press, Karachi, Pakistan, 1999.
16
and the Army. 42

The body of literature encompassing the last theme of work included studies
that argue against propositions that there can be a form of warfare legitimately
described as Islamic, to arguments that there does exist a continuous unbroken Islamic
heritage of unconventional warfare. 43 This theme also includes such works as
Brigadier S. K. Malik’s The Quranic Concept of War and Haq’s Islamic Motivation
and National Defence, that draw upon the exegesis of holy sources for the conduct of
warfare and management of the Army. 44 Similarly, Al-Fughom’s work on the
spiritual preparation of Muslim armies is useful and focuses on the first two decades
of Islam. Al-Fughom’s work is informative on classic portrayals of Islamic military
doctrine, Islamic military leadership, strategy, self-denial, steadfastness, and sense of
mission and is valuable in comparing the early Islamic communities views to those
later views espoused as Islamic by Pakistani Officers. 45

Before the impact of Islam upon the Army between 1947 and 2007 is
examined in the succeeding chapters, an introductory chapter will provide the
information required to establish historical context. Chapter One discusses the
management of religion in the British Indian Army as well as the theory of martial
race and political consciousness. This is important in understanding the subsequent
conflation of martial race notions with the Muslim identity of the Officers who would
form the Pakistan Army in 1947. Significantly, this conflated identity was expressed
via powerful myths of a Muslim and martial exceptionalism amongst those Officers
who would form the new Army. Chapter Two will examine the period 1947 to 1951
and explore how the interpretation of British and Indian actions by Pakistani Officers
contributed to their feeling of having been defrauded of their rightful portion of
military materiel and territorial inheritance despite paradoxically their having
achieved the objective of a Muslim homeland constituted with the establishment of

42
General Mohammad Musa, From Jawan to Genera, East & West Publishing, Karachi, 1984; Ayub
Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford University Press, London, 1967 & Brig. Syed Shah Abul Qasim,
Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel Publishers, Karachi, 2003.
43
M.O. Khan, ‘Is there an Islamic Way of War”, in Small Wars Journal, published by Small Wars
Foundation, USA, 2010 & H. John Poole, Tactics of the Crescent Moon – Militant Muslim Combat
Methods, Posterity Press, Emerald, North Carolina, USA, 2004.
44
S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, Himalayan Books (reprint), New Delhi, India, 1986 & I.
Haq, Islamic Motivation and national Defence, Vanguard Books, Lahore, Pakistan, 1991.
45
Nawaf Bedah Al-Fughom, ‘Factors in the Spiritual Preparation of Muslim Armies’, Unpublished
PhD Dissertation, The University of Leeds, April 2003.
17
Pakistan. Linked to this will be the Army’s views on the acquisition of the Muslim
majority state of Kashmir by India and how this produced influential myths and
narratives in which Islam was stated to be in danger from a Hindu India. This is
significant because a fear of India is a pillar of Pakistani strategic culture evident
throughout the period studied.

The unresolved issue of Kashmir contributed to the establishment of an Army

culture and identity as well as a strategic culture in which Islam dominated. By
culture the meaning in this context refers to culture as contestable and refers to the
“values, norms and assumptions that guide human action…” that allow members of
that culture to interpret situations in a limited and specific way. 46 In the sense of the
Pakistan Army being an organisational entity, culture is also helpfully explained in
some aspects by reference to management theory which proposes that organisation’s
maintain specific cultures that are formed in response to external environment and
reflect the philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, and shared values of its members. 47 These
aspects Grant argues are furthermore “embedded within national cultures, and
incorporate elements of social and professional cultures”. 48 Cultures and national
cultures influence strategic cultures.

Chapter Two argues that the impact of the division of the Army from the
British Indian Army into the Pakistan Army, the travails of partition, the loss of
Kashmir to India and the 1947–48 War contributed to the establishment of a myopic
Army interpretation of these events. The influence of these events was critical and has
been manifested throughout the history of the Army this thesis addresses. These
events have influenced Army values, premises, and assumptions on their role. The
term ‘myths’ is used in the sense of “commemoration of key individuals and events
associated … during formative periods in its history”. 49

Chapter Three will deal with the period 1951 to 1958 in which command of
the Army was assumed by its first indigenous Pakistani Commander in Chief, a
modernist Muslim, and the consequences of Pakistan’s international and domestic

46
Peter H. Wilson, ‘Defining Military Culture’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 72, No. 1,
January 2008, p. 14.
47
John Viljoen & Susan Dann, Strategic Management 3 rd Edition, Longman, Australia, 2000, p. 487.
48
Robert M. Grant, Contemporary Strategy Analysis – Concepts, Techniques and Applications 4 th
Edition, Blackwell Publishers, Malden Massachusetts, 2002, p. 220.
49
Wilson, ‘Defining Military Culture’, p. 20.
18
politics on the Army. Linked to this discussion will be an examination of the
persistence of British Indian Army cultural influence on the Army amid attempts to
inject more of an indigenous and Islamic identity into the Army.

Chapter Four examines the period 1958 to 1970 in which General Ayub Khan
became both Commander in Chief of the Army and ruler of Pakistan. Khan’s
modernist Islamic views are linked to his political experiments and his expedient use
of Islam during the 1965 War with India, which had included the Army utilising Islam
as a justification for conducting covert and asymmetrical warfare.

Chapter Five examines the 1971 War in which the shock of the Army’s defeat
and the dismemberment of Pakistan ushered in a new focus on the role of Islam in the
Army and in Pakistan. Importantly, Chapter Five notes how a number of officers in
the Army viewed the senior Army leadership as being inauthentic Muslims who were
viewed as slavish followers of Western vices. These perceptions were occurring, the
chapter notes, during a nascent period of a global Islamic resurgence.

Chapter Six explores the period 1972 to 1988 in the aftermath of the shock
and humiliation of having lost the eastern half of the country as the newly
independent state of Bangladesh. The chapter considers the initially euphoric
reception of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as the leader of Pakistan and his attempts to gain
civilian control of the Army. The chapter notes how, during this period of a
burgeoning Islamic resurgence, Bhutto attempted to outflank Islamist opposition by
his own initiatives to prove his Islamic credentials. After a brief hiatus the Army
returned to power with General Zia declaring martial law and subsequently detaining,
convicting and executing Bhutto. During this period Zia performed the duties of
Army Commander and President until 1988 during which he instituted an Islamisation
process that had a profound impact on both Pakistan and the Army.

Chapter Seven studies the period 1988 to 1999 after the eleven year period of
Zia’s rule and the impact of his Islamisation of the Army and Pakistan. The chapter
examines dialogue within the Army concerning arguments on the role of Islam. This
chapter examines the impact of Islam on Army culture as well as Islamic notions in
the consideration of strategic alliances.

Chapter Eight covers the period 1999 to 2007 addressing the impact of the US
alliance with Pakistan brought about after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on
19
the US. The chapter examines the role of Islam in the education of Pakistan Army
Officers including their pre-selection and training. Arguments concerning the Army’s
management of Islamic injunctions as part of a philosophy of war and its use as a
leveraging aspect in unconventional warfare are also examined.

Chapter Nine concludes the thesis and synthesises the material presented over
the previous chapters. The conclusion then details the original contribution made by
this thesis upon the role of Islam on the Pakistan Army between 1947 and 2007 and
the implications of this conclusion. The conclusion finally provides a number of
suggestions for research arising out of subjects addressed within the chapters of this
thesis as well as its conclusion.

20
21
 Chapter I Religion, Martial Race and Myth in the
British Indian Army from the late 19th Century to 1947

One cannot spend years of one’s life in India without being conscious of the tremendous influence of
religion and the mysteries of the spirit on the life of man. In the years that I was in India, that country
was still steeped in religion.

(Lt. Colonel D.M. Killingley – Indian Army 1919–1945) 50

Introduction

The introduction proposed that a history of the impact of Islam upon the
Pakistan Army Officer Corps is required for a more effective understanding of
contemporary security matters in south and Southwest Asia. Equally important in
understanding the Pakistan Army Officer Corps is an understanding of the influences
of its immediate predecessor the British Indian Army.

The aim of this chapter is to review the management of religion and martial
race in the British Indian Army, which is important in understanding the nature of
these practices and why they were transmitted into the Pakistan Army. The Muslim
Officers who made up the first generation of the Pakistan Army brought some of these
beliefs and practices concerning religion, martial race and British regimental culture
with them to the Pakistan Army. British Regimental culture was designed to promote
and instil a sense of belonging to one’s regiment that entailed a sense of egality and
shared comraderie overlaid with sometimes totemic symbols and rituals of arcane
antiquity. The structure of the Indian Army promoted the development of a
Regimental esprit de corps through its links to ex-servicemen and generations of
family service within the Army, with Marston noting that during the interwar period,
“it was not unusal for a jawan arriving at a regimental centre to be the fifth generation
of his family to serve in the Army”. 51

50
Lt. Colonel D.M. Killingley, Farewell the Plumed Troop – A Memoir of the Indian Cavalry 1919–
1945, Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990, pp. 5-6.
51
Danile Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campagin, Praeger,
Westport, 2003, p.25.
22
 The Regimental spirit was perhaps epitomised by Lieutenant Colonel C.C.
Spooner in marking the end of his command of the 2 Essex in 1939.

To me, the Regiment is a living soul, something more than what the casual
person calls a Regiment. For its welfare there is nothing I would not do, and I
believe those are the sentiments of us all here tonight. It is really the Essex
Regiment that counts. We must subordinate ourselves to the interests of the
Regiment it it is to be successful. In other words the Regiment lives on where
we pass on. 52

While Precy upon his departure from India in 1946 noted the intense camaraderie
between the British and Indians.

For me there had always been a bond, a feeling of mutual respect, a common
sense of humour, an inherent kindness on bothsides, a tolerance and a
brotherhood that transcended colour of skin, religion and social position… 53

Regimental histories also formed an essential role in the creation and

continuance of the Regiment’s martial myths and hence promote the combat
motivation of the men serving in the Regiment by emulating those heroes of the past
with inconvenient truths rewritten into more palatable forms. 54 The influence of the
British Regimental Culture is located within theories on military culture that apart
from noting that a group of people must have stability and requisite common history
to allow a culture to form notes that;

…military culture may be said to refer to the deep structure of organizations,

rooted in the prevailing assumptions, norms, values, customs, and traditions
which collectively over time, have created shared individual expectations
among the members. 55

The functional approach to military culture also includes consideration of how an

Army’s warfighting determines their central beliefs as well as how war is invested
52
David French, Military Identities – The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People,
c.1870-2000, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p.79. French’s work explores the significance of
British Regimental Culture and the influence and transmission of that culture over generations.
53
W.H.Precy, A Passage to Peshawar: Misadventures of an Indian Army Officer 1944-1946,
Woodfield Publishing, Bognor Regis, 2002, p.149.
54
French, Military Identities, pp.80-85.
55
Don M.Snider, ‘An Uninformed Debate on Military Culture……p.118
23
with meaning and significance. For example the role of the religious motif in the
Pakistan Army, the influence of the Officer Coprs as well as the development of sub-
cultures within the military such as the Islamist and moderate being an example of
military culture factors examined in this thesis. 56

These inheritances from the British sustained powerful myths of Muslim

martial race exceptionalism by the Punjabi and Pakhtun dominated Officer Corps as
well as contributing to an army culture that at times drew slavishly from the British
Indian Army Regimental culture.

This chapter though is not a detailed history of the British Indian Army but is
intended to highlight a number of salient features of that Army’s management of
religion, culture and advocacy of martial race. The purpose of this is twofold. First, to
provide a contextual background to understand the progenitor of the Pakistan Army in
regard to these issues, and secondly as a means of comparing any change in the
Officer Corps over the course of the succeeding chapters. As the Pakistan Army was
formed out of the dismembering of the British Indian Army into the respective
Pakistan and Indian Armies it is essential to understand the nature of the British
Indian Army. It is important to have an understanding of how the British Indian Army
was managed and what its role was in the socio-political context of the early to mid-
twentieth century up to partition and the creation of the Pakistan Army in 1947.

The historical context is important in tracing the antecedents of political,

religious and cultural management practices of the British Indian Army and whether
these practices had any influence on succeeding generations of Pakistan Army
Officers. As the Pakistan Army carried these traditions over to its service it is useful
to understand their provenance. While the Pakistan Army did continue with many of
the practices and cultural aspects of the British Indian Army it departed significantly
in a number of aspects, perhaps most significantly with its involvement in politics,
which was anathema to the British Indian Army Officers.

Part one of this chapter considers the treatment of religion in the Army. Part
two examines martial race and part three observes attitudes to politics in the Army. In
drawing together the conclusions of these three sections the chapter argues the manner

56
Snider, ‘An Uninformed Debate on Military Culture, p.118 & pp.125-127
24
in which the British Indian Army managed and manipulated religion and ethnicity are
critical to understanding the subsequent development of Pakistan Army culture. As
the British Indian Army could not use nationalism as a means of motivation they
successfully manipulated political, ethnic and religious aspects of their armies by
introducing notions of martial race and Muslim exceptionalism that were taken up by
the Punjabi and Pakhtun Officer Corps of the new Pakistan Army. For the Muslim
members of the Army these notions of martial superiority linked to their Muslim
Punjabi and Muslim Pakhtun ethnicity were embedded in the Pakistan Army from its
outset as these Officers had obtained these beliefs in their transmission from the
British Indian Army.

The British Indian Army was one of the empire’s main engines of war and
provided the empire with its largest reservoir of military manpower. 57 Indian soldiers
in the service of Britain had protected the empire’s borders and fought in wars
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in theatres throughout Asia,
including Burma, Java and Afghanistan. 58 Indian soldiers also fought for the empire
in both world wars, inter-war conflicts and in actions aimed at restoring the French
and Dutch colonial possessions in Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies after the
Second World War. 59 Apart from its external duties, the primary duty of the Indian
Army was internal security, which accounted for up to one third of its duties.
Upholding the Raj’s authority when civil authorities could not, in the instance of large
scale communal rioting and unrest, was one of its most significant functions.

Extinguishing communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, as well as

intra-Muslim violence, was one of the primary responsibilities of civil authorities,
which had usually resulted from gross insults to respective religions or the
disturbances created by major religious festivals such as Muharram. 60 In the decade
prior to independence the Army had been called out to attend, and assume control of

57
Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War, Hambledon Continuum, London,
2006, pp. 352-353.
58
Major J.J. Snodgrass, The Burmese War (1824-1826), John Murray, 1827, London, This reprint by
AVA Publishing House, Bangkok, 1997.
59
LHCMA, General Sir Douglas Gracey papers, 5/6 October 1945.
60
S.T. Hollins, C.I.E., No Ten Commandments – Life in the Indian Police, Hutchison, London, 1954,
pp. 141-144.
25
numerous civil disorders where the civil authorities could not, such as the rioting in
Kanpur which had left over 600 persons dead. 61

Religion and the British Indian Army

Maintaining the integrity of Indian religion and culture was of paramount

importance to British Officers. British Officers were committed to ensuring Indian
units were not troubled by cultural and religious problems that could degrade their
effectiveness as well as escalate into major conflagrations. It was a vital security
imperative of the colonial power with memories of the apocalyptic impact of the
Indian Rebellion of 1857. 62 There had been earlier albeit short lived rebellions against
the British as had occurred at Vellore against the East India Company in 1806 in
which suspicions were cast upon the activities of those wandering faqirs who had
“frequently attached themselves to sepoy battalions”. 63 The Madras Government had
been concerned these faqirs were involved in an anti-British conspiracy, and Hoover
noted that the ignorance of the British officials was problematic in understanding the
religion of their sepoys.

In 1806, the daily devotional life of south Indian Muslims was not well
understood, and this lack of understanding was to lead to gross
misintepretations, false accusations of sedition… 64
Awareness of the importance of maintaining Vigilance against the impact of
sustained insensitivity, indifference or worst of all religious and cultural offence that
could lead to catastrophic results was important for this multi-ethnic and religiously
diverse army. The Army included British Christians of different denominations,
Muslims of different sectarian origins, Sikhs and the diversity inherent in Hinduism.
The British Army though, which was situated in India alongside the British Indian
Army, was not always viewed as the paragon of religious sensibilities.

Historically the British public may have celebrated the heroic feats of arms by
the British Army but it did not view the Army as a particularly moral or religiously

61
Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘In Aid of Civil Power’: The Colonial Army in Northern India, c.1919-42’, The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2004, p. 54.
62
George Townsend Warner & C.H.K. Marten, ‘The Groundwork of British History, Blackie and Son
Limited, London, 1920, pp. 692-693.
63
James W. Hoover, Men without Hats: Dialogue, Discipline and Discontent in the Madras Army,
1806-1807, Manohar, New Delhi, 2007, p.210.
64
Hoover, Men without Hats, p.211.
26
imbued institution. Early nineteenth century views of the British soldier perceived
them as godless pariahs and the profession of soldiering as inherently sinful. 65 Even
towards the end of the nineteenth century there were circles who still viewed the
profession of soldiering as a disgrace. 66 Perceptions persisted of someone choosing to
be an Officer in the Army as being suspect of the same-shared failings of the common
soldiers’ penchant to drunkenness, immorality and criminality.

In India the temperance minded Field Marshal Roberts attended to the more
brutish aspects of life for the British soldier in the British Indian Army. Roberts
gained the cooperation of the different Christian denominations in setting up the
Army Temperance Association. Roberts also inaugurated ‘The Regimental Institute’
to replace ‘canteens’ which did much to provide the soldier recreations beyond simple
drinking, though Master’s noted that the British soldier’s life was still very brutish in
1930s India. 67 The perception of morality and piety within the Army were regarded
dismally by the public but Roberts and others did devote attention to the spiritual
succour of its British and Indian army personnel in India during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. 68

In the nineteenth century the spiritual needs of the Army’s British personnel
in India were met by the Church of England through the Army Chaplains department.
The Army commissioned Church of England Chaplains as well as providing official
recognition of other denominations as the nineteenth century progressed into the
twentieth. The relationships between the dominant Church of England, Roman
Catholicism and Protestant denominations were at times acrimonious in securing

65
Kenneth Henderson, ‘Making Saints: The Role of Religious Pluralism and Tolerance in the
Reshaping of the British Army, 1809-1885’, (PhD Dissertation, University of Iowa, 1993), pp. 223-224
& Robert Graves, ‘Goodbye to all that’, Penguin, UK, 1960, quoted in Michael Snape, The Redcoat
and Religion, Routledge, London, 2005, p. 71.
66
Michael Snape, The Redcoat and Religion, Routledge, London, 2005, pp. 71-73.
67
Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty-One Years in India from Subaltern to Commander-
in-Chief, Macmillan and Co., London, 1901, pp. 519-521. Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts was
Commander-in-Chief India between 1885-1893 and Commander in Chief British Army between 1901-
1904.
68
Oriental and India Office Collections (hereafter referred to as OIOC), L/MIL/7?3089-3134
Collection 73, British Army in India: Religious Instructions, Chaplains etc., 1871-1943.
27
dominion of their spiritual flocks from the attentions of other denominations
administering to the regiments. 69

During the First World War British units had their chaplains provided by the
Indian Ecclesiastical department while the Army provided Hindu, Sikh and Muslim
troops their own clerics, though these clerics did not accompany Indian troops
overseas. The administering of battlefield religious duties, such as burials for the
Indian troops during the First World War, was left to their co-religionists who had the
requisite religious knowledge appropriate to the occasion. Religious welfare services
for soldiers serving in Europe were supported by the Indian Soldiers Comforts Fund
Charity, which for instance provided copies of the Holy Quran for Muslim soldiers in
France. 70 Britain was also serious in ensuring the religious dietary requirements of its
Indian personnel in France were met. Kitchener had demanded the Foreign Office
supply 10,000 live goats a month to service this requirement. 71

The Army was sympathetic to the religious sensitivities of its Muslim, Sikh
and Hindu troops and enforced a non-interference policy upon the spiritual beliefs of
the Indian soldiers as well as strictly policing any attempts at proselytisation by
British or other religious entities—usually Christian—as well as any unwanted
attempts amongst the sectarian groups in the Army. German propaganda attempted to
destabilise the Army with claims the English planned the forcible conversion of all
Indian soldiers to Christianity while emphasising the fact that Germany’s ally was
Muslim Turkey. 72 Germany had also made similar attempts on France’s North
African Muslim troops to desert by appealing to Islam. 73 Germany’s Turkish Allies
had also attempted to initiate a Jihad against the Triple Entente through a dubious

69
For example, OIOC L/MIL/7/3109, the complaint by the Protestant Alliance to the Army about
British Soldiers being involved in Catholic services in Madras in 1894. Farwell notes this as well.
Byron Farwell Mr Kipling’s Army – All the Queens Men, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1981, pp.
220-221.
70
Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches – The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914-15,
Spellmount, Staplehurst, 1999, pp. 201-202.
71
Max Hastings, Catastrophe – Europe goes to War 1914, William Collins, 2013, p. 413.
72
Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches, pp. 201-202.
73
Driss Maghraoui, ‘The Grande Guerre Sainte: Moroccan Colonial Troops and Workers in the First
World War’, in The Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 2004), p. 3 & Richard S.
Fogarty, Race and War in France – Colonial Subjects in the French Army 1914-1918, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008, in particular pp. 189-201 ‘Germany, the Ottoman Empire,
and Islam in the French Army.
28
Fatwa that selectively excluded the Germans and Austrian-Hungarians and sought to
wed pan-Germanism with an anti-imperialist pan-Islam. 74

The German attempts were generally unsuccessful with only a few examples
of Muslim units objecting to being deployed against the Turks or being deployed in
the direction of or in close proximity to Holy Mecca. Muslim troops made it known
they would still fight so long as it did not infringe these or other religious sensitivities.
Muslim troops who were forced—despite their protests to serve in areas objected to—
sometimes mutineered. Some of the mutineering troops were executed or imprisoned
while others were punished by deportation to the Andaman Islands. 75

After the First World War the issue of Muslim troops being deployed by the
empire to the Middle East remained an issue passionately debated in India. The
British Empire was identified by numerous Muslims as being closely connected to the
disintegration of the Turkish Khilafat. 76 The Khilafat movement was a response of
both political and religious in India to the allied dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire. Muslim sensitivities in India had been heightened during the Chanak crisis
with Turkey in 1922 when the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, attempted to
have the Dominion troops including Indian troops eject the Turks for their
contravention of the Treaty of Sevres. Muslims in India were incensed that Britain
was so insensitive concerning an issue of Turkish territorial sovereignty that had such
important religious implications for Muslims, that France with its own colonial
Muslim soldiers had opted not to pursue. 77 In the Second World War the Muslim

74
Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World
Power 1898-1918, Penguin Books, London, 2010, p.24 & p.124.
75
The Muslim cavalrymen of the 15th Cureton’s Multani Cavalry after distinguished service in France
were sent to Mesopotamia and refused to be transported further inland, Jack Gannon, Before the
Colours Fade, Polo, Pig, India, Pakistan and some Memoirs – A collection from the writings of
Brigadier Jack Gannon, J.A. Allen, London, 1976, p. 89.
76
There was considerable concern about the impact of the Treaty of Sevres on the Ottoman Empire and
Holy Land. PRO-CAB/24/111, the Secretary of State for India on 16 September 1920 draws Cabinet
attention to the negative press and correspondence concerning Indian Troops in the Middle East, in
particular a letter from the All-India Moslem League Lucknow to the Secretary of State for India
complaining that Indian Muslims could not tolerate or be involved in the destruction of the Khilafat
and desecration of the Jazirat-ul-Arab.
77
M. Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement 1918-
1924, Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, 1999, p. 327.
29
League addressed this problem by lobbying for assurances that Muslim Troops would
not be sent against any Muslim country or power. 78

Between the world wars the Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Christian troops were
all provided separate kitchens, places of worship and were encouraged to observe
their religious festivals. Christian traditions were also rigorously adhered to with
Christmas being celebrated by British units and their Officers. 79 All British Officer
Cadets at Sandhurst in the early 1930s attended Anglican Church Services unless the
Cadets originated from any one of a number of groups known colloquially as the
‘RCs, Parsees and others’. 80 The Victorian era ban on proselytisation or evangelism
was expected to be strictly adhered by British Officers serving in the Indian Army and
continued into World War II. A British Officer commissioned in the Baluch Regiment
noted that his Commanding Officer in guarding the religious integrity of his non-
Christian unit had made a Christian missionary persona non grata due to the absolute
necessity of protection from even the whiff of proselytising. 81

The British since the apocalyptic events of the mutiny had developed an
effective management strategy for their ethnically and religiously diverse Indian
soldiers borne out of sheer necessity for their survival and security. This section
briefly addresses the impact of the mutiny on the development of Army practices in
managing the ethnic and religious divides of the Indian soldiers.

British views of their Indian soldier’s religions were to varying degrees

rooted in the threat to British rule that had arisen because of the Indian Mutiny of
1857 where issues of religion overlapped issues of ethnicity, culture and geography. 82
In the case of Muslims the British feared the underlying religious unity of Islam and
that Muslims political consciousness of their former rule in India was more a threat to

78
The Presidential address of Mohammed Ali Jinnah at the Twenty-seventh Session of the All India
Muslim League, Lahore, March 1940, in Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, (Ed), Foundations of Pakistan, All-
India Muslim League Documents: 1906-1947, National Publishing House, Karachi, 1970, p. 334.
79
National Army Museum, (hereafter referred to as NAM), Sound Cassettes, Oral History, Lt. Colonel
A.G.S. Alexander & Lt. Colonel David Gillians, service in the British Indian Army.
80
John Hislop, A Soldier’s Story from the Khyber Pass to the Jungles of Burma – The Memoir of a
British Officer in the Indian Army 1933-1947, Newhaven Publishing, 2010, pp. 23-24.
81
Brigadier John Randle, OBE MC, Letter dated 16 June 2010.
82
The British and/or Western preference for the ‘Indian Mutiny’ is referred to as the ‘Indian Rebellion’
by many South Asian and other writers on the events of 1857.
30
them than the allegedly ‘caste riven’ Hindus. 83 Belief in this threat had been noted
soon after the mutiny in 1859 where it was believed prudent to mix the Muslim
classes through the regiments, 84

That the Native Army should be composed of different nationalities and castes, and
as a general rule, mixed promiscuously through each regiment. 85

In 1862 the efficacy of this policy of mixing religions and ethnicities was
encapsulated by Sir Charles Wood in emphasising that a ‘divide and rule’ approach
toward the organisation of the regiments would be in the strategic interests of
continued British rule,

…depend upon it; the natural antagonism of races is no inconsiderable element of our
strength. 86

The fear of a united Muslim soldiery was a critical element of post-mutiny

army planning. Additionally, the assassination of the acting Chief Justice in Calcutta
by a Wahabi Muslim in 1871 followed by Governor General Lord Mayo’s
assassination by another Wahabi Muslim strengthened this belief that the Muslim
threat was real and was the subject of popular and official analysis at the time.
Hunter’s Indian Mussulmans published in 1871 warned of the failure of not
understanding the Muslim populace of India and raised the bogey of what was
described as the standing camp of hostile Muslims in adjoining countries. 87 The
stigma of distrust of the Muslims had resulted in their being no complete Muslim
regiments in the post-mutiny army as there were for other classes, while there were

83
John Ferris, ‘The Internationalism of Islam’: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840-
1951’, in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2009, p. 59.
84
‘Classes’ in the sense that it is referred to in official documents and literature concerning the British
Indian Army is an amorphous term encompassing, to varying degrees, the ethnicity, religion and
geographic location of Indian soldiers. For example the class ‘Punjabi Mussulman’ refers to a number
of Muslim peoples from different tribes and geographic locations.
85
Recommendations of the Indian Army Organisation Commission, in ‘Organisation of the Indian
Army Report, 1859, C.2515, pp. XIV-XV.
86
OIOC, Private Letter of Sir Charles Wood to Lord Elgin, 19 May 1862, in Wood Papers, Vol. 10, pp.
246-252.
87
W.W. Hunter, The Indian Mussulman’s 3 rd Edition, Trubner & Co., London, 1871, (Reprint by Sang-
e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 1999).
31
also suspicions as to the loyalty of Muslim troops when pitted against their co-
religionists on the Afghan frontier. 88

The recommendations decided on in the aftermath of the mutiny formed the

basis of the Army practice of managing the threat of a unified native army by the
institution of ‘mixed class composition’ regiments. Mixed class composition
regiments diluted the threat and with the advent of martial race provided a doctrinal
basis to justify the classification and separation of Indian soldiers. The deep imprint of
the mutiny remained evident in military planning up until and including the 1920s and
1930s where planning was still predicated on the fear of another widespread revolt
some seventy years after the mutiny. 89 Kincaid wrote of how in 1938 he had still
taken a rifle and ammunition to church to prevent a reoccurrence of the surprise of the
60th rifles at church at Meerut in 1857. 90

Muslim Officers who formed the first generation of the Pakistan Army
expressed bitterness at the British practice of excluding all Muslim units, but seemed
to be alleviated by and supported the British inspired notions of their martial
propensities to be accepted wisdom.

There was an understanding amongst certain Muslim Indian Officers of the

time of the rationale behind the British practices. One Officer reflecting on his time at
the Indian Military Academy Dehra Dun noted,

It always struck me as strange that the British who ran the school and were so anxious
to keep religion as far away as possible from the boys during the day, would in the
evening without fail, undertake the duty of separating us into various religious
groups. This I presume was to impress upon us that we were really different people
following different religions. 91

The nineteenth century management decisions on ‘promiscuous division of

the nationalities’ made in the aftermath of the rebellion together with martial race

88
General Mohammed Musa Khan, Jawan to General – Recollections of a Pakistani Soldier, East &
West Publishing, Karachi, 1984, p. 74 & David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army,
1860-1940, MacMillan, London, 1994, p. 129.
89
Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘In Aid of Civil Power’: The Colonial Army in Northern India, c.1919-42, The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2004, p. 50.
90
Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608–1937, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, p. xviii.
91
Brigadier Mirza Hamid Hussain, The Battle Within, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2003, p. 73.
32
were also echoed in the Indian Statutory Commission Report of 1930. 92 The report
commonly referred to as the ‘Simon Report’ was published during the period of the
independence movement of the Congress Party and Muslim League. The report,
arguably in seeking to prolong British rule, recommended continued British
governance of India as prudent. In ‘martial race’ parlance the report was concerned
that should independence be granted, the ‘gentler peoples of India’ would be left to
the predations of the martial classes. 93 These ‘martial classes’ were those same classes
developed in response to the threat posed by the mutiny and as shortly to be shown
produced to maintain British rule.

The paradoxical nature of the British regarding Muslims as both the sword
arm of the Raj, as well as constituting a threat to the security of the Raj, was not lost
on Officers who fought for the British and who became the first generation of
Pakistan Army Officers. 94

The British had developed an entire architecture of martial race for the
British Indian Army. British Officers joining the Indian Army were introduced into
their units through army briefing notes that emphasised the special aptitudes required
of an Indian Army Officer in regard to Indian religion, language and culture. 95
Officers received mentoring from peers, senior Officers, Indian Officers, NCOs, and
Munshis with manuals specifically published to address matters of ‘religion’, ‘race’,
‘class’ and ‘ethnicity.’

The British interest in the religious and cultural background of their troops
was necessarily utilitarian to manage troops, and maintain troop morale and efficiency
by not being culturally ignorant. As early as 1806 British East India Officers had
charged a Muslim sepoy with blasphemy as well as initiating a civll trial upon the
alleged heresy against a group of faqirs 96 . A few Officers though became exceptional

92
Indian Statutory Commission Volume 1, Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, HM Stationery
Officer, London, May 1930.
93
Address at the Twenty-first Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, December 1930, in,
Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, (Ed), Foundations of Pakistan, All-India Muslim League Documents: 1906-
1947, National Publishing House, Karachi, 1970.
94
Major General F.M. Khan in his history argued the British recognised the martial qualities of the
Muslim soldier though suppressed the Muslim to the benefit of the Hindu, in Major General Fazal
Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1963, pp. 8-9.
95
‘Notes for Officers wishing to join the Indian Army, Military Department of the India Office,
London, 1942.
96
Hoover, Men without Hats, pp.228-231.
33
adepts in matters of religion and culture and became fluent in a number of Indian
languages apart from Urdu required by the Army. 97 British Officers took interest in
their troops’ religious practices including participation in or support of significant
Muslim and Hindu ceremonies while adhering to the Victorian edict of no
proselytising or interference with native religion. 98 Some Officers’ interest in the
cultural and religious background of their men was marked by an extraordinary
immersion and affinity with the religious practices of their men.

For some Indian regiments British Officers were the subject of holy status
drawn from a tradition of regional religiously inspired martial myths. Brigadier John
Nicolson killed during the mutiny and known for his audacious behaviour on the
battlefield was one such British Officer, commemorated through a minor cult known
as Nikalseynism amongst his Sikh troops. 99 The veneration of Nicolson persisted after
his death into the twentieth century. A British Officer noted how the people of
Nowshera in present day Khyber Pukhtunkwa of Pakistan popularly associated the
sounds of thunder with that of Nicolson’s warhorse galloping like thunder into
battle. 100 The award of mythical status as noted was regionally evident in other
examples where ability or even pure fear inspired such tales. The martial depredations
of the Sikh Hari Singh also persisted in areas of Pakistan’s Khyber Puktunkwa into
the mid-twentieth century. The threat that, “Hari will get you” was used to mildly
frighten misbehaving Pakhtun children and was redolent of the early nineteenth
century use of Napoleon Bonaparte to similarly scare British children. 101

The tendency towards affixing religious and supernatural status on British

Officers was evident until the end of the Second World War. One Lieutenant Colonel
noted how his Muslim NCOs and troops believed him to be favoured by Allah and to
be under the almighty’s protecting hand. 102 This Officer, arguing from the perspective
of twenty-six years’ service in the Indian Army, noted the innate importance of

97
NAM, 1996-08-1851, Sound Cassettes, Oral History, Tape One, Brigadier W.M.T. Magan,
interview.
98
Lt. Colonel D.M. Killingley, Farewell the Plumed Troop – A Memoir of the Indian Cavalry, 1919-
1945, Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990, p. 57 & John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger,
Michael Joseph, London, 1956, pp. 182-183.
99
Richard Holmes, Sahib – The British Soldier in India, HarperCollins, London, 2005, p. 206.
100
Mark Channing, India Mosaic, J.B. Lippincott Company, London, 1936, p. 244.
101
James W. Spain, The Way of the Pathans, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1962, p. 31.
102
Lt. Colonel D.M. Killingley, Farewell the Plumed Troop – A Memoir of the Indian Cavalry, 1919-
1945, Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990, p. 27.
34
religion to his personnel. The same Officer argued that the piety of a British Officer
together with his respect and interest in his unit’s religion was of elemental
importance in maintaining the respect of the troops. 103 Other British Officers engaged
in more esoteric interests in their soldiers’ religious background by pursuing studies
of Indian religions and philosophy during their service in India. 104 Though the British
did at times act in a manner prejudicial to the political and religious interests of their
Muslim subjects, British Officers with an appreciation of the strategic importance of
the Islamic world also sought to garner favour with some ambitious plans. Such plans
had included one Officer’s vision to secure the favour of the pan-Islamic community
and enhance British Imperial prestige by constructing a chain of mosques between
Jeddah and Mecca for Muslim pilgrims. 105

According to the census of 1941 there were 96 million Muslims out of a total
Indian population of 388 million. 106 Islam was not monolithic in India as it was not
monolithic in the Army. Islam in India encompassed populations in diverse regions of
the subcontinent from Pakhtun tribes in the peaks and plains of the Afghan frontier in
the west, to the Muslims inhabiting tropical Bengal in the east. Expressions of Indian
Islam also varied from the literalist Deoband to the syncretic and diverse practices of
Sufism and Barelvi Islam. Some Muslims were austerely literal in their devotion to
Islam while others worshipped Muslim Saints at Mazars, wore sacred lockets,
venerated ‘footprints of the prophet’ at qadamgah (shrines) and reliquaries such as
hairs of the prophets beard, as well as adopting some Hindu traditions. 107 Other
Muslim traditions celebrated the burial of Jesus Christ in Kashmir, while Adams Peak
in Sri Lanka was associated with other variants of Muslim tradition. Celebrated
festivals such as Basant in present day Pakistan and others that were Hindu in origin
were representative of Indian Muslim religious diversity. 108

103
Lt. Colonel D.M. Killingley, Farewell the Plumed Troop, p. 29.
104
Mark Channing, India Mosaic, J.B. Lippincott Company, London, 1936.
105
OIOC 425/1511, L/MIL/7/18483, Correspondence of Lt. Colonel Carter to Maj. General Sir
Havelock Charles, Military Adviser to Secretary of State for India, India Office.
106
Percival Spear, India, Pakistan and the West Oxford University Press, London, 1949, p. 78.
107
Anita C. Ray, ‘Varuna, Jhulelal and the Hindu Sindhis’, in ‘South Asia Journal of South Asian
Studies, Routledge, Vol. XXXV, no. 2, June 2012, pp. 233-234.
108
Nile Green, ‘Migrant Sufis and sacred space in South Asia Islam, Contemporary South Asia,
Vol.12/4, December 2003, pp. 495-496.
35
 That first generation of Officers who joined the Pakistan Army were similarly
diverse from the austere to the syncretic, though most were from the Punjab or
Pakhtuns from the North West Frontier Province. The veneration of Muslim saints
was important for Muslim Officers of more syncretic religious traditions who
subsequently joined the Pakistan Army upon its establishment. 109 The Sufi Pirs and
Sajjada Nisshins who kept the Mazars had also been important to the British as these
Muslim holy persons had commanded significant religious influence among the
Muslims of the western Punjab with followings of 200,000 Muslims and more. Such
Muslim holy persons had encouraged their followers to serve the British cause and
hence their favour was vitally important for the British in the management of
religion. 110 The diversity in Islam was sometimes expressed in its disputes. Islam in
India was not free of the sectarian troubles that also existed sometimes between the
Muslim and Hindu communities. The Army had been required to assist civil
authorities in violence between the Sunni and Shia Muslim communities in Lucknow
during the late 1930s. 111 The Muslim community in India was vibrant and in the last
two decades of British rule active politically and religiously in competition with
Hindu proselytising movements such as the Arya Samaj.

In 1941 Abu’l-A’la Mawdudi established the Jama’at-i Islami (JI) while the
Tablighi Jama’at (TJ) was formed in the late 1920s by Muhammad Ilyas in Delhi
with the aim of proselytising and bringing people to Islam without the divisiveness of
theological or political activities. 112 Islamic activists such as Abu l-Kalam Azad had
also recommended Jihad against the British, and if that failed then a Hijra to Muslim
ruled Afghanistan should be considered, and he was credited with having rehabilitated
holy war as the forgotten pillar of Islam. 113

109
Maj. General S. Shahid Hamid, Autobiography of a General, Ferozsons (Pvt) Ltd, Lahore, 1988, p.
14.
110
Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State – The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab,
1849-1947, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005, p. 130.
111
Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘In Aid of Civil Power’: The Colonial Army in Northern India, c.1919-42’, The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2004, p. 54.
112
Marc Gaborieau, ‘A Peaceful Jihad – South Asian Muslim proselytism as seen by Ahmadiyya,
Tablighi Jama’at and Jama’at-i Islami’, in David Taylor (Ed) Islam in South Asia – Critical Concepts
in Islamic Studies, Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 152-153.
113
Marc Gaborieau, ‘A Peaceful Jihad – South Asian Muslim proselytism as seen by Ahmadiyya,
Tablighi Jama’at and Jama’at-i Islami’, in David Taylor (Ed) Islam in South Asia – Critical Concepts
in Islamic Studies, Routledge, London, 2011, p. 155.
36
 The Islam of the soldier and the Indianised Officer Corps from the 1920s
onwards accordingly ran the gamut from the austerely religious to the perfunctory.
Even literalist strands of Islam revealed themselves to be somewhat flexible from the
memoirs of Muslim Officers of this period. There are few works though on the
diversity of Islam within the Army. One exception is the study of soldiers’
relationships with their Faqirs in the Hyderabad Army of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. 114 With the diversity of Islam and ethnicity in the subcontinent,
since the mutiny the British had promoted the idea that certain classes of Indians were
better soldiers than other classes.

Martial Race and the British Indian Army

Moving from a consideration of religion in the British Indian Army to martial

race it is first important to note that not all Muslims were considered to be a ‘martial
race’, and neither were Muslims the only martial race from within or outside the
Punjab. The Sikhs, Dogras and Gurkhas were significant martial race groups raised by
the British in India and Nepal. The Yeoman martial races of the Punjab were derived
from Rajput and Jat extraction and could be Muslim, Sikh or Hindu. 115 The
celebration of the ‘Punjabi Mussalmans’ though had significant consequences on
those ethnic groups who would be recruited and would not be recruited to form the
future Pakistan Army. 116 The idea of martial race, though not uncontested, endured
from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the partition of India and after.
Two of those martial race classes were the Muslim Punjabis known as the ‘Punjabi
Mussulmans’ and the Pakhtuns who would constitute the bulk of the Officer Corps of
the future Pakistan Army.

The labelling of martial race attributes to the British Indian Army’s favoured
recruits in the Punjab and North West Frontier selectively mythologised the martial
history and propensities of soldiers from certain ethnic and religious backgrounds and
geographical locations. Martial race was though not an unknown concept in India
where caste stratifications such as the Kshatriya varna saw themselves essentially as

114
Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.
115
J.H.Hutton, Caste in India: Its Nature, Function and Origins, Cambridge University Press, United
Kingdom, 1946, pp.32-33.
116
‘Punjabi Mussalmans’ was the term used for those Muslims from the Punjab frequently abbreviated
to simply ‘PM’s’ in much literature of the time.
37
fighting men as well as there being a distinct military labour market within India. 117
Furthermore there were established traditions of both spiritual Sufi Muslim ghazi’s as
well as more traditional Muslim soldiers in the south of India including Mysore and
Vellore where Muslim troops including those led by Tipu Sultan “spoke of conflict in
terms of Jihad and sh{a}hadat martyrdom”. 118 Martial race also amplified divisions
and competition between martial classes in the Army, as well as the non-martial
classes. These practices ultimately supported British interests in promoting the ethnic
and religious divisions in the Army believed so essential by Sir Charles Wood as
noted earlier. In a period of Imperial anxiety martial race was a “consciously
manipulated linguistic and performative tool” to maintain British rule. 119

Martial race was an important tool in providing pseudo-scientific

justification for the preferential recruitment of certain groups in the Indian population
by the British, and aspects of it would be retained by the Pakistan Army. The British
justifications of martial race, included politically pragmatic interests based on the fear
of a united and trained body of Muslim Indian soldiers that ‘divide and rule’ policies
would ensure there would be no second Indian mutiny. These Muslim martial race
soldiers from the Punjab as well as their Sikh, Gurkha and Dogra martial race
counter-parts, “were used to disguise a policy that sought to limit armed service to
only those Indians who could be trusted with unfailing loyalty”. 120 The first
generation of Muslim soldiers in the Pakistan Army were aware of how the British
both valued and feared them in equal measure. 121

Martial race theory may be described as a set of beliefs that a particular race
or section of a race or group of peoples have the natural propensity and temperament
to be better soldiers than other races or groupings of people. The theory is pliant and
susceptible to expedient theoretical ‘add ons’ and has at times included elements of
religion, social Darwinism, physiology, climate, geography, disease susceptibility and

117
Omissi considers the antiquity of martial race concepts, while Kolff examined the history of the
military labour market and its contribution to sect formation. David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj –
The Indian Army, 1860-1940, MACMILLAN, Basingstoke, 1994, pp.24-25 Dirk H.A.Kolff, Naukar,
Rajput & Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1990.Varna refers to the four original castes of Hindu society.
118
Hoover, Men without Hats, pp.211-212.
119
Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture,
1857-1914, Manchester University Press, 2004, p.7.
120
Heather Streets, Martial Races, p.178.
121
Mohammed Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1967, p. 32.
38
resilience to justify exclusive recruiting policies. Historically, the British sought to
manage their Indian troops by emphasising unit loyalties, religious difference, and
distinctive martial race attributes that often encompassed traditions that the British
had themselves indoctrinated into their troops.

The Army kept detailed records of ‘class composition’ throughout the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries to better facilitate and manipulate the management
of sectarian and ethnic divides. The British belief in the validity of martial race was
not something that disappeared over the course of the Second World War. The
persistence of martial race’s influence is detectable in the margins of World War Two
recruitment analysis documents that lamented the exhaustion of martial race
recruits. 122 Such documents were replete with the minutiae of categorising Muslims.
Muslims were described as ‘Mussulman Rajput’, ‘Punjabi Mussulman’, ‘Baluchi’,
‘Pathan’ and ‘Hindustani Mussulman’, as well as sub-classifications that included
clan and tribal information. The respective merits of the classification and religious
affiliations of the same ethnic group often were argued as making one recruit superior
to another by virtue of religion or caste though both being ethnically the same.

Martial race was not peculiar to the British and was a concept that other
nineteenth and twentieth century colonial powers adhered to. British measures were
believed particularly adept as even the French with their vast colonial possessions and
large Muslim populations had sent a mission to India in 1913 seeking guidance in the
management of its colonial Muslim soldiers. 123 The French martial race recruitment
policy in North African colonies idealised and politicised the quality of the ‘martial
Berbers’ at the expense of their supposedly more politically nationalist and martially
deficient Arab countrymen. 124 The French had also applied martial race categories
derived from the ‘biological determinism’s of the age’ upon their West African troops

122
OIOC WS 1680-L/WS/1/136, Recruitment in India 1939-1944, for instance, notes that as of October
1943 the overall ‘class composition’ of the Indian Army was 34.03% Mussulman’s, 51.6% Hindus,
7.69% Sikhs & 6.67% miscellaneous, including Madrassi Christians, Anglo-Indians, other Christians
and Santhals. This document notes that 36.7% of the total personnel for the Army were recruited from
the Punjab.
123
OIOC L/MIL/7/17080, Sub-heading, ‘French Government would like to send Officer to study
system of utilising Mohammedans in Indian Forces’, ‘Captain Aymand’ (French Army) study of the
employment of Mohammedans in the Indian Army, 1913.
124
Ethan M. Orwin, ‘Of Couscous and Control: The Bureau of Muslim Soldier Affairs and the Crisis of
French Colonialism’, Historian, Vol.7 0, issue 2, 2008, pp. 263-284.
39
that referred to the innate ‘warrior instincts that remain extremely powerful in
primitive races’and made them especially valuable as shock troops. 125

…their savage impetuosity in attacks with the bayonet would prove

decisive….the warrior qualities of the black race were hereditary and that in
the prevailing conditions of modern warfare, their cold blooded and fatalistic
temperament would render them irrestible in the attack. 126
The French in this way had done much the same as the British had in the feting of the
Punjabis, Pakhtuns and other martial races of India at the expense of the more
politically aware Bengalis or Madrassis. Similarly, the Dutch preference for the
Ambonese in the Dutch East Indies and the American preference for the Macabebe in
the Philippines and their enmity for the Tagalogs was useful in the American defeat of
a nascent independence movement. 127

The British had tried to introduce the concept into other imperial possessions
including a failed attempt to raise a levy of ‘Muslim’ martial race troops in Cyprus in
the late nineteenth century. 128 The belief in the superiority of the ‘martial race’ recruit
persisted in the interwar years despite a mass of arguments and evidence levied by
Indian and British commentators on the excellent military performance of other
Indian classes during the First World War. 129 Martial race “…continued to shape
Indian military policy through the 1930’s”, and persisted throughout World War II

125
Joe Lunn, ‘Les Races Guerrieres’: Racial Preconceptions in the French Military about West African
Soldiers during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vo.34. No.4, 1999, pp.519-
521.
126
Lunn, ‘Les Races Guerrieres’, p.525.
127
Karl Hack and Tobias Rettig, ‘Imperial Systems of Power, Colonial Forces and the making of
Modern South-east Asia’, in, Karl Hack & Tobias Rettig, (Eds), Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia,
Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 12-13 & Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in
the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream, New American Library, New
York, 2012, pp.148-149.
128
Andrekos Varnava, ‘Martial Races’ in the Isle of Aphrodite’, in, The Journal of Military History,
Volume 74, Oct 2010, pp. 1047-1067.
129
General Menezes notes that at least 75 other classes of Indians had proven their mettle in the First
World War with the British failing to learn their lesson, in Lt. General S.L. Menezes, Fidelity and
Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, 1999, pp. 304-305. British literature lauding the performance of all Indian troops after the
First World War included, Edmund Candler, The Sepoy, John Murray, London, 1919, and the dismissal
of martial race theory in World War II, F. Yeats-Brown, Martial India, Eyre and Spottiswoode,
London, 1945, pp. 33-34.
40
and beyond and was well known to those Officers who would form the first
generation of the Pakistan Army in 1947. 130

Martial race was not only applied to Indian soldiers, with the doctrine also
being manipulatively applied to the Scottish Highlanders and the Irish to serve
imperial interests. 131 One theory arguing the invented nature of martial race claimed
Highland Regiments were populated by Scottish lowlanders and English recruits,
while Gurkha Regiments were made up of disparate tribal groups in which the Gurkha
identity had to be taught by the British. 132 Similarly, in noting the contested nature in
the constitution of ethnic or sub-national regiments, Robert Graves noted that his
133
Welsh Regiment did not contain more than one Welsh speaking Welshman in fifty.
These anomalies existed in Indian Regiments where Baluch Regiments rarely
contained any significant portion of ethnic Baluchis.

Field Marshal Lord Roberts was the pre-eminent martial race protagonist of
the nineteenth century and he had actively worked to alter the racial complexion of
the Army. Robert’s justification was derived from his belief that in a war against what
was described as a first class enemy such as Imperial Russia certain classes of Indian
soldiers would not be able to meet the challenge.

It is no use our trying to persuade ourselves that the whole of the Native army is
capable of meeting an enemy from Central Asia, or of taking their part in a campaign
anywhere out of India. They are not capable of this, and nothing will ever make them
so. It is not a question of efficiency, but of courage and physique; in these two
essentials the sepoys of lower India are wanting. 134

Roberts had argued, for instance, that the ancient military spirit of the South
Indian Madrassi had dissipated because of extended peacetime and Britain had to look
elsewhere for better troops. 135 This may have had more to do with evolving strategic

130
Heather Streets, Martial Races, pp. 101 & General Molesworth claimed that Indian classes except for
those of the Northwest had lost their appetite for war in OIOC L/WS/1/136 July 21 1943.
131
David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, p.24.
132
Heather Streets, Martial Races, pp. 176-178.
133
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, Cassell & Company Ltd, London, 1929, p. 70.
134
Roberts to Stewart, Ootacamund, 30 June 1882, in Brian Robson (Ed), Roberts in India – The
Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts 1876-1893, Alan Sutton Publishing for the Army
Records Society, Gloucestershire, 1993, p. 256.
135
Field Marshal Roberts of Kandahar, Forty-One Years in India – From Subaltern to Commander-in-
Chief, Macmillan and Co., London, 1901, p. 499.
41
concerns and threat perceptions of the British in the second half of the nineteenth
century in which the new Punjab recruiting grounds were also closer to the Russian
threat and proved a powerful incentive for the British to re-select their native allies. 136
Evidence though supporting martial race recruitment in the late nineteenth century
was adduced through the use of comparative surveys on the fitness and hardiness on
campaign of different classes of Indian troops. For instance, a survey presented to the
Secretary of State for India in 1881 sought to identify those classes of troops that had
best withstood the hardships of Afghanistan. 137

While the overall finding of the survey was that the Pakhtuns, Punjabi
Mussulmans and Sikhs had fared best, a close reading of these surveys reveal the
contested nature of these findings which ran counter to Roberts’s opinion. Omissi
notes that Sir Frederick Haines was a significant example of a senior officer who had
served in Madras who would not accept the policy inspired by Roberts to cateogrise
the Madrassi soldier as inferior. 138 Roberts, during his long tenure as Commander in
Chief of the British Army in India, was able to successfully manipulate the racial
composition of the native Indian Army in favour of the martial races from one quarter
in 1881 to one half by 1893. 139

Lieutenant General Goddard commissioned into the Indian Army in 1915

illustrated this change in recruitment and the significant importance of the Punjab and
northern areas to the Army quoting the comparative statistics between infantry units
by regions and class (racial composition) between 1862 and 1914 illustrated in the
following table and which by the end of the First World War had reached 80%,
though Leigh of the Indian Civil Service maintained that the Punjab supplied half of
the soldiers for the war. 140

136
Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: the Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849-
1947, SAGE Publications, New Delhi, 2005, pp.32-33.
137
OIOC L/MIL/7/7018, Indian Army – Strength, composition and fighting efficiency.
138
David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, p.35
139
Brian Robson (Ed), Roberts in India – The Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts 1876-
1893, Alan Sutton Publishing for the Army Records Society, Gloucestershire, 1993.
140
Eric Goddard, ‘The Indian Army – Company and Raj’, Asian Affairs, Vol.7, No.3, 1976, p.273 &
M.S. Leigh, The Punjab and the War, Superintendent Government Printing Lahore, 1922 (reprinted by
Sang-E-Meel) Lahore, 1997, p.7.
42
Region Year Region Year
1862 1914
Punjab 28 Punjab 57

East of the 28 East of the 15

Ganges Ganges
Madras 40 Madras 11
Gurkha 5 Gurkha 20
(Nepal) (Nepal)
Bombay 30 Bombay 18

The Punjab for this very reason in supplying Muslim, Sikh and Dogra
soldiers was of pivotal importance to the British who referred to the Punjab as the
‘Sword Arm of India’ and credited the Punjabis together with themselves as having
saved India from the mutineers. 141 Tan Tai Yong also emphasizes the importance of
the Punjab to the British Indian Army in a study that considers the politics and
practicalities of the recruitment of Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers in the Punjab. 142
The Punjab would retain this pre-eminence in the new state of Pakistan.

Only fifteen years prior to partition Lieutenant General MacMunn, the

soldier scholar and martial race acolyte, had argued on the validity of martial races
such as the Punjabis and Pathans in India. In one of his books MacMunn argued that
certain fair skinned races inhabiting usually cooler northern climates in India were
hardier and more vigorous than south Indian communities subject to the enervating
impact of hot weather, indolence, disease, immorality and the impact of varying
religions. 143 These theories were arguably derived also from British perceptions of
beauty and fair skin which such northern Indian races possessed compared to the
darker skinned southerners as well as the geographic implications of these men from
the hills echoing the Victorian cult of Scotland. This does not explain the adoration of

141
M.S.Leigh, The Punjab and the War, pp.7-8.
142
Yong, The Garrison State.
143
Lt. General Sir George MacMunn, The Martial Races of India, Sampson Low, Marston & Co.,
LTD, London, 1932, pp. 1-3.
43
the British for their arguable overall preference for the short, stocky and Mongolian
featured Gurkhas as a martial race. 144

MacMunn had encapsulated his thoughts,

It is one of the essential differences between the East and the West, that in the East,
with certain exceptions, only certain clans and classes can bear arms, the others have
not the physical courage necessary for the warrior. 145

At the time MacMunn’s martial races of India was published the Statutory
Commission Report—or Simon Report referred to earlier in the chapter—had
maintained that India would fall victim to these same martial classes without the
restraining hand of Britain. 146 Books such as MacMunn’s that contained vitriolic
denunciation of Gandhi may also have been published at this time with a view to
dampening the nationalist ardour of the Congress Party and Gandhi’s agitation for
independence from Britain. 147 MacMunn’s book was also published in the period of
Indianisation of the Officer Corps. The content of his book may also have proved of
interest to those Indian Officers from martial race classes undergoing Officer training
who would form the future Pakistan Army Officer Corps.

Martial race beliefs were so pervasive at the time that they were held by
British Officers who had only undertaken limited deployments in India. British
Officers held these views on martial race long after the cessation of their service in
India. For instance, Montgomery with only limited service in India between 1908 and
1913 and apart from a visit at the time of partition was confident in opining on the
essential differences between the Hindu and the Muslim martial traditions,

The Turks were able to defeat the Hindus because they lacked in outstanding measure
those essential martial qualities which the Hindus lacked. They found complacency

144
David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, p.29 & p.33.
145
Lt. General Sir George MacMunn, The Armies of India, Lancer, New Delhi, 2009 (reprint of 1912),
p. 129.
146
The Simon Commission on Army Recruitment, 1930, Indian Statutory Commission, Cmd.3568
(1930), Vol. 1, pp. 96-98.
147
Lt. General Sir George MacMunn, The Martial Races of India, Sampson Low, Marston & Co.,
LTD., London, 1932, see the preface of this work for an early demarcation of the difference between
the virile martial races and ‘Ghandi poison’, p. V and where MacMunn refers to the “gentle yet
merciless race of hereditary moneylenders from which Lala Ghandi springs, only kept within bounds
by an occasional flaying and roasting…” pp. 2-3.
44
 and tolerance and opposed these with the vigour of a barbaric people fired by
fanatical devotion to the faith of Islam. 148

Churchill who had served in India also admired the warlike Muslim peoples of
the northwest, while British officials like Sir Steuart Pears and Sir Olaf Caroe the
Governor of the North West Frontier Province until 1947 were infatuated with the
warlike Pakhtuns. 149 Caroe, Governor of the North West Frontier Province until 1947,
had reportedly stated that the frontier was a ‘brotherhood of arms’ where,
“Englishmen and ‘Pathan’ looked one another in the eyes, and there they found – a
man”. 150 With such eminent Officers throughout the Army and Indian Civil Service
expressing such virile beliefs eulogising certain classes of the Indian population it is
difficult to imagine a multitude of Officers holding an openly contrary view. Punjabi
and Pakhtun Officers who had been training in the British Indian Army since the
advent of Indianisation could hardly have been immune to these views held by these
senior Officers and civil servants who trained, commanded and mentored them.

I also learned that the people of India were divided into two classes – one was
supposed to be martial and the other non-martial. This intrigued me and I came to
know the British rulers had grouped Indians on the principle of their ability to
fight. 151

It is important for this thesis in understanding that on the creation of Pakistan

in 1947 only the Punjabis and Pakhtuns were considered ‘martial race’ while the
Sindhis, Baluchis, Bengalis, Muhajirs and other ethnic groups, with some exceptions,
were considered non-martial or unsuitable to Army life. The Officers who would form
the Pakistan Army had been exposed to British indoctrination on martial race
throughout their service with some of the more senior Officers from the early 1920s

148
Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, ‘A History of Warfare’, William Collins, Sons &
Company Ltd, London, 1968, p. 402.
149
Churchill admired the reputation for courage, tactical skill and marksmanship of the Muslim tribals
he encountered on the Malakand Field Force in 1897, Winston S. Churchill, Frontiers and Wars, Eyre
& Spottiswoode, London, 1962, p. 125. Pears was noted for his cultural and linguistic ability in
managing tribal populations in Waziristan, in B.J. Gould, The Jewel in the Lotus, Chatto & Windus,
London, 1957, pp. 116-121.
150
High Noon of Empire – The Diary of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Tyndall 1895-1915, B.A. ‘Jimmy’
James (Ed), Pen & Sword, Barnsley, UK, 2007, p. 31.
151
Brigadier Mirza Hamid Hussain, The Battle Within, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2003, p. 74.
(Brigadier Hussain was commissioned into the British Indian Army in 1935).
45
onwards being repetitively reminded of their proud Muslim military heritage and
traditions.

The belief in the martial race attributes of certain Indian classes was certainly
a notion that large numbers of British Officers carried to the end of their service, with
British Officers casually referring to martial race sometimes as the ‘warrior races’ just
prior to partition. 152 Sixty-five years after service in the British Indian Army one
veteran attested,

I certainly accepted the prevailing concept in the Indian Army that there were martial
153
races … and even that the further north you went, the more martial they were…

This is significant because at partition and the establishment of the Army in

1947 the most populous ethnic group, the Bengalis, were not considered martial and
were excluded militarily and politically by Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers dominating
the Army. Shorthand descriptions of the qualities separating the martial from the non-
martial were deployed as common sense stereotypes. Punjabis and Pakhtuns though
considered unsophisticated were thought ‘martial’ by the British while the Bengalis
were considered effeminate and subservient. Fatally for the Bengalis to British post-
mutiny sensibilities the Bengalis were considered intelligent and politically
sophisticated.

In order to ameliorate problems in understanding the unique or exotic aspects

claimed for a particular ‘class’ and to induct the uninitiated British Officer into his
unit the government produced ‘martial race’ handbooks. These handbooks addressed
those ethnic groups that would later form the rump of the Pakistan Army, such as the
‘Punjabi Mussulmans’ and ‘Pakhtuns’. 154 Handbooks were published on all martial
races Muslim, Sikh and Hindu and provided a pithy informative guide to the history,
ethnology, customs and characteristics of these ‘martial races’ inclusive of their
superstitions as well as means of managing their temperament. 155 It is important to

152
George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out There, Harvill, 1992, p. 133.
153
Brigadier John Randle, OBE MC, (British Indian Army WWII), Letter dated 16 June 2010.
154
Lt. Colonel J.M. Wikely, Handbooks for the Indian Army – Punjabi Mussulman, Government of
India Printer, Calcutta, 1915 & R.T.I. Ridgway, Pathans, compiled under orders of the Govt. of India,
nfd.
155
There were handbooks produced for other Muslim martial races as well as for Hindu and Sikh, for
example, W. Fitz. G. Bourne, Hindustani Mussulman and Mussulman’s of the Eastern Punjab,
Compiled under the Orders of the Govt. of India, Supt. Govt. Printing, Calcutta India 1914 as well as
46
note that the focus on ethnology also coexisted with cruder rascist perspectives and
that by the 1930’s recruits “were described as if they were so many breeds of dog or
horse”. 156

The Pakhtun for instance was stereotyped as possessing some of the worst
human character traits of treachery, blood thirstiness and revenge which was thought
however to be more than offset by his manliness, courage and natural understanding
for the art of cover in combat. 157 Other books provided compendiums of all martial
races and served as single reference points for Officers in commanding mixed-class
formations. 158

The stereotypes in such handbooks were supplemented by the experience of

serving Officers as well as other publications, and drew upon existing Indian
stereotypes on caste and ethnicity. 159 Brigadier Magan who served in India between
1928 and 1945 and Brigadier Bristow who served in India between 1919 and 1947
viewed Sikhs as energetic but subject to deviousness if left idle, Dogras as steady and
easy to command, and Punjabis as simple and uncomplicated. 160 Others had
characterised the Punjabi as the backbone ‘everyman’ of the Army because of their
reliability and the numbers in which they were recruited. 161 Similar views were
accepted by British and some future Pakistani Officers who believed without rancour
these qualities as the relatively true merits and failings of different Indian
communities, much as stereotypes upon European nationalities as the Germans,
French, Swiss and Italians also existed. 162

These handbooks and other sources assisted the creation of a belief in the
essential legitimacy that underwrote martial race theory and importantly, as later
chapters reveal, were transmuted into the Pakistan Army by Officers who also

Dogras revised edition 1918 and Gurkhas 1933, Maj. R.M. Bentham, Marathas and Dekhani
Mussulman, compiled under the Orders of the Government of India, Superintendent of Government
Printing, Calcutta, 1908.
156
Omissi,The Sepoy and the Raj, pp..31 - 32.
157
R.T.I. Ridgway, Pathans, compiled under orders of the Govt. of India, nfd, pp. 14-17.
158
P.D. Bonarjee, A Handbook of the Fighting Races of India, Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1899.
159
Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, p.26.
160
NAM, 1996-08-1851, Sound Cassettes, Oral History, Tape One, Brigadier W.M.T. Magan,
interview & Brigadier R.C.B. Bristow, Memories of the British Raj: Soldier in India, Johnson, London,
1974.
161
Edmund Candler, The Sepoy, John Murray, London, 1919, pp. 55-59.
162
NAM, 1999-12-115, Sound Cassettes, Oral History, Tape One, Khanzada Sultan Mohammed Khan,
interview.
47
believed these qualities to be largely true. An important aspect of these guides and
other books extolling the attributes of the martial races was the emphasis on the links
with a glorious military past. The Punjabi’s for instance dated their martial heritage to
pre-Islamic tales of their bravery against Alexander the Great, a belief held by future
generations of Army Officers and repeated in Pakistani history texts.

We had soldiers who traced martial tradition from Scythian, Turkish, Mongol and
Afghan ancestors. 163

The British encouraged the celebration of martial legends and pedigrees with some
arguing in the case of the Sikhs that without the British insistence on Sikh traditions
in the Army that Sikhism would have dissolved into Hinduism. 164

Officers argued that the result of intense British indoctrination and the
process of celebrating the distinctive identities of martial race units was a two-way
process that did not only consist of some British Officers predilections for an interest
in oriental religions. While British Officers closely identified with their martial race
units some were more profoundly attached to their units to the extent that they were
believed for instance to be more a Sikh or Gurkha than the men of their units. 165
Emphasising the distinctiveness of the unit’s class and highlighting its loyalties and
associations underpinned the unit’s identity according to Muslim Army Officers of
the period. 166

Indicative of the two-way process of identifying and celebrating respective

martial pedigrees and legends, a Scottish Officer of the Baluch Regiment during the
Second World War Burma campaign emphasised to his Pakhtun soldiers their
respective martial race heritages in having both fought the English, they now fought
the Japanese together for the English. 167 Six years after the end of the Second World
War on the occasion of Ayub Khan becoming the first Pakistani Commander in Chief,
another British General who had commanded 7 Division of the Pakistan Army,

163
Maj. General Shaukat Riza, Izzat-O-Iqbal, Published by School of Artillery, Nowshera, 1980, pp. 4-
5.
164
Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 128 &
Heather Streets, Martial Races, p. 214.
165
Maj. General Sher Ali Pataudi, The Story of Soldiering and Politics in India and Pakistan, Syed
Mobin Mahmud & Co., Lahore, 1988, p. 36.
166
Maj. General Sher Ali Pataudi, The Story of Soldiering, p. 36.
167
Interview conducted with Major Thomas Bruin (Baluch Regiment), London, 9 February 2010.
48
publically extolled the martial pedigree of the Pakistan Army in an English newspaper
popular with Army Officers, 168

Pakistan possesses the nucleus of potentially the best Army in Asia ... certainly they
are troops with a long fighting tradition. 169

And specifically linking Muslim rule over India to these martial qualities,

Pakistan is notably distinguished by that homogeneous spirit which promotes military

strength and fortifies morale – the pride perhaps of ancient rule across the plains of
India. 170

The chapters that follow will draw the connection on how indelible an
influence martial race has been on the Pakistan Army. While martial race has
remained an indelible aspect of the Army introduced by the British, the attitude to
politics in the British Indian Army would prove to be substantially in contrast to that
undertaken by the Pakistan Army.

Politics and the British Indian Army

The British Indian Army purposely isolated itself from politics between the
wars as well as trying to distance itself from providing riot control. Euphemistically
referred to as ‘aid to the civil power’, the political implications of the Army
involvement in controlling riotous assemblies were apparent after the Amritsar
massacre of 1919. The British Indian Army in the late 1920s consisted of 60,000
British troops and 150,000 Indian troops as well as 34,000 reservists organised into a
Field Army for overseas operations, covering troops for guarding the frontiers and
internal security garrison; as much as one third of these soldiers were committed to
the internal security functions in India. The internal security forces alone consisted of
twenty-two out of the total of one hundred Indian infantry battalions and as many as
twenty-eight battalions of British infantry during the late 1920s. 171

168
Major General F.J. Loftus-Tottenham, CBE, DSC is listed as Commander of 7 Division in,
‘Appointments held by British Officers in Pakistan, OIOC L/WS/1/1673.
169
LHCMA, LH15/5/425, Major General F.J. Loftus-Tottenham, in Telegraph Newspaper, London, 15
January 1951.
170
LHCMA, LH15/5/425, Major General F.J. Loftus-Tottenham, in Telegraph Newspaper, London, 15
January 1951.
171
Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘In Aid of Civil Power’: The Colonial Army in Northern India, c.1919-42’, The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2004 pp. 41-43.
49
 Politically, the British had sought to divide and separate the disparate ethnic
and religious groups that constituted the Army. Politically, the notion of martial race
was largely derived from the post-mutiny management decisions of the Army, that
had sought to exclude those who had revolted, and recruit those who had supported
the British and were perhaps less politically aware. With the advent of Indianisation
of the Army in the last two decades before partition the British sought to populate the
Army with the politically conservative who were removed from the Congress Party
and Muslim League agitation.

Politically, the Indian Officer Cadet’s chosen to attend Sandhurst were not
decided by educational merit alone, but also by social affiliation with the British
objective to obtain the ‘right type’ of conservatively disposed Indian Cadet who was
reliant if not favourable to the Raj. Traditional elites were considered far more
desirable than any from the educated Indian middle class. The educated class in such
ethnic groups as the Bengalis for instance were perceived by the British to be
politically suspect and ideologically unreliable and unsuitable for the Army. Barua
argued that even though some senior British Officers undertook a form of social
engineering in their preference for the scions of Indian royalty, these attempts failed
because numbers of these elite Indian youths lacked the ability and aptitude
necessary. 172

Politics furthermore was not an appropriate subject to be discussed in clubs by

the British Officers, or thought appropriate to discuss with the Indianised Officers of
the 1930s or the Indian ranks. These discussions were not appropriate except for what
Chevenix-Trench, who served in the Indian Army between 1935 and 1946, related as
acceptably derisive references to the Congress Party during the independence
movement before the war. 173 Fraser though notes that during his time at an Officers
Training School just before partition there was substantial and free discussion of
politics and religion. Fraser claimed that most of the Indian Officer Cadet’s were

172
Pradeep P. Barua, Gentlemen of the Raj – The Indian Army Officer Corps, 1817-1949, Praeger,
USA, 2003, p. 57.
173
Charles Chenevix Trench, The Indian Army and the King’s Enemies 1900-1947, Thames and
Hudson, 1988, p. 120.
50
firmly against independence, perhaps understandable though by the fact that these
Officer Cadets were going to a British Officer School. 174

Masters’s recollections of his service does not note politics as being a

significant issue; it was simply not discussed, though he was in a Gurkha Regiment.
Masters noted the overarching focus of loyalty to the regiment that he claims both
British and Gurkha alike adhered to which left no time for inappropriate chatter on
politics. 175

Indian Officers though enjoying the benefits of the slow Indianisation of the
Army over the last two decades before independence were aware of the stark political
realities of their situation. Indian Officers were particularly attuned to the explicit
racism, exclusion and snobbery they suffered from numerous but not all the British.
Allen who served in Burma with the Army noted how this alleged bias felt by Indian
Officers accounted for their susceptibility for recruitment into the Japanese sponsored
Indian National Army during the Second World War. 176 Marston noted that the
involvement of Indian officers and troops in the Indian National Army could also be
considered proof an unusual kind of latent political sentiment. 177

Allen, also ruminating on the political awakening of Indian soldiers, noted

they were sentimentally admired by the British, but were not allowed to be the equal
of their British Commanders. 178 While the Pakistan Army in time would develop a
reputation for coup d’etat and intervention in government the British Indian Army
loved their sovereign, though were described as contemptuous of nearly all politicians
including prime ministers and secretaries of state. 179 Senior Officers though interested
in the acts of parliament that affected them had no desire for power outside of the
Army and believed that soldiers should have no politics. 180

174
George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here; A Recollection of the War in Burma, Harvill,
1992, London, pp. 133-134.
175
John Masters, Bugle and a Tiger, Cassell Military, London, 2002.
176
Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45, Guild Publishing, London, 1984, p. 606 & p. 634.
177
Daniel Marston,‘The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, 1945-1947’, War in
History, Vol.16, No. 4, 2009, p.474.
178
Allen, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45, p.634.
179
Byron Farwell, Mr Kipling’s Army – All the Queen’s Men, W.W. Norton, London, 1981, p. 112.
180
Farwell, Mr Kipling’s Army, pp. 110-112.
51
Conclusion

The aim of this chapter was to explore how the British Indian Army managed
religion in the Army, belief in martial race and the place of politics within the Army.
The chapter is more descriptive than analytical. The subject of the next chapter is the
formation of the Pakistan Army from the British Indian Army in 1947 and the
analysis and identification of how some of these concepts such as the management of
religion, martial race, ethnicity and the culture of the British Indian Army came to
exert a powerful influence on the early development of the Pakistan Army.

52
53
 Chapter II Turbulent Birth: the Pakistan Army
1947–1951
Partition, division of the British-Indian Army, Kashmir, Islam and
the foundations of the strategic culture of the Pakistan Army

...nations and classes have individual characteristics which should be emphasized to the full
and commanders must study these characteristics and adapt their methods to make the most of
them - Pakistan Army Battle Instruction No. 2 Sept. 1948.

(C-in-C Pakistan Army General Sir Douglas Gracey) 181

Introduction

Upon Pakistan and India gaining independence in 1947 parts of these

countries became engulfed in a maelstrom of violence between migrating Hindu,
Muslim and Sikh communities. The Pakistan Army, which was formed from the
Muslim elements of the British Indian Army, was at its outset poorly equipped and
because of a lack of senior Officers was led by seconded British Officers until 1951.
Though the Indianization process had been undertaken in the previous two decades
and there had been an exponential increase of Indian Officers during the Second
World War including three brigadier-generals, the Armies of the two respective
dominions lacked officers necessary for the operation of an independent Army. The
newly independent Pakistan Army was involved in refugee assistance from its outset
while members of the Army were also involved in the first Kashmir War of 1947–48.

This chapter examines the first four years of the Pakistan Army from its
formation in 1947 under the command of its first two British Commanders in Chief
until January 1951 with the assumption of command of Mohammed Ayub Khan the
first Pakistani Commander in Chief. Initially the chapter discusses the ramfications of
the Indianization program upon the newly independent armies and a brief history of
the time period in order to provide appropriate context to the discussion. Then in four

181
IWM - Army Training - Pakistan Military Training Pamphlet, Pakistan Army Battle Instruction No.
2, September 1948, Ministry of Defence, Pakistan.
54
sections this chapter considers the tribulations involved in the partition of British
India in 1947, the division of the British Indian Army, the British Officers who
became part of the Pakistan Army’s predilection for ‘martial race’ and the Kashmir
conflict of 1947–48 which all contributed to the establishment of a strategic culture
within the Officer Corps in which Islam became the central element of a national and
martial identity.

Indianization grew out of a sense of obligation to India for its sacrifices it had
made during World War One as well as part of a British policy through the Montagu-
Chelmsford reforms of 1918 to allow greater devolution of responsibility to elected
Indian politicians. 182 The Indianization process was always modest in its scope and
earned the ire of Indian nationalists with the initial ten places offered to Indian officer
cadets at Sandhurst being criticised by Indian nationalists as ineffectual. The Indian
legislature eventually secured the creation of the Indian Military Academy (IM) at
Dehra Dun in 1932 whose graduates would be known as Indian commissioned
officers (ICOs’) unlike the Sandhurst graduates who were known as KCIOs’ (Kings
commissioned Indian officers). 183

Apart from its glacial progress problems with Indianization also included
issues of equity from comaparitive wages, command and control issues over British
other ranks to social snobbery and exclusion from the clubs British officers
frequented. 184 Some IMA graduates also noted differences between themselves and
their KCIO colleagues whom they believed to more British than Indian in their
manner and way of thinking. 185 Auchinleck had undertaken considerable effort before
and during the war to address the inequities of Indianization whose solution he
believed was critical to the success of the Army during the war. 186 Auchinleck’s
work on these problems as well as tackling the bias towards the martial races and
opening up recruitment to other classes had by the end of 1941 resulted in, “the ratio

182
Daniel Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign, Praeger,
Westport, 2003, p.16 – 17.
183
Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes, pp.16-20.
184
Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes, pp.20-23 & the snobbery of some British officers and treatment
as second class officers was thoroughly hated especially so when some claimed the British were trying
to manufacture according to a 1935 IMA Officer Graduate, ‘Kala Sahibs’, (black gentlemen), Brigadier
Mirza Hamid Hussain, The Battle Within, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2003, pp.90 & p.109.
185
Mohammed Zaman Kiani, Memoirs of Major General Mohammed Zaman Kiani, Reliance
Publishing House, New Delhi, 1994, p.3.
186
Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes, p.47-49.
55
of Indian officers to British officers” rising by 4 per cent early in the war, “an upward
trend that continued throughout the war”. 187 The experiences gained during the war
whether in North Africa, Italy or Burma provided a tremendous boon to the esprit de
corps of the British Indian Army. The morale of the Army had been extremely high in
Burma after the initial turnarounds at the beginning of the campaign. 188 The Indian
Army had defeated the Japanese comprensively. The Japanese at the beginning of the
war had been believed unbeatable after their outmanoeuvring and defeat of allied
armies. Officers of the new Pakistan Army who had fought in these campaigns were
proud of their contributions and the awards they had won during the war with their
sense of esprit de corps and contributions to the war recorded in subsequent military
histories of the Army. 189 This esprit de corps derived from the hard won battles
against the Axis as well as the equally hard won battles of recognition of their skills
was an element present in both the new Indian and Pakistani officers who took up
their new roles in the new dominion armies.

Chapter One noted that the Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers believed themselves
to be the inheritors of a martial tradition promoted by British Officers leading up to
the foundation of the Pakistan Army. Strategic culture it was noted argues the
importance of an organisation’s history that has been involved in the defence of the
country, and the particular importance of major shocks and disasters that may
overcome such an organisation in this role, and how they adapt to the security
environment. It is important to note here that strategic culture within Lantis and
Howlett’s description noted in the first chapter applies to organisations involved in the
security and defence of a nation, such as is the case with the Pakistan Army. Lantis
and Howlett’s description does not limit this theory to the entire edifice of national
security structures as for instance Snyder’s analysis of Soviet strategic culture.

National identities are forged out of adversity and the impact of the events of
partition and the 1948 War in Kashmir acted powerfully in this way to establish an

187
Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes, p.49.
188
Marston, The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, p.471.
189
Lt.General A.A.K.Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998,
p.10. & Khan’s history of the Pakistan Army records the esprit de corps of the Muslim soldiers and the
mutual respect between the British and Muslim soldiers. Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the
Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press, 1963, p.2. Rahman devotes one chapter to participation in the
Burma campaign and his trials, tribulations and successes.M.Attiqur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion,
Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, pp.39-54.
56
identity and strategic culture derived from Islam. The tragedies perceived and
otherwise during this period established national myths and creation stories in which
the Army as defender of Islam featured prominently. 190 This was the case with
Pakistan where the varied threats both real and imagined to the new nation’s existence
gained deep purchase in the psyche of the first generation of Pakistan Army Officers.

Pakistan was achieved by Jinnah and the Muslim League’s efforts against
congress and British opposition to create a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent.
Pakistan consisted of two wings separated by over one thousand miles of Indian
territory and three hundred and fifty six million Indians 191 . The new country of
approximately seventy five million people established its capital in Karachi in the
western wing of the country. 192 East Pakistan the numerically greater of the two
wings consisted of forty two million people with a distinct cultural, linguistic and
demographic outlook that included a much larger percentage of non-Muslims. 193 The
new country with no authentic claims to a past history was immediately beset with
internal and external problems ranging from the tensions inherent in its disparate
ethnic, religious and geographical divides to the geo-strategic conundrums of being
faced by a hostile India in the East, a hostile Afghanistan in the West and an Army
still under the control of British Commanders.

Though the Muslim League’s objective of Pakistan was achieved against

significant obstacles, paradoxically upon its achievement there were Pakistanis
believed their objective had not been fully realised. These Pakistanis believed
Pakistan to be a partially fulfilled achievement spoiled by alleged Indian recalcitrance,
interference and the failure to provide Pakistan its full territorial inheritance, which
included parts of the Punjab, Kashmir and some other areas. 194 Because of this, an

190
Smith’s ethno-symbolism and nationalism theory emphasises the importance of conflict in creating
myths of battle and heroism that later generations may emulate, a theme that is prevalent in Pakistan,
Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism, p. 47. The term ‘Myth’ is also usefully considered from the
sense described by Marwick of a ‘Myth’ being a version of the past containing an element of truth in it
that distorts what actually happened in support of a vested interest, Arthur Marwick, The New Nature
of History, Palgrave MacMillan, 2001, p. 292.
191
Population estimates derived from estimates of 1951. Joseph E Schwartzberg (Editor), A Historical
Atlas of South Asia, Oxford University Press, New York, 1992, p.77.
192
Joseph E Schwartzberg (Editor), A Historical Atlas of South Asia, p.77.
193
1 in 5 of East Pakistan’s population was non-Muslim compared to 1 in 30 of West Pakistan. Ian
Talbot, Pakistan – A New History, Hurst & Company, London, 2012,, p.16.
194
Major General S.Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan, Ferozsons (Pvt.) Ltd, Lahore, 1993, p.26 &
pp.41-53.
57
irredentist Hindu India bent on extinguishing the new state and its re-absorption into
Mother India was established as truth, at least in the beliefs of the political and
military elite of Pakistan. 195 The Army believed India to be the core threat to the new
Muslim state’s existence.

In this manner the story and legends of the new army from its beginning
focused on its Muslim character and its heroic achievements in overcoming the
tribulations believed by the Pakistanis to have been thrust on it in these early years by
a Hindu India. The exhilaration of Pakistan’s independence was further tempered by
its tenuous claims to existence as a nation both contemporaneously and historically
with its claims to be South Asia’s Muslim homeland belied by the fact that thirty-five
million Muslims had remained in India. Indian diplomats astutely made it a point to
remind others of India’s own Muslim heritage. 196 The Army, the most organised state
entity with its claims to have defended the Muslim homeland against alleged Indian
aggression in Kashmir, quickly established itself as the paramount institution of the
new state.

This first generation of Officers were trained and indoctrinated by the British
within the multi-ethnic and religiously diverse British Indian Army. The Pakistan
Army shed this diversity almost from its very beginning, despite Jinnah’s early desire
for Pakistan’s national institutions to be representative of its minorities. The
communal fears involved in partition acted on those Hindu Officers in the Army to
seek their careers and security in India while Muslims desirous of remaining in India
were also rejected. 197 Officers noted how the Army was being destroyed by
politicians with one Muslim officer lamenting the loss of his beloved Sikh troops. 198
The Army quickly became an Army of Muslims assured of their heritage as the
‘sword arm’ of the Raj consisting largely of Muslim martial race soldiers from the
Punjab and NWFP.

195
Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy 1947-58, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore,
1998, p.67.
196
Aparna Pande, Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India, Routledge, London, 2011, p.
47.
197
Major General S.Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan p.37 & Marston notes the process how
Muslim officers were denied commissions in the new Indian Army and Hindu Officers in the Pakistan
Army, Daniel Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition and the Punjab Boundary Force’, p.485.
198
Daniel Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition and the Punjab Boundary Force’, p.499.
58
 Pakistan had become independent on 14 August 1947 amid tumultuous
violence, territorial dispute and recrimination with India over possession of capital
assets and supplies left by the British. 199 Born out of the exhaustion of Britain after
World War II, which had at various times cajoled, threatened and made promises of
independence to India during the war, the two new states of Pakistan and India were
born in an era of decolonisation, nationalism and the burgeoning Cold War
environment. The success of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League in prevailing
and obtaining independence on the basis of the two nation theory of a homeland for
the subcontinent’s Muslims, was soured by disputes with India over the accession of a
number of the Princely States who were required to devolve their power to either
Pakistan or India. The accession of Kashmir to India was met with outrage in
Pakistan, which had expected to receive the territory of this Muslim majority state and
Pakistan refused to recognise Kashmir’s accession. 200

The invasion of Kashmir by tribal invaders that India alleged was orchestrated
by the Pakistan Army was eventually repulsed in early November 1947 with India
effectively gaining control of Jammu and Kashmir while Pakistan gained control of
those areas it would describe as free or ‘Azad’ Kashmir. 201 Continued Pakistani
protests at the United Nations resulted in a security council plan to hold a plebiscite in
Kashmir in March 1948 which was never held, while it took until July 1949 for India
and Pakistan to agree on a ceasefire line for Jammu and Kashmir. The UN mediator
Sir Owen Dixon announced on 22 July 1950 his failure to bring India and Pakistan
together to solve the Kashmir dispute. Physical manifestations of these hostilities
involved troop concentrations at the border with Pakistan producing a white paper on
Indian troop concentrations in September 1951.

The nebulous sense of identity for the new multi-ethnic state in which two
wings of the country was separated by India was made apparent in March 1948 when

199
For literature on the violence of partition see, SPARC, Partition: Surgery Without Anesthesia,
Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), Islamabad, 1998, Yasmin Khan, The
Great Partition – The Making of India and Pakistan, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007,
Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition – Violence, Nationalism and History in India, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2001, Ian Talbot & Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India, Cambridge
University Press, 2009, Cambridge and Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight – The Last Years of the
British Empire in India, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.
200
Major General S.Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan, pp. 41-53.
201
Maj.General S.K.Sinha, Operation Rescue – Military operations in Jammu & Kashmir 1947-49,
Vision Books, New Delhi, 1977 (originally penned in 1955),p.21.
59
Jinnah made a speech at Dacca University. Jinnah announced to an East Pakistani
audience proud of their Bengali language and identity that Urdu, a language native to
neither West nor East Pakistan, would be the national language for Pakistan. Later
that same year there were communal riots in Karachi involving masses of the
Mohajirs or Muslim settlers from India who had emigrated during partition resulting
in a state of emergency. 202 To complicate the already tenuous existence of the new
country, Jinnah—the architect of Pakistan—died in September 1948. Pakistan already
indignant at the loss of Kashmir also protested to the United Nations concerning
India’s invasion of Hyderabad a Hindu majority state ruled by a Muslim in August
1948.

Internationally, with a view to establishing its Muslim credentials, Pakistan

hosted the first international Islamic conference in Karachi in December 1949. The
leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, Khaliquzzaman, had also suggested a pan-
Islamic unity of countries to be known as ‘Islamistan’. 203 Pakistan and India also
engaged in bilateral talks in 1949 concerning a host of disputes including Kashmir,
evacuee property and the Punjab water dispute concerning India stemming the flow of
water into Pakistan. 204

The disputes and enmities begun at independence continued into 1951 with
Pakistan believing India to be inciting Afghan hostility against Pakistan. Afghanistan
had not recognised Pakistan’s independence and held irredentist claims on Pakistani
territory that Britain had taken from Afghanistan. India had also to Pakistan’s mind
provocatively hosted the all India Pakhtoon Jirga in Delhi, as well as allowing the
Afghan Ambassador to use ‘All India radio’ to deliver an anti-Pakistan speech in May
1951. Pakistan’s woes continued with the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in
October 1951 who was perhaps after Jinnah, Pakistan’s most able politician capable
of articulating a coherent vision and identity for Pakistan.

202
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence, Verinder Grover & Ranjana Arora (Eds), Deep &
Deep Publications, New Delhi, 1997, p. 23.
203
Anas Malik, Political Survival in Pakistan: Beyond Ideology, Taylor & Francis, 2010, p. 42.
204
Aaron T. Wolf & Joshua T. Newton, ‘Case Study of Transboundary Dispute Resolution: The Indus
Water Treaty’, Oregon State University, Institute for Water and Watersheds,
http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/research/case_studies/Indus_New.htm, accessed 24
September 2013.
60
 Pakistan’s formation and identity were loosely tied to the idea of a Muslim
homeland by a secular elite that had largely not been supported by the Ulema of the
day while a Pakistan identity was still being negotiated. 205 Those interested in
pursuing a more Islamic basis to the state moved towards this objective almost from
independence. A number of the Ulama including Maududi had been opposed to
Jinnah and felt that he aimed to secularise the Muslims of India, while nationalist
Muslims were opposed to the idea of Pakistan as proposed by the Muslim League. 206
Some Muslims felt even more strongly and described Jinnah in hostile terms as the
great Kafir-i-Azam’ (the greatest of infidels). Despite this opposition numerous north
Indian Ulama, including Maududi, joined the mass migration to Pakistan during
partition and some Ulama who had become members of the league pushed for the
adoption of an Islamic constitution. 207

The Partition of British India and the Pakistan Army

It is to the next section of this chapter that the partition of British India into the
dominions of Pakistan and India shall now be considered, and why this process
provoked strong sentiments of distrust and betrayal in Pakistani Army Officers.
Officers who would constitute the new Pakistan Army did not trust the Viceroy
Mountbatten and believed him to be biased against Pakistan in considering the
partition, while the Vicereine’s allegedly improper relationship with Nehru were
believed by Pakistanis to be another example of the improper Hindu influence on the
Viceroy. 208

Similarly, the departure (before his due date) of the Supreme Commander of
the British Indian Army Auchinleck at Mountbatten’s urging, because of allegations
of Auchinleck’s bias towards Pakistan, infuriated the Pakistanis who saw themselves
as out-manoeuvred by the Indians largely out of their leaders special relationship with

205
There was significant opposition to the idea of Pakistan amongst a number of religious groups with
figures in the Deoband School believing that men like Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan would be incapable
of building an Islamic state in Pakistan, in Ziya-Ul-Hasan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the
Demand for Pakistan, Navana, Calcutta, 1963, pp. 118-121.
206
Osman, ‘The Ulama in Pakistani Politics’ p. 232 & Akhtar, ‘Pakistan Since Independence, p. 236.
207
Akhtar, ‘Pakistan Since Independence, p. 234.
208
The poor view of Mountbatten by Pakistani Army writers is prolific including an almost de rigueur
reference in regimental histories, for example in Maj. General Rafiuddin Ahmed, History of the Baloch
Regiment, The Naval & Military Press Ltd, East Sussex, 2005, p. 189 & 197 & Colonel M.Y. Effendi,
Punjab Cavalry –Evolution, Role, Organisation and Tactical Doctrine 11 Cavalry (Frontier Force)
1849-1971, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p. 147.
61
Mountbatten. 209 Mountbatten had informed Auchinleck that too many Indian
Ministers resented Auchinleck and he had accordingly taken advantage of
Auchinleck’s offer to resign. 210 Pakistanis believed the early departure of Auchinleck
left Pakistan at the mercy of India who held most of the government and military
stores and they would not honour the agreed division. This belief was shared by a
perhaps embittered Auchinleck who thought Indian intentions were,

... too strongly imbued with the implacable determination to remove anything which
is likely to prevent their gaining their own ends, which are to prevent Pakistan
receiving her just share, or indeed anything. If we are removed there is no hope at all
of any just division of assets in the shape of movable assets belonging to the former
Indian Army. 211

Auchinleck’s beliefs were supported by those Officers who formed the new Pakistan
Army, and though respectful of British Indian Army higher command, were outraged
by Mountbatten’s actions, as well as disgusted with India for the violence during the
process of partition.

The process of partition poisoned what trust had existed between Hindu, Sikh
and Muslim communities in the Punjab. Pakistani, Indian and British Officers who
had served together in the British Indian Army were witness to a carnage and brutality
that fundamentally polarised communal perceptions between Muslim, Sikh and Hindu
communities. The brutalities were not one sided, but those caught up in the maelstrom
of violence could see it only as evidence of hate perpetrated on their co-religionists.
Hindus, like Sikhs and Muslims, were shocked. The personal and communal
experiences of violence experienced by Muslim Officers invoked an epiphany in
numerous Officers, which separated them from their past perspectives on relations
with other communities they had lived side-by-side with during service with Sikh and
Hindu Officers. The experiences shared by these Muslim Officers who were mainly

209
LHCMA, General the Lord Ismay Papers, 3/7/67/38, Letter from Viceroy Mountbatten to Field
Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck dated 26 September 1947 at Government House to Field Marshal Sir
Claude Auchinleck.
210
LHCMA, General the Lord Ismay Papers, 3/7/67/38, p. 4.
211
John Connell, Auchinleck – A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, Cassell, London,
1959, pp. 920-921 & Auchinleck’s private secretary Maj. General Shahid Hamid, Disastrous Twilight –
A personal record of the partition of India, Leo Cooper, 1986, London, pp. 260-261 Auchinleck’s
papers in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, Doc.1262, 28 September 1947
refer to this quote.
62
Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers amplified their sense of Muslim identity and the threat
posed by the Hindu’s and Sikh’s. These experiences seemed to fulfil the Muslim
Leagues pre-partition fears of being dominated by a Hindu India. 212

Major Musa, a Senior Staff Officer in Lahore between September and

December 1947, noted his psychological shock of having witnessed a train full of
slaughtered Muslim refugees and the influence this had on his perceptions of the
Indian state and its political objectives. 213 Similarly, Mohammed Zia ul-Haq had
related how the vision of his exhausted mother crossing the border into Pakistan
carrying their worldly possessions produced an indelible impact upon him. 214

The Punjab experienced the worse violence during partition and involved a
three way process of killing and destruction amongst the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh
communities. 215 The violence though could have been worse except for the
involvement of the Punjab Boundary Force (PBF) which had been instituted out of
elements of the British Indian Army in order to counter anticipated problems during
the course of partition. Approved by the Partition Council on 17 July 1947 the PBF
was constituted of elements of the 4th Indian Division and led by Major General Pete
Rees together with a Sikh and Muslim officer as senior Indian military advisors. 216

The PBF though having performed its role to the best of its ability had to
perform a role in a highly communalised atmosphere where a significant proportion of
the population had been militarised with large numbers of demobbed Sikh, Muslim
and Hindu soldiers experienced in the recent combat of World War II and
passionately committed to securing their communites. Overlaid onto this were the
organisational abilities of the Sikh communities who feared being marginalised and
together with demobbed Sikh soldiers provided their Jatha’s a particularly aggressive
and tactical propensity for success in evicting and killing Muslim refugees and

212
Wajahat Husain’s Indian Commander attempted to persuade him to remain in India but Hussain
who had served on the Punjab Boundary Force was convinced by witnessing the carnage brought on
Muslims in the East Punjab to opt for Pakistan, in ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Major General (Retd)
S. Wajahat Husain, Defence Journal, August 2002.
213
General Mohammad Musa, From Jawan to Genera, East & West Publishing, Karachi, 1984, p. 77.
214
Quoted in Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988’, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10,
October 1988, p. 1084.
215
Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, p.470.
216
Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, pp.489-490.
63
villagers. 217 Ths “gave the character of the violence a distinctiveness that was both
extraordinary and unparalleled anywhere else in India”. 218 The PBF furthermore had
to contend with the collusion of a number of the Princely states in providing support
to communal elements engaged in the violence as well as the criticism of British and
Indian politicians alike at being seemingly unable to prevent the scale of violence as
well as calling for the PBF to be reinforced. 219

The ferocity of the violence also left a searing impact on British Officers who
served in the Pakistan and Indian Armies at this time. The brutality meted out by the
Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities on each other generated introspection on the
nature of humanity and altering previously held beliefs of the British Indian Army.
Though innumerable officers had witnessed and even policed communal violence in
the past, the experience of partition was apparently a level of violence on a previously
unimagined magnitude for all concerned.

I have served in what I regard as the finest infantry in the world and I have had much
pleasure and happiness in India, but I have now plumbed the depths of human
degradation ... I now know that we are not basically far above animals. 220

Auchinleck’s own household comptroller witnessed the killing of a group of

Muslim women and children close to Auchinleck’s headquarters, while the British
Comptroller General of the Pakistan Army had his Muslim bearer murdered in front
of him. 221 Explicit accounts from India and Pakistan have recorded the brutality,
extent and manner of violence that accompanied partition. 222 There is evidence
though of Pakistani and Indian soldiers who prevented further bloodshed by rescuing

217
Brigadier R.C.B.Bristow, Memories of the British Raj, Johnson, London, pp.159-168.
218
Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, 1945-1947, p.486 & Swarna
Aiyar, ‘August Anarchy’: The partition massacres in Punjab, 1947’, South Asia, Vol.XVIII, 1995, p.27.
219
Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, 1945-1947’, pp. 486-.487 &
p.493.
220
OIOC MSS EUR.D.1030/1-33, Hudson Papers & the recollections of Major James on the
dismemberment of women and children by Sikh Jathas. Major James, ‘Transfer of Sovreignty’, Royal
Engineers Journal, August 1997 p.118, quoted in Marston, “The Indian Army, Partition and the Punjab
Boundary Force, p.493.
221
E.W. Robinson-Horley, Last Post – An Indian Army Memoir, Leo Cooper, 1985, pp. 124-125 &
140-145 & Letter of Major General J.B. Dalison to Field Marshal Auchinleck on 30 August 1947, in
AUC/1251, Auchinleck Papers at the University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library
(hereafter JRUL).
222
See for instance SPARC, Partition: Surgery Without Anesthesia, Society for the Protection of the
Rights of the Child (SPARC), Islamabad, 1998 & Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition – The Making of
India and Pakistan, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007.
64
refugee populations from their own co-religionists, outside of the efforts provided by
the Punjab Boundary Force that had been tasked with policing the Punjab border. 223

Division of the British Indian Army

Given the communal violence and mass killings that occurred it is important
to note that there had originally been a concerted effort to prevent the division of the
British Indian Army. Senior British Political and Military figures believed a single
army could have served both dominions for a time. It is to this section that the thesis
now examines.

The uncompleted nature of the division was due in part to this resistance to
divide the Army by the British and some Indian Officers, with some British Officers
believing that the majority of Indian Officers were against the division of the Army
and even against independence. 224 The division was resisted by Mountbatten the last
Viceroy, Auchinleck the Supreme Commander in Chief, as well as senior Officers of
the new Indian army. 225 Lord Ismay who had served in the British Indian Army and
who was Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff stated,

The problem which caused many of us the greatest grief was the decision to divide
the Indian Army on communal lines before partition took place … I did my utmost to
persuade Mr Jinnah to reconsider his decision ... but Jinnah was adamant. He said that
he would refuse to take over power on 15 August unless he had an army of
appropriate strength and predominantly Muslim composition under his control… 226

223
See for instance Chapter VIII of Maj. General Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949,
Wajidalis, 1989, Lahore, pp. 249-257 & Qureshi’s recollections of more general Muslim efforts to
prevent violence against Hindus and Sikhs, in Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak
War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 190.
224
Brigadier Bristow wrote that most Hindu and Sikh officers were strongly opposed to the partition of
India and became enraged when Pakistan declared itself Islamic, Brigadier R.C.B.Bristow, Memories
of the British Raj, Johnson, London, p.157 & Fraser claims this from his time with Indian Officer
Cadets at an Officer Cadet Training School after World War II. George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered
Safe Out There, Harvill, 1992, p. 133.
225
Ayub Khan notes that he was approached by General Cariappa the first C-in-C of the Indian Army
in a bid to seek Ayub’s support in not dividing the Army, in Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford
University Press, London, 1967, p. 19. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali a member of the Armed Forces
reconstitution steering committee during partition also makes this claim, Chaudhri Muhammad Ali,
The Emergence of Pakistan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1967, p. 187.
226
Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of the General the Lord Ismay, Heinemann, London, 1960, pp. 425-428.
Alan Campbell Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, Robert Hale Limited, London, 1951, p. 137,
Johnson was Mountbatten’s ADC wrote that Mountbatten thought the partition of the armed forces to
be “the biggest crime and the biggest headache”.
65
 Auchinleck had opposed an early plan for the division of the forces in April
1947 by the first Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan. The Pakistanis had
resented this and saw the reluctance as contributing to the failure of Pakistan
receiving its share of military stores. 227 Other Pakistanis saw the reluctance in more
sinister terms with the ‘save the united army campaign’ as a Hindu plot to sabotage
the partition of India and deny the creation of Pakistan. 228 The ‘Hindu plot’ to deny
the formation of the Pakistan Army established itself as an established Army myth
held by the Officers of the new Pakistan Army, though it was never convincingly
proven amongst the opportunism and initiative laden Officers of the new armies
seeking to obtain the best outcome for their new services.

The ‘myth’ was established though,

To sabotage partition, a campaign to save the Army was stepped up. Senior Hindu
Officers went round persuading the Muslim personnel not to accept the division …
at the back of their minds was the hope that without an Army of its own Pakistan
would not be able to last very long. 229

Other Officers saw the situation as the hand of British strategic expediency
with Britain trying to maintain a united army in terms of its strategic value to the
Commonwealth. 230 The issue had been the subject of British cabinet considerations,
which had considered the potential of future Indian and Russian intrigue and the
necessity for contingency planning. 231 The issue had also been explored in the May
1947 India Burma committee where it was recommended that Britain should insist
that Pakistan and India should not lease bases to any power outside the

227
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, Columbia University Press, New York,
1967, p. 187.
228
Maj. General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, OUP, 1961, pp. 17-18.
229
Brigadier S. Haider Abbas Rizvi, Veteran Campaigners – A History of the Punjab Regiment 1759-
1981, Wajidalis Lahore, 1984, p. 105.
230
Maj. General Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949, Services Books Club, 1989, pp. 118-
119. See also Brigadier D.H. Cole, Imperial Military Geography – the geographical background of the
defence problems of the British Commonwealth, Sifton Praed & Co., LTD, London, 1953, pp. 159-182,
where Cole writes of the importance of India as a potential base for Britain and the particular problems
of Pakistan pp. 172-176.
231
National Archives of the United Kingdom – Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) CAB 128/7-
Confidential Annex to reference CM (46) 55, India Constitutional Problem, p. 23.
66
Commonwealth otherwise than in pursuance of a scheme of regional defence
approved by the UN. 232

Chaudhri Muhammad Ali a member of the armed forces reconstitution

steering committee chaired by Auchinleck claimed that the attachment to the
undivided army by British Officers and plenty of Indian Officers was so great that
they could not emotionally reconcile themselves to the Army’s division even after the
matter had been decided. 233 The profound impact of even using the term ‘division’ in
describing the actual division of the British Indian Army was felt to be
psychologically harmful by Auchinleck. 234

Though the British were resistant to the division of the Army, future Officers
of the Pakistan Army though proud of the martial achievements of the old Indian
Army fervently desired the division. Auchinleck arguably was also cognizant of the
impact of partition on communal lines would affect the desires of officers to be
affiliated to their new national armies and expressed concern in September 1946.

Already many Muslim officers, for example, consider themselves as Muslims

first and Indians second, though they may be proud to belong to the present
Indian Army235
In this atmosphere Officers of the new Pakistan Army were distinctly against
retaining a single army and stated their preferences to the British in terms of the
religious chasm between Muslim and Hindu. Niazi who had won the military cross
during the Burma campaign noted the rejoicing and elation of his fellow Muslim
Officer colleagues in Clement Town near Dehra Dun upon learning that Pakistan had
been achieved and that they could now serve the Army of their new Muslim
homeland. 236 The Commanding Officer of the 7/10th Baluch Regiment stated to

232
Anita Inder Singh, ‘Imperial Defence and the Transfer of Power in India, 1946-1947, in The
International History Review, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Nov. 1982), pp. 568-588, Taylor and Francis, 1982, pp.
584-585 & Maj. General Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949, Ferozsons & Wajidalis, 1989,
Lahore, p. 125.
233
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, Columbia University Press, New York,
1967, pp. 186-187.
234
Field Marshal Auchinleck to Chiefs of Staff and British Cabinet, in John Connell, Auchinleck – A
Biography of Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, Cassell, London, 1959, p. 889.
235
Quoted in Marston. Marston, ‘The Indian Army, Partition and the Punjab Boundary Force, 1945-
1947, p.478.
236
Lt.General A.A.K.Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998,
pp.11-12.
67
General Messervey who was to be the first Commander in Chief of the Pakistan Army
the Islamic nature of the proposed new Army in contradiction to the Indian Army,

Sir, my grandfather, my father and I have fought for your empire. I have no
wish that my sons and grandsons fight for the Hindus. 237
As noted earlier in this chapter the desire for the division of the Army by
those future Pakistani officers was noted by Ayub one of the most senior Muslim
officers of the time. Ayub wrote that he was approached by General Cariappa the first
C-in-C of the Indian Army in a bid to seek Ayub’s support in not dividing the
Army. 238

The Muslim Officers though were increasingly influenced by the impact of

the communal violence experienced during the exodus of populations during partition.
Furthermore, there were instances of the Army’s discipline and unity unravelling with
episodes involving Muslim units engaging in fatal skirmishes with Sikh and Hindu
units being witnessed by British Officers. 239 British officers began to note their
concerns about the reiliability of Punjabi troops with instances of troops failing to
respond to instances of gross butchery of civilians. 240 These skirmishes were part of
the tribulations of partition that were acting as a form of cohesiveness upon these
newly independent Muslim units being coordinated to form the Pakistan Army.

Other instances such as the Indian Navy mutiny as well as communal troubles
on board troopships returning with Muslim and Hindu troops from overseas were also

237
Maj. General Rafiuddin Ahmed, History of the Baloch Regiment 1939-1956, The Naval & Military
Press Ltd, East Sussex, 2005, pp. 187-188.
238
Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford University Press, London, 1967, p.19., the future Defence
Minister and Prime Minister of Pakistan Chaudhri Muhammad Ali also makes this claim in his book,
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1967,
p.187.
239
An Officer of the 2nd Battalion of the Black Watch witnessed a fatal skirmish between the Muslim
troops of the 3/8 Punjab and the Sikhs and Hindus of the 19th Lancers on 7 September 1947, in Roy
Humphries, To Stop a Rising Sun – Reminiscences of wartime in India and Burma, Sutton Publishing,
Gloucestershire, 1996, p. 203.
240
Brigadier Bristow refers in this instance to an example of Punjabi Dogra troops failing to respond to
the massacre of Muslim vilagers. Bristow himself spent most of his service commanding Dogra troops.
Brigadir R.C.B.Bristow, Memories of the British Raj – Soldier in India, Johnson, London, 1974, p.156.
68
reported. 241 The British too were also beginning to suffer casualties from being
involved in the escort of refugees between India and Pakistan. 242

The rapidity of partition and the division of the Army was confusing to the
few senior Officers who would constitute the Pakistan Army. Brigadier Akbar Khan
in his response to an armed forces committee question responded,

I don’t even know whether there will be one or two India’s. It will depend on whether
243
there will be internal troubles or war...

The confusion as to whether or not there would be a partition into two separate
homelands or a Federation in which there would be substantial Muslim autonomy was
incomprehensible to those who had little information as to whether or not they would
be required to choose which Army they would serve in. This confusion was
something familiar to junior Muslim Officersl, who had no idea as late as March and
April 1947 that the Army would be divided. 244

The resistance to divide the Army was perhaps amplified by the fact that a
number of senior British Officials were critical of Jinnah with Ismay even sharing his
confidential notes of discussion between himself and Jinnah with Nehru. 245 Jinnah
himself was likewise critical of some British Officials. Jinnah informed Ismay that a
number of British Officials were dangerously susceptible to providing concessions to
the Indians due to their inability to understand the wiles of the Hindu mind and the

241
LHCMA – Boyle – Reports and Messages re: tensions between Muslim and Hindu troops on board
H.M. Troopship ‘Empire Pride’, Suez-Bombay, October 1947. Boyle reports via ‘Marconigrams’ of his
and fellow British Officers (Maj. Walker & Maj. Mitchell) belief in imminent violence on board the
vessel between the Muslim majority and Hindu minority if the vessel did not dock at Karachi before
Bombay.
242
The Commander of the 33 Field Squadron Engineers reported the death of two British Officers
escorting Muslim refugees in Amritsar, in Roy Humphries, To Stop a Rising Sun – Reminiscences of
wartime in India and Burma, Sutton Publishing, Gloucestershire, 1996, pp. 201-202.
243
NAM.1982-04-797-1, Brigadier Akbar Khan’s response as witness to the Armed Forces
Naturalisation Committee (AFNC), (from minutes of AFNC at 14th meeting on Wednesday 9th April
1947).
244
Maj. General Tajammal Hussain Malik, The Story of My Struggle, Jang publishers, Lahore, 1991, p.
7.
245
Ismay and Montgomery were critical of Jinnah and even Montgomery with his contemporary lack
of familiarity with India pronounced that Jinnah had a deadly hatred of Hindus Field-Marshal
Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Collins, London,
1958, p. 457; Ismay blamed the troubles of partition on Jinnah in British Library sound recording,
C940/19 General Lord Ismay (1887-1965) interviewed by Henry Vincent Hodson & Liddell Hart
Centre for Military Archives (hereafter LHCMA), General the Lord Ismay Papers, 3/7/68/45.
69
Hindu determination to prevent the creation of Pakistan. 246 Jinnah’s distinctly
religious rhetoric in describing the Hindu mind was incongruent with a number of his
notable addresses on the nature of Pakistan’s inclusiveness.

Despite the resistance by the British the Army was divided. Pakistan became a
nation on 14 August 1947 and the Army it inherited was constituted from the Muslim
elements of the former regiments of the British Indian Army. For a very short time
before the violence of partition escalated there were also in keeping with Jinnah’s
vision of the Army Hindu Officers whose home was in Pakistan and who had opted to
serve in the Pakistan Army. 247 In August 1947 the undivided Army had been over
400,000 in number. On partition, India’s share was 280,000 personnel, excluding state
forces, and Pakistan’s about 150,000. 248 The Officers and men who were to make up
the Pakistan Army were scattered throughout the regiments in India and overseas.

The Pakistani Officers forming the new Army though nearly all Muslim and
nearly all originating from the Punjab or the North West Frontier Province came from
a complex sociological melange of tribes, clan and religious adherence. Most Officers
came from families with traditions of military service to the British. A prominent
issue with the new Pakistani officers was the belief that there had been no all-Muslim
regiments in the British Indian Army while there had been eight all Hindu Regiments
and ten Gurkha Regiments. 249 The argument centres on recruitment into the Army and
the matter of mixed composition regiments and units. Arguably though there were
smaller Muslim units numerous officers, including British officers believed there to
be no all Muslim regiments, though the term Regiment can be imprecise. 250

246
LHCMA, General the Lord Ismay Papers, 3/7/68/45.
247
Jinnah’s inaugural address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August 1947, in his
capacity as its first President, in G. Allana (Ed), Pakistan Movement Historic Documents, University of
Karachi, pp. 407-411 & Maj. General S. Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan: Including the Period
from August 1947 to 1949, Ferozsons Pvt. LTD, Lahore, 1993, p. 37 & Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The
Emergence of Pakistan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1967, p. 186.
248
Lt. General S.L. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour – The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the
Twenty First Century, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, p. 446.
249
Maj. General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, OUP, 1961, pp. 24-25.
250
Brigadier Bristow who commanded a Dogra Regiment certainly believed there to be no all Muslim
regiments as did Fazal Khan (noted below) and Ayub Khan. Brigadier R.C.B.Bristow, Memories of the
British Raj, Johnson, London, 1974, p.190. David French notes that British military terminology is
cursed by words with imprecise meanings and none more so that the word, ‘regimenta’, “that is so shot
through with anomalies that to talk of a ‘regimental system’ is itself almost a misnomer”. David
French Military Identities: The Regimental System, The British Army, and the British People, c.1870-
2000, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p.7.
70
 The principles of the division of the British Indian Army for the two
respective dominion armies was unanimously agreed on 30 June 1947 to be
undertaken on a communal basis upon the proportionate strength of two armies with
Pakistan receiving thirty-six per cent and India sixty-four per cent. 251 The process of
the division of the British Indian Army was outlined in guidelines provided by the
Partition Council under the auspices of the Armed Forces Reconstitution Committee
chaired by Field Marshal Auchinleck. 252 The division process for the Army involved
a two-step plan that would initially divide the existing forces on a communal basis
followed by a complicated ‘comb out’ process in which Muslim and non-Muslim
personnel had to be separated and units reconstituted. 253 Apart from the grief in
dividing the Army, senior British officers thought the process in undertaking the
division complicated and as having caused the “biggest headache’ involved in
Partition. 254 Individuals who were Muslim and from the area that would be Pakistan
would be entitled to join the Pakistan Army and not the Indian Army, and if from an
area that was to make up India they could opt for either India or Pakistan with the
converse applying to non-Muslims. 255

British Officers in the Pakistan Army and the Division of Assets

The first two Commanders in Chief of the Pakistan Army were British. Upon
independence in 1947 there were one hundred and twenty British Officers serving in
the Pakistan Army in Command, senior Staff Officer positions, Commandants of
schools, administrative units, training centres, and record offices as well as being
Commandants of active units, technical units and first grade staff appointments. 256
The British who stayed on in the Pakistan Army believed the most severe problem
was the lack of able Staff Officers in the Pakistan Army. 257 Apart from the respective
personnel strengths in India’s favour, India also inherited more whole units with more

251
Maj. General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1963, pp. 28-29.
252
V.Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green, pp.260-264.
253
V.Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green, p.264.
254
Lord Ismay apart from noting the division of the Army was a crime noted its complexities as did
Field Marshal Auchinleck. V.Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green, p.265
255
Maj. General Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949, Services Book Club & Wajidalis,
Lahore 1989, pp. 127-128.
256
OIOC L/WS/1/1673 – Appointments held by British Officers in Pakistan and List of Colonels and
above – Pakistan Army.
257
NAM.1992-03-162-1) Oral History series, Cassette one – Lieutenant William Langdon Farrow.
71
senior ranks than Pakistan. India’s first commander in chief General Sir Rob
Lockhart was also British and together with four hundred and eighteen British officers
served in the Indian Army. 258 Lockhart was replaced by India’s first indigenous
commander Lieutenant General Kodandera Cariappa in December 1948 and only six
British remained by April 1956.

The majority of the Muslim Officers who constituted the Army were junior in
rank and experience. With the loss of Officers during partition due to the combat in
Kashmir and accidents, as well as the small number of remaining British Officers
meant that large numbers of officers were rapidly promoted to fill gaps in the new
Army. 259 Ayub Khan for instance advanced within the space of six years from
Colonel to be the Army’s first Commander in Chief. This was a familiar experience to
the new Pakistan Army Officers with for example an Artillery Officer commissioned
in 1946 receiving an accelerated promotion to Major due to the shortage of qualified
Officers. 260

While the division of Army personnel was confused, the division of the
military weapons, stores and assets of the British Indian Army between the two new
dominion’s armies was fraught with ill will and subterfuge.

The division of assets involved countless claims and counter claims between
Pakistani and Indian sources as to the dastardly acts performed by each other.
Complaints from Pakistani Officers alleged nearly every conceivable crime and act of
infamy from plain theft of stores to fraud and the alleged sabotage of equipment. In
keeping with the ‘Hindu myth’, there were Pakistani Officers who believed the
Indians premeditatedly starved them of supplies to prevent the establishment of the
Pakistan Army. 261

Brigadier Ansari, commissioned in 1943, oversaw the emergence of the

Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps at partition and claimed that India had disarmed

258
V.Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green, pp. 277-287.
259
For instance one serious loss was Major General Iftikhar Khan who was believed would be the first
Pakistani Army Chief who together with Brigadier Sher Khan, another experienced Officer, was killed
in an air crash on 13 November 1949.
260
Brig. Syed Shah Abul Qasim, Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel Publishers, Karachi, 2003,
p. 73.
261
Interview of Maj. General Wajahat Hussain, in ‘Remembering our Warriors’, Ikhram Seghal (Ed),
Pakistan Defence Journal, August, 2002.
72
repatriated troops bound for Pakistan, while the non-Muslim members of the Punjab
Boundary Force had been briefed to demand as many stores as possible regardless of
needs. 262 Ansari’s perspective as an Officer who formed the first generation of the
new Pakistan Army is consistent with others of this generation who believe in the
hostile premeditated nature of India’s denial of stores and assets. These beliefs were
linked religiously to the context of a vengeful Hindu India engaged on a deliberate
initiative to ruin Muslim Pakistan.

Allegations existed furthermore that the Indians had for instance deliberately
forwarded redundant equipment such as oversize World War II era clothing meant for
West African Troops. The individual inequities of such actions though became
thoroughly infused with the politics of religion and that of the spiteful Hindu. Despite
Indian complaints of their own problems the Pakistanis viewed their problems as
continuing elements of a sinister and premeditated Indian attempt to extinguish the
Pakistan Army at birth. 263 The sabotage of equipment left behind in Pakistan—such
as the rendering of the Poona Horse’s few tanks in-operational by fouling their fuel
tanks—were seen as warlike in their intention, especially so when it had prevented
these tanks subsequent deployment in the 1948 border hostilities. 264

For the newly formed Pakistan Army the inescapable reality was that during
the Second World War Army depots had been situated near the main supply routes for
the war in South East Asia. The location of the majority of these depots had
absolutely nothing to do with Indian intentions at partition and everything to do with
the pragmatism of such centres being close to operational theatres during the war.
India had correspondingly been left the bulk of military materiel and production
facilities.

Pakistani claims were countered by Indian arguments that the division of

assets was impossible to achieve given the immensity of trying to sort out records
from 1857 onwards within the limited time frame of partition thrust upon them by the

262
Brig. M.A.H. Ansari, Brig. M.H. Hydri & Colonel Mahboob Elahi, History of the Pakistan Army
Ordnance Corps 1947-1992, Ordnance History Cell & Ferozsons, Rawalpindi, 1993, pp. 89-90.
263
Brig. M.A.H. Ansari, Brig. M.H. Hydri & Colonel Mahboob Elahi, History of the Pakistan Army
Ordnance Corps 1947-1992, Ordnance History Cell & Ferozsons, Rawalpindi, 1993, p. 90.
264
Brigadier Z.A. Khan, The Way it Was, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, p. 44.
73
British decision. 265 Pakistani Officers argued that they were not assisted by either
Indian or British Officers in their tasks and had to leave New Delhi, due to the
mounting violence against Muslims, without achieving their objectives. 266

Indian Officers’ counterclaimed that the Pakistan Army was not the only
service to suffer as most of the military intelligence material was uplifted to Pakistan,
which had left India with little intelligence capability. 267 Indians also noted they did
not inherit a functioning headquarters as had Pakistan, as well as noting the loss of
training institutions such as the Quetta Staff College to Pakistan. Equally problematic
for both new dominion’s armies were the return of military stores to the United
Kingdom. 268

Nevertheless, the Pakistanis were bitter at what little stores and infrastructure
they did receive. A Pakistani Officer commissioned in 1947 noted the Army at
partition did not possess any armour, artillery, or infantry regiments or battalions that
were fully Muslim. Pakistan he noted had to cobble together units made up of a
patchwork of individuals, platoons and oddly constituted companies that had trickled
into Pakistan. 269 India also suffered organisationally in this regard with both suffering
reorganisation problems with the breakup of the old regiments. The regimental
histories of both dominions provide examples of this process of the separation of the
regiments into their respective national units, with for example the 1st Punjab
Regiment transferring its Sikhs and Rajputs to India, leaving the regiment to entirely
consist of Punjabi Mussulmans and Pakhtuns from the Hazara District of Pakistan. 270

The tribulations of partition arguably had an even greater impact on the first
generation of PMA Officer Cadets. Unlike earlier generations of Officers who had
served with Hindu and Sikh Officers during the two world wars and frontier

265
Maj. General S.K. Sinha, Operation Rescue – Military Operations in Jammu & Kashmir 1947-49,
Vision Books, New Delhi, 1977 [1955], p. 4 notes how he and a Pakistani Officer ended up destroying
a number of files due to their impossible task.
266
Maj. General Shaukat Riza, The Pakistan Army 1947-1949, Services Book Club Lahore, 1989, pp.
145-146.
267
Lt. General L.P. Sen, Slender was the Thread – Kashmir Confrontation 1947-48, Orient Longmans,
Bombay, 1988, p. 19.
268
V. Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green – A History of the Indian Army 1600-1974, Allied Publishers,
Bombay, 1974, pp. 276-277.
269
Lt. General Faiz Ali Chisti, Betrayals of Another Kind – Islam, Democracy and the Army in
Pakistan, Jang Publishers, Lahore, 1996, p. 399.
270
Major Mohammed Ibrahim Qureshi, History of the First Punjab Regiment 1759-1956, Gale &
Polden LTD, Aldershot, 1958, pp. 430-431.
74
operations, the first batch of PMA Officer Cadets would no longer have this
opportunity. With this lack of inter-faith and cultural familiarity and experience, these
new Officer’s worldviews became more limited than earlier generations of Muslim
Officers. This limited worldview possibly made them more susceptible to beliefs of
their own superiority outside of any other faith to compare themselves to, unlike the
multi-faith Indian Army, and secondly more susceptible to the idea of the ‘Hindu
plot’.

Pakistani Officers of the British Indian Army generation still perceived India
as the primary threat to Pakistan, but from their history of having served with Hindus
and Sikhs it is apparent that they still held these former colleagues in warm regard, a
phenomenon the Officers commissioned after 1947 did not experience and which
served to polarise their view of India. 271 Balancing to some degree the myopia of
many newly trained Officers was the communal connections other older Officers still
had in India. A number also had relations in Indian military service as well as friends
in the Indian Army, matrimonial agreements andh communal connections in India. 272

Furthermore, there were some Officers who did not view the tribulations of
partition as necessarily a one sided matter of Hindu atrocity against Muslims. A few
Officers, perhaps because they originated from the south of India where the
compulsion for Muslims to move or be driven out was not the same as in the Punjab,
had different perspectives than their Punjabi, Pakhtun and Mohajir north Indian
colleagues. Some of these Officers frankly noted with disgust the violence, reprisals
and destruction of non-Muslim property meted out by their co-religionists. 273 The
violence directed against the non-Muslim population in Pakistan was something also
noted by those remaining British soldiers in the new dominion. 274

271
Rahman fondly recalled visiting India and meeting old British Indian Army colleagues such as Sam
Manekshaw, an Indian Army Officer, Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, p. 81.
272
Qasim notes despite the tense atmosphere between Pakistan and India when he returned to
Bangalore in 1953 to be married, Syed Shah Abul Qasim, Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel,
Karachi, 2003, p. 73; Lt. General Rahman’s brother was in the Indian Government, in M. Attiqur
Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, p. 156 and Brigadier Hussain
lamented the profound impact of the death of his Sikh friend an officer of the 11th Sikh in Kahsimr in
1948. Hamid Hussain, The Battle Within, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2003, p.125.
273
Brig. Syed Shah Abul Qasim, Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel Publishers, Karachi, 2003,
p. 69.
274
Roy Humphries, To Stop a Rising Sun – Reminiscences of wartime in India and Burma, Sutton
Publishing, Gloucestershire, 1996, p. 203.
75
 The majority of the first generation of Officers at the new Officer training
school at the PMA though were thoroughly convinced of the hostile intentions of
India. This newer generation of Officers derived these beliefs on their tribulations
experienced during partition and were convinced India did not want Pakistan to
exist. 275 Additionally, this new generation of Officers, like their forefathers, were
being nurtured on the same notions of their inherent martial race superiority by those
remaining British Officers as their forefathers had. Their martial race identities were
being conflated with the Muslim nature of the new state and contributing to a martial
race Muslim exceptionalism. The Indians too continued to preference martial race
recruits such as the Sikhs despite pronouncements that their army would be more
representative of the Indian population. 276 Thoough disputed by some including
Stephen Cohen that the Indian Army has indeed become more representative of the
nation as a whole others argue that the Sikhs and non-Sikhs from the Punjab
continued to be proportionally over-represented in the Indian Army. 277 Kundu for
instance argued that Sikhs “accounted for 10-15 per cent of all ranks in the army
despite the Punjab containing just 2.45 per cent of the population in 1981”, with a
1991 report estimating that the Sikhs constituted a fith of all Indian Army Officers. 278

The dominant narrative remained outrage at India’s alleged perfidy in not

honouring the division of the forces agreement. The new Pakistani Officers may have
been aware that their British Commander had also bitterly complained about India’s
alleged failure to honour agreements. General Gracey, the Army’s second
Commander in Chief, had complained directly to the Commonwealth Relations Office
of India that India was, “continuing to do its best to sabotage Pakistan”, with this
complaint possibly not lost on the Pakistani Officers who worked closely with him,
such as his ADC Lieutenant Husain. 279 Other British Officers in the Pakistan Army

275
Lt. General Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges, Oxford University Press, Karachi,
1999, p. 8.
276
V.Longer, Red Coasts to Olive Green: A History of the Indian Army 1600-1974, Allied Publishers,
Bombary, 1974, pp.288-289.Longer quotes General Cariappa Commander-in-Chief that he will not
tolerate communalistic ideas and that the idea of martial races was abhorrent.
277
Stephen P.Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation, Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1990, pp.183-191.
278
Apurba Kundu, Militarism in India: The Army and Civl Society in Consensus, Tauris, London,
1998, pp.169-171.
279
OIOC L/WS/1/1652 (7), From General Sir Douglas Gracey to General Sir Geoffrey Scoones,
Commonwealth Relations Office, London & Interview of Maj. General Wajahat Hussain, in
‘Remembering our Warriors’, Ikhram Seghal (Ed), Pakistan Defence Journal, August, 2002.
76
also noted their misgivings with one believing the Indians maliciously turned trains
around east of Lahore back to their points of departure. 280 Gracey though criticised by
Pakistanis for not deploying the Army into Kashmir to prevent its accession to India
was admired for his support of Indian troops during World War II and his Punjabi
Indian troops in Indo-China after the war. 281

This section now examines how Gracey and some other British Officers in the
Pakistan Army had pronounced preferences for particular martial race units obtained
during their service with the British Indian Army before, during and after World War
II. These preferences were significant in their influence upon the Punjabi and Pakhtun
rump of the newly formed Officer Corps.

Class composition limiting army recruitment to Punjabis and Pakhtuns while

identified as not appropriate in a new national army was still evident in the newly
formed Pakistan Army. The epigraph commencing this chapter quoting the Army’s
second Commander in Chief is indicative of the persistence of the martial race ‘class
and composition’ makeup that was an inherent part of the British Indian Army.
Gracey who had served most of his career in the British Indian Army was thoroughly
familiar with such concepts. The foreword written by General Gracey in 1950 in the
centenary publication of the Punjab Field Force Regiment noted recruitment had of
necessity changed because Sikhs, Dogras and Gurkhas could no longer be recruited.

Since partition the class composition has been changed to 50% each of Punjabi
Mussulmans and Pathans and the recruitment of only special areas and tribes has been
done away with. 282

The changes though only concerned a matter of choice between classes of Punjabi and
Pakhtuns. There is for instance no mention of Pakistan’s majority population of
Bengalis or that of the other Pakistani ethnic populations from Sindh, Baluchistan or
the Muhajir migrants from India.

280
LHCMA – Devereux Papers ACC.197, ‘My tour with the Pakistan Army. Devereux commanded 3
SP Regiment Royal Pakistan Artillery, pp. 1-2.
281
Gracey a former Gurkha Officer was hailed by Field Marsahl Slim as an energetic officer with a
great hold on his Indian troops. Field Marshal The Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory: An abridged
edition, Corgi Books, 1971, UK, pp.128-129. Gracey wrote in his papers of an incident in Indo-China,
“Things did not look good but events were to show that a handful of Punjabi’s even when wounded, are
worth an army of Annamites”, LHCMA, Gracey Papers, 5/6, October 1945
282
Maj. General M. Hayaud Din, One Hundred Glorious Years – A History of the Punjab Frontier
Force 1849-1949, Civil and Military Gazette Ltd, Lahore, 1950, p. 9.
77
 The matter of martial race and ‘class’ composition was an issue of some
importance to British Officers in deciding whether or not to stay on in Pakistan. Apart
from preferences for particular units the decision for British Officers to serve in
Pakistan rather than India was according to Ian Stephens the pre-partion Indian based
publisher because of a firm dislike for the Indian National Congress.

…their attitude orginated from the previous struggles between the British Raj
and the Congress party. Some of them looked upon the Indian leaders now in
power at Delhi as permanently their foes; they had bitter remembrance of the
party’s policies in 1942 283
Stephens notes that this reason though could not account for the enthusiasm
amongst so many of the youngest British Officers he was aware of who chose
Pakistan. 284 Additionally Nehru wished to have the Indian Army thoroughly
nationalised as soon as possible and had even stated that he would have sooner have
every village in India put to flames rather than keeping the British Army on any
longer than August 15 in response to a proposal of Auchinlecks to keep British troops
on to maintain law and order and protect British citizens until January 1948. 285

It is perhaps not difficult to believe that these British Officers so immersed in

favourable views of martial race would not continue to utter and promote these beliefs
to those same martial race Officers now being groomed to assume leadership of the
Army. As late as 1945 Colonel Birdwood had argued for the immutable logic of
martial race, despite protests of its racially discriminatory presumptions. 286 The
Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers arguably provided a receptive audience to these senior
British Officers so enamoured with martial race. The positive views of these British
Officers would have arguably gone some way in confirming these beliefs of
exceptionalism in the older generation of Pakistani Officers, as well as indoctrinating
the newer generations being trained at the PMA. In so doing, these British Indian
Officers ensured the continuation of these beliefs in the Army.

283
Ian Stephens, Horned Moon – An account of a Journey through Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan,
Chatto & Windus, London, 1954, p.88.
284
Stephens, Horned Moon, p.88.
285
V.Longer, Red Coats to Olive Green, p.267.
286
Lt. Colonel The Hon. C.B. Birdwood, M.V.O., A Continent Experiments, Skeffington & Son,
London, 1945, pp. 112-113.
78
 ...the thought of commanding a regiment composed of Punjabi Mussulmans and one
to be regarded as the equivalent of an R.H.A regiment in the British Service was a
choice I could not resist. 287

That British Officers continued to hold such beliefs even after the expansion
of recruitment to ‘non-martial’ groups during World War II is not surprising. Given
the pre-eminent place of martial race in the British Indian Army from the late
nineteenth century onwards—when Officers had served in regiments where these
preferences were developed and encouraged—it was natural for an Officer to perhaps
prefer Punjabis over Gurkhas, or Gurkhas over Sikhs and so on amongst the range of
martial races in the British Indian Army.

Problems with the parochialism of Officers who held such beliefs and strong
affiliations for their preferred units meant there had to be a degree of caution
exercised over the potential for such Officers to cause offence in the new and
sensitive security environment involving the two new dominion armies. The Congress
party politicised the entire issue of bias with Sir Olaf Caroe—the Governor of NWFP
replaced in 1947 at the urging of Nehru for his perceived preference for Pakistan.
Auchinleck was also caught up in these arguments and though demonstrably against
any form of martial race preference in his efforts during and after the war was
attacked on his neutrality. 288 Because of the allegations arising out of the process of
partition and attacks on the neutrality of and alleged partisan involvement of British
Officers within the dominion armies British Officers were carefully monitored from
Britain.

British Officers identified strongly with their units and perpetuated martial
race beliefs in the new environment of the two new dominion armies in a manner
sometimes deemed inappropriate with London. In one instance an article by Major
General Cawthorne in September 1948, who had at times acted as Chief of the
Pakistan Army, was believed to be too incendiary against India and a decision was

287
LHCMA – Devereux Papers ACC.197, ‘My tour with the Pakistan Army’. Devereux commanded 3
SP Regiment Royal Pakistan Artillery, p. 1.
288
In regards Auchinleck’s early departure because of Indian political agitation against him see p.56
above. Auchinleck sought to dismantle martial race in the Army during and after the war. Marston,
Phoenix from the Ashes, pp.49-50 & pp.219-220..
79
made not to publish it. 289 This identification by British Officers with the men of the
Pakistan Army was not unusual, and as noted in Chapter One was an element of the
two way process of glorification and identification with the martial race unit that had
occurred in the British Indian Army. 290

A number of British Officers in Pakistan during the period 1947 to 1951

continued to believe in the veracity of martial race and transmitted this to their largely
Punjabi and Pathan audience in the now independent Pakistan Army. 291 The Punjabi
and Pakhtun Officers who formed the rump of the Pakistan Army were indoctrinated
by the British to define themselves by religion and ethnicity and believed this to be
accepted wisdom. Now that these Officers had been separated from the Hindu and
Sikh martial classes their worldview of martial race was reduced to themselves. They
took up wholeheartedly their territorial and ideological mantle as Islamic Ghazis and
soldier saviours of the newly created Muslim homeland from the Hindu enemy.
Though Pakistan had never been a nation in the past and had inauthentic and tenuous
links to the Mughal Empire, the influence of British martial race rhetoric glorified and
confirmed their perceptions of identity as glorious Islamic warriors. The accession of
Kashmir to India invoked the call of ‘Islam in danger’ and the official and unofficial
involvement of the Army. Elements of the Army supported and were involved with
eclectic bands of Mujahideen and tribal Lashkars bent on taking Kashmir back from
India. This section of the chapter now examines the impact of the Kashmir War on the
Officer Corps.

Kashmir, Islam and the foundations of Pakistani Strategic Culture

Kashmir provided the grounds for further myth making in the tale of a battle in
which the former British Indian Officers, newly commissioned Officers and Officers

289
OIOC IOR L/WS/1/1608 – Articles on India, Pakistan written by ex-I.A. Officers and British Army
Officers and vetting of articles on India and Pakistan.
290
Maj. General Sher Ali Pataudi, The Story of Soldiering and Politics in India and Pakistan, Syed
Mobin Mahmud & Co., Lahore, 1988, p. 36.
291
Major General Loftus-Tottenham the Commander of the Pakistan Army 7 Division publically quoted
his belief in the unique martial qualities of Pakistani troops in 1951. LHCMA, LH15/5/425, Telegraph
Newspaper, London, 15 January 1951, while Devereux made his decision to stay on in Pakistan
because he believed that commanding a regiment composed of Punjabi Mussulmans was the equivalent
of an R.H.A. Regiment in British Service. LHCMA – Devereux Papers ACC.197, ‘My tour with the
Pakistan Army, p.1.
80
in training became thoroughly immersed in a war in which ‘Islam in danger’ was the
rallying cry and cast all into a conflict overlaid with religious themes.

The tribulations of partition had amplified the divide between Muslim and
Hindu on which the entire premise of the two-nation theory on which the basis of
Pakistan had been created. The signing of the instrument of accession by the
Maharajah of Kashmir confirmed the new Pakistani Officers views of the abject
treachery on India’s part in securing the Muslim majority state for the Indian Union.
The accession was bitterly argued by the Pakistanis who denounced India’s perfidy
and Mountbatten and his Hindu clique’s bias. Officers also lamented the failure of
Gracey to commit the meagre though available resources of the Pakistan Army into
the conflict in its early stages. All of these factors contributed to a narrative of Hindu
oppression, perfidy and lost opportunities in which Pakistan should have acquired
Kashmir. It also served as a useful motif for consolidating the Army’s identity with
the Hindu enemy defining the Muslim nature of the Pakistan Army.

The Indian view of their military action as the result of a request by the
Maharajah to save Kashmir from the predations of the marauding raiders was not
accepted by Pakistan who saw the matter as a hegemonic Indian denial of Muslim
self-determination. Sources amply record that the tribal raiders did commit egregious
predations, including: rape, murder, looting, and forced religious conversions. 292 The
infamy of the raider’s actions was of such magnitude to inspire contemporaneous
fiction. H.E. Bates the author who had visited India during the 1940s, and possibly
influenced by British Indian Army military stereotypes of martial race of the time,
infused his tale with martial race myth and racial categorisation that would have been
familiar to the British trained Pakistan Army Officers of the time,

Pathans were not like the people of Bengal: to be crushed by famine and
overbreeding and the wretchedness filth … they were a mountain warrior people,
proud, loving blood, thriving on war… 293

292
See for instance OIOC IOR MSS EUR C 705 – A 1947 Tragedy of Jammu and Kashmir State: The
Cleansing of Mirpur by Amar Devi Gupta (Retired Headmistress). Ms Gupta a former headmistress at
Muzzafarabad relates how Pathan raiders robbed, raped and murdered Hindu and Kashmiri Muslims
alike.
293
H.E. Bates, The Scarlett Sword, Cassell Military Paperbacks (Evensford Productions, London
[1950]), p. 7.
81
 What this section of the chapter will briefly make evident is that irrespective
of the ultimate argument concerning the accession of Kashmir to India is the enduring
influence that the accession had upon this first generation of Pakistani Officers. The
manner that India obtained Kashmir as well as the alleged subjection of a Muslim
majority area to Hindu India from this point became a core element of Pakistan Army
strategic culture in which Islam was pitted against Hinduism. The narrative by army
Officers maintains that a vengeful Hindu India—thwarted by its designs of a unified
subcontinent by the creation of Pakistan—undertook to dismantle, diminish and de-
legitimise Pakistan’s existence until it was absorbed back into the fold of India.

The Indians argue that it was inconceivable that the atrocities committed by
the tribesmen were not organised from the beginning by the Pakistan Army.

Indian participants rebutted the entire notion of a spontaneous uprising of

tribesmen in the call to Jihad as some Pakistanis claimed,

...the enemy was no ill-organised rabble nor was he like the tribesmen of the
Northwest frontier of pre-partition days. These raiders were led by regular army
officers conversant with tactics and they were equipped with modern weapons like
machine guns and mortars. 294

The Indians claimed there was also reliable intelligence that a British Officer
transferred to Pakistan assisted the tribesmen, a claim that in the instance of the
Skellon and Milne matters examined later in this chapter were not without some
merit. 295

Pakistanis counterclaim that the tribes responded because of the massacre of

Muslims in Kashmir. Significantly, in religious terms, Pakistani Army Officers
understood the situation of Kashmir explicitly as one of ‘Islam being in danger’ from
the Hindu Indians. 296 ‘Islam in danger’ in Kashmir became a rallying cry acquired by

294
Maj. General S.K. Sinha, Operation Rescue – Military operations in Jammu & Kashmir 1947-49,
Vision Books, New Delhi, 1977 (originally penned in 1955), p. 21.
295
Maj. General S.K. Sinha, Operation Rescue – Military operations in Jammu & Kashmir 1947-49,
Vision Books, New Delhi, 1977 [1955], p. 18.
296
Maj. General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1963, p. 96 & in regard to the notion of ‘Islam in danger’, chapters three and four discussing
Pathan tribal custom on rebellion in the name of Islam, in Alan Warren, Waziristan – The Faqir of Ipi
and the Indian Army the North West Frontier Revolt of 1936-37, Oxford University Press, Karachi,
2000.
82
the Pakistan Army. The notion of ‘Islam in danger’ was probably familiar in its tribal
context to Officers who came from Pakhtun backgrounds. Tribal Jihad involved
remarkable coordination and assurances of good will between tribes that they would
not commit predations on each other while the other was engaged in the Jihad. 297
Captured communications between Mullahs in previous conflicts had illustrated this
level of goodwill, as well as realistic appraisals of their ability to inflict defeat. Tribal
Mullahs would urge Jihad to the best of their ability and resources reasoning this
would be enough on their day of judgement. 298 The powerful unifying aspects of the
Jihad on this basis drew from a tradition of Southwest Asian Muslim resistance
where, “religion was used to define the enemy”. 299

Numberous Pakistani Officers of this generation note how they participated, or

knew of others who had participated, with tribal Lashkars in the invasion of Kashmir.
Officers justified their break from professional training and involvement in the Jihad
specifically in terms of ‘Islam in danger’. The response to ‘Islam in danger’ entailed a
religious obligation of Jihad against a Hindu aggressor believed to be guilty of
atrocities upon the Muslim population. 300 Tribal Jirgas of the Afridi and Mohmands
had initially and unsuccessfully sought the permission of Sir George Cunningham, the
Governor of the North West Frontier Province in late October 1947, to go to the
assistance of their brethren in Kashmir. 301

297
Colonel H.D.Hutchinson, The Campaign in Tirah 1897-1898: An Account of the Expedition Against
the Orakzais and Afridis, MacMillan and Co., London, 1898, pp.152-153.
298
Colonel H.D.Hutchinson, The Campaign in Tirah, p.153.
299
Warren, Waziristan, p. 120. Ahmed’s anthropological study of Waziristan including the role of
Jihad and mysticism is illustrative as well. Akbar S.Ahmed, Religion and Politics in Muslim Society:
Order and conflict in Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 94-99.
300
“The belief that Islam is under threat politically and/or religiously is shared by different Islamic
movements and scholars across various Muslim countries”, in Joas Wagemakers, “Framing the ‘Threat
to Islam: Al-Wala’Wa Al-Bara’, in Salafi Discourse,” Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4, Fall
2008, p. 4. & a number of scholars have placed the concept of ‘Islam in danger’ as central to the
formation of Pakistan, Sayeed argued in 1963 that even Jinnah with all his brilliance could not have
achieved Pakistan without the two cries, “Islam in danger!” and “Pakistan an Islamic State!”, Khalid
Bin Sayeed, ‘Islam and National Integration in Pakistan’, in South Asian Politics and Religion, (Ed)
Donald Eugene Smith, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966, p. 412.
301
OIOC IOR L/WS/1/747 – British High Commission, Political Movements within the State, dated 28
November 1947.
83
 Their leaders, both religious and secular, were unanimous in their belief that it was
their duty to go to the help of their brethren in the Punjab and Kashmir Jihad or holy
war was being discussed in every hujra and Jirga. 302

The first generation of Officers being trained at the PMA, which was not
officially opened until November 1948, were also alert to the call of ‘Islam in danger’
and were eager to participate in the ‘Jihad’ in Kashmir. 303 Some went to Kashmir
without the knowledge of the PMA staff and led tribal Lashkars. 304 One notes that he
and other Officers volunteered when it became apparent that the commitment of
regular forces would not cause the Indians to spread the conflict into the Punjab. 305
Others went because they recognised that the Jihad of the tribesmen would not
succeed without their skilled assistance.

Soon after the tribesmen invaded Kashmir it became imperative to have some control
over them to defend Azad Kashmir effectively. To that end Pakistani officer
volunteers were inducted immediately to take care of these Lashkar’s. This number
kept increasing... 306

Islamic martial myths were important to the Army Officers who joined the
Jihad. Religious and martial imagery are evident in accounts of the fighting in
Kashmir during 1947 and 1948. Akbar Khan’s account of leading tribal Lashkars
under the nom de guerre General Tariq, the famous Moorish invader, were evidence
of the importance of connecting such heroic Islamic myth to the exploits of the new
Muslim Officers of the Pakistan Army. Hafeez Jullundhri who was to become the
national poet of Pakistan during this period was also wounded in Kashmir and would
write the heroic lyrics to the Pakistan National Anthem. Religious and martial
symbolisms in this first generation of Pakistani Officers are imbued with the myth of
Muslim exceptionalism as Ghazis defending and overcoming the enemies of the faith.

302
Maj. General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1963, p. 88.
303
Maj. General Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges, Oxford University Press, Karachi,
1999, p. 11.
304
Interview of Major General Naseerullah Khan Babar, in, ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Babar the
great’, in Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal, (Ed) Defence Journal, April 2001, Vol. 4 No. 9, Karachi, 2001, p. 9.
305
Brigadier S. Haider Abbas Rizvi, Veteran Campaigners – A History of the Punjab Regiment 1759-
1981, Wajidalis, Lahore, 1984, p. 121.
306
Interview of Maj.General Wajahat Hussain, in, ‘Remembering our Warriors’, Ikhram Seghal (Ed),
Pakistan Defence Journal, August, 2002.
84
 …the spectacle before us was like a page out of old history. Memory flashed back
many centuries. This is what it might have been like when our forefathers had poured
in through the mountain passes of the Frontier … men of all ages, grey beards to
teenagers good to look at and awe inspiring … these men had come to fight, in their
blood ran the memory of centuries of invasions and adventure … above the rumble
and din could be heard a chorus of war songs … ahead lay glory. 307

Akbar’s glory though was short lived as the Indian Army repulsed the mixed force of
tribesmen and soldiers both by virtue of their organisation and the tribesmen’s
penchant for ‘male-e-ghanimat’ (booty). 308 The significance of Akbar’s account as
well as the less florid accounts of others is important in their emphasis on the joint
tribulations and camaraderie experienced by these fellow Muslim Officers in the new
Army of a new country with no historical antecedents.

It was a formative experience at the very beginning of these Officers’ army

careers, and it encouraged a number of them such as Hakeem Qureshi who had
assisted the Mujahideen, to join the Army and continue the fight against India. 309
Veteran Officers such as Akbar and Officer Cadets alike engaged in a Jihad against
the perceived threat of a Hindu India bent on denying Pakistan its birthright. The
excitement apparent at the beginning of many conflicts played a part, but equally the
experiences of the Jihad in Kashmir made lasting impressions on these Officers’
individual and group identity. This was especially so for those Officer Cadets and
newly commissioned Officers whose first experience of combat would be against
India in a conflict infused with religious overtones.

The Jihad in Kashmir tied with the communal and religious violence that had
occurred during partition became infused with powerful elements of religion,
historical experience and myth that contributed to the creation of an identity for the
Pakistan Army and foundation of the Army’s strategic culture. Defending Pakistan for
the Army became synonymous not with any concept of a constitution or political

307
Maj. General Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, National Book Foundation, Islamabad, 1970, pp.
34-36, corroborated in part by Wajahat Hussain upon Akbar adopting the nom de guerre of the Muslim
conqueror of Spain ‘Tariq’, Interview of Maj. General Wajahat Hussain, in ‘Remembering our
Warriors’, Ikhram Seghal (Ed), Pakistan Defence Journal, August, 2002.
308
Maj. Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 191.
309
Maj. Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 246.
85
ideology but explicitly in terms of defending Islam, and the loss of Kashmir tempered
by the heroism of the Jihadi tribesmen and their Pakistan Army brethren, was
established as the key element of the fledgling Army’s strategic culture.

The overarching centrality of Islam to the older and new generation of

Officers was apparent with ‘Islam in danger’ inspiring these Officers to place in
abeyance their professional military precepts. ‘Islam in danger’ called on the new
Army Officer’s to respond in a manner inimical to their inherited traditions and
training received in the British Indian Army, with the psychological impact of combat
tied with the religious aspects of combat profoundly influencing this generation of
Officers. 310 The fears of the loss of Kashmir to India galvanised Officers such as the
Sandhurst trained Akbar as well as others to join and lead tribal Lashkars in an
unconventional religiously inspired war against India.

The unconventional nature of this war was also evident in how senior
members of the Pakistan Army, Police and Air Force—all still under British
Commanders—were able to covertly provide supplies and assistance to the tribal
Lashkars without the British being alerted. 311 Another significant aspect of the plan to
take Kashmir was through the use of former Muslim Officers and other ranks of the
disgraced Indian National Army (INA). The INA though never more than 30 000 in
strength predominantly from captured British Indian Army soldiers in Malaya during
the war, had included a female combat unit and civilians recruited in Malalya, Burma
and Singapore believed they would have inspired a spontaneous uprising upon their
entry into India with the Japanese. 312

The INA’s importance though had been inflated due to nationalistic overtones
involved in trying INA officers after the war. 313 These soldiers, though discredited in
the eyes of the British, Pakistan Army Officers and their former Japanese allies were

310
On the existential transformation from experiencing combat, see Rune Henriksen, ‘Warriors in
combat – what makes people actively fight in combat?, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30 No. 2,
April 2007, pp. 188-189.
311
Maj. General Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, National Book Foundation, Islamabad, 1970, p. 19.
312
Leonard A.Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists, Sarat & Subhas
Chandra Bose, Rupa & Co., Calcutta, 1997, pp.497-498.
313
Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes,p.237. The INA led ideologically by Subhas Chandra Bose, see
Peter Fay Ward, The Forgotten Army – India’s Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945, The
University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1993.
86
 314
sympathetically viewed by other Officers. De-mobbed INA Officers also operated
during partition on both sides with the effectiveness of the Sikh Jatha’s being
attributed to their command by former Sikh INA Officers Mohan Singh and Naranjan
Singh Gill. 315 The former INA Officers proved a boon to the Lashkars with former
senior INA Officers such as Major General Kiani a veteran of both pre-War North
West Frontier Operations as well as during the Second World War involved in the
operation. 316

Kiani claimed that Jinnah had wanted the former INA officers inducted intot
he Army but that opposition from the British, some Muslim Leaguers as well as
senior Pakistani Officers prevented this. 317 Such efforts to escape attention from their
commanding British Officers in planning flagrant breaches of command, arguably
illustrates the overarching belief in the religious imperatives of these Muslim Officers
responding to the call of ‘Islam in danger’. These Officers wilfully subverted their
accumulated British Indian Military heritage of discipline and response to command
to react to this religious imperative.

There was also a strategic territorial imperative in wishing to obtain Kashmir

by any means necessary but it was the religious call of Islam in danger that motivated
these Muslims. The call to Jihad saw serving Pakistani Officers act jointly with
disgraced INA Officers, deserters, entire units of Princely State forces—such as the
three hundred men of the Wali of Swat’s Army—and even adventurers sympathetic to
Pakistan’s cause, such as the case of a former American serviceman who allegedly led
a Lashkar of eight thousand tribals. 318

314
Maj. General Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, National Book Foundation, Islamabad, 1970, p. 1 &
Captain J.W. Pennington, Pick up your Parrots and Monkeys and fall in facing the Boat, Cassell,
London, 2003, p. 359. The Japanese were dismissive of the INA militarily and questioned their value
as turncoats as a number of INA officers did desert back to the British when provided an opportunity
which had infuriated Bose. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, p.515. Slim noted that he had to provide
orders to allow INA soldiers to surrender as Indian and Gurkha troops were not disposed to allow them
to surrender. Field Marshal The Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory, P.289.
315
Swarna Aiyar, ‘August Anarchy’, p.30.
316
JRUL AUC/1231 & AUC/1232, Correspondence between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Field
Marshal Auchinleck on pleadings of former INA Officer Kiani to return to service in British Indian
Army.
317
Mohammad Zaman Kiani, Memoris of Major General Mohammad Kiani, Reliance Publishing
House, New Delhi, 1994, pp.204-209 & p.xv.
318
Maj. General Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, National Book Foundation, Islamabad, 1970, p. 72
& p. 58 & Howard B. Schaffer, The Limits of Influence – America’s role in Kashmir, The Brookings
87
 A British Officer was also arrested in Rawalpindi and suspected by the British
of leading Pakistani troops in Kashmir. 319 The arrested Officer had threatened to
reveal the alleged involvement of other British Officers in Kashmir including the
bombardment of Indian positions on behalf of Azad Kashmir forces by a British
Officer. 320 As noted, some British Officers were strongly attached to their units and
may have been involved out of solidarity with the new Army. Though the British
Officers had clear instructions not to participate in the hostilities they were permitted
in the early period of the conflict to undertake what was perhaps euphemistically
described as ‘administrative visits’ to the conflict area. 321

British observers of the conflict prior to approved Pakistan Army involvement

in May 1948 noted evidence of assistance being provided to the invading tribesmen
by official Pakistani sources. 322 Others, while noting the apparent official assistance
from unknown official parties, had noted the less than pious aspects of the liberating
tribesmen. One observed tribesmen transporting loot of all descriptions, including
abducted Hindu women, an observation supported by a British journalist reporting
from Kashmir at the time. 323

The official commitment of Pakistani forces was finally approved in May

1948 by Gracey after what he perceived was the dangerous proximity of Indian forces
advancing towards the Poonch-West Punjab border. 324

Conclusion

This chapter examined the first four years of the Pakistan Army from its
formation in 1947 under the command of its first two British Commanders in Chief

Institution, USA, 2009, p. 21 & a photograph of Haight appearing in uniform wearing a ‘Pagri in Life
Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 7, February 16, 1948, p. 42.
319
OIOC IOR L/PJ/7/13851 – Captain Skellon I.E.M.E. Arrest at Rawalpindi and the matter of Col.
Milne Pakistan Artillery.
320
OIOC IOR L/PJ/7/13851 – Captain Skellon.
321
LHCMA – Devereux Papers ACC.197, ‘My tour with the Pakistan Army. Devereux commanded 3
SP Regiment Royal Pakistan Artillery, p. 6.
322
OIOC IOR L/WS/1/747 – British High Commission, Political Movements within the State, dated 28
November 1947.
323
Lt. Colonel Patric Emerson, OBE, conversation, Saturday 20 February 2010, London. (Lt. Colonel
Emerson was at the border to make these observations) & Sydney Smith, ‘Ten Days of Terror’, Daily
Express, 11 November 1947, (Smith noted the Pathans hunting for women while in captivity at
Barramula).
324
Alastair Lamb, Kashmir – A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1992,
p. 162.
88
until January 1951. The chapter explored and analysed the impact of the partition of
British India on the newly independent dominion of Pakistan’s Army Officers. This
chapter illustrated how the searing impact of partition felt by all involved, had created
particular beliefs in the new Pakistan Army Officers. These Officers who had served
with Sikhs and Hindus experienced epiphany like situations arising out of the horrors
of partition that reinvigorated their sense of Islamic identity.

The chapter also argued those British Officers who undertook service in the
Pakistan Army, including their Commanders, were thoroughly imbued with beliefs in
martial race. General Douglas Gracey and Major-General Loftus-Tottenham were
argued as indicative of these beliefs. The chapter argued that these senior and
influential Officers’ views on martial race would have received a receptive audience
in an Officer Corps consisting of Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers who had been
generationally feted as superior soldiers. The impact of partition together with the
perpetuation of beliefs in martial race was then joined by the impact of the 1947–48
Kashmir War. ‘Islam in danger’ was noted in the chapter as a cry to the faithful to join
battle against the Indians in Kashmir. The convergence of these three elements
established a Pakistan Army strategic culture derived from shared tribulations,
disaster and the unitary call to Islam. The next chapter examines the period 1951 to
1958 and the assumption of command of the Army’s first indigenous Army
Commander in Chief. The chapter considers how domestic and international politics
impacted on the role of the Army, as well as the persistence in British Indian Army
culture, the impact of American aid and how the Army was evolving more indigenous
and Islamic concepts.

89
90
 Chapter III Independence and Evolution: 1951–1958

After nearly two hundred years a Muslim army in the sub-continent would have a Muslim Commander-
in-Chief.

(General Mohammed Ayub Khan – first Pakistani C-in-C of Pakistan Army) 325

Introduction

Mohammed Ayub Khan who had been a Colonel in the British Indian Army
barely six years previously was appointed as Pakistan’s first indigenous Commander
in Chief of the Army on 17 January 1951.

Pakistan was still in a parlous state of development when Khan succeeded Sir
Douglas Gracey as Pakistan’s first Commander in Chief of the Army. Jinnah had died
barely after the new state had begun while Liaquat was assassinated in 1951. The
death of Liaquat who was possibly the second most highly regarded political figure
after that of Jinnah left Pakistan’s political future in the hands of a number of Muslim
League veterans whose rule up until 1958 would be characterised by fragile and
fleeting tenures of government. Though a number of these politicians had been
leaders in their own right prior to partition, they lacked the political gravitas of Jinnah
and Liaquat.

This chapter begins with a historical overview of the period 1951 to 1958
from Ayub’s appointment to the Army coup that installed him as leader of Pakistan.
This chapter consists of three sections, which examine the impact and place of Islam
on the Army during this period. This will be achieved firstly through an examination
of the impact of domestic and international politics globally and within the Islamic
World on Pakistan. This is important as the Army would become the pre-eminent
institution and drive domestic political discussion on defence, which had become
thoroughly infused with religious themes due to the recent war with India.
Additionally, the Army’s Islamic and martial race nature became a mechanism by
which the Army sought to gain valuable materiel and support from the Americans
who were interested in Pakistan as a Cold War ally. Secondly, an examination of

325
Mohammed Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford University Press, London, 1967, p. 35.
91
Army culture considers the persistence of British influence on the Army, as well as
the impact of increasing American political courting of Pakistan. Lastly, institutional
development of the Army in regard to structure, training and Islamic symbolism is
considered in light of British, American and indigenous influences. The conclusion
considers the evolution of the Army over this period of time and how Islam had at this
point become an important identity factor to those in the Army. The chapter notes the
contradictions and paradoxes of those wishing to induct more of an Islamic and
indigenous ethos into the Army while others in the Army still closely mimicked
British habits and social mores unacceptable to Islam.

Throughout the period of this chapter Pakistan and India engaged in continual
mutual recrimination, intransigence and general hostility on issues such as Kashmir,
the Indus water dispute, and unresolved evacuee and refugee matters. India, for
instance, attacked Pakistani treatment of the Hindu minority in East Pakistan, while
there were also continuing border clashes, attacks and demonstrations against
respective diplomatic facilities. 326 Pakistan attempted to leverage UN support during
the period by noting that Pakistan could not contribute armed forces personnel for UN
service so long as the Kashmir impasse continued. During the course of 1953 martial
law was promulgated in Lahore due to anti-Ahmediya agitation throughout the city
with the Jamaat-i-Islami leader Maulana Abul Ala Maududi initially sentenced to
death. 327 The belief that India was not reconciled to the independence of Pakistan was
revisited and publicly broadcast repeatedly. At a speech in Abbotobad in May 1953
Governor General Ghulam Mohammed stated that relations with India would only
improve when India ceased its opposition to Pakistani sovereignty and
independence. 328

October 1953 also saw new impetus to shape the Islamic nature of the country
with a decision that the head of state would be a Muslim and the country should be
known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The constituent assembly decided that no
law repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah would be legislated, provoking Nehru to label

326
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence, Verinder Grover & Ranjana Arora (Eds), Deep &
Deep Publications, New Delhi, 1997 p.30.
327
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence, p.32.
328
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence p. 32.
92
these developments as mediaeval. 329 In 1954 Pakistan joined the SEATO Pact and a
defence agreement with the US. In 1955 Pakistan took its first step in pursuing atomic
energy with the constitution of the atomic energy expert committee and entered the
Baghdad Pact in July. Pakistan’s regional security problems continued with the
sacking of the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul and consulate in Jalalabad. Pakistan and
India were even more intransigently opposed when Marshal Bulganin announced
Soviet recognition of Kashmir as constituting a part of India.

Hostilities with India continued throughout 1956 with alleged violations by

India occurring in the Rann of Kutch. Protest days were organised in Pakistan
protesting the alleged persecution of Muslims in India, and nationwide protests
against Israel and the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt. Nationally, Pakistan
concluded its constituent assembly with the proclamation of the 1956 Constitution
and Pakistan being proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. 330

Pakistan requested the security council discuss Kashmir in January 1957 as

well as Prime Minister Suhrawardy warning of Kashmir’s propensity to escalate into a
nuclear war, while Finance Minister Syed Amjad Ali warned of the dangers of too
much dependence on the US. Clashes and hostility with India continued into 1958
with border clashes occurring in June. Pakistan acquired the territory of Gwadar on
the Maccran coastline from the Sultan of Muscat and Oman in September 1958. On 7
October 1958 Major General Iskander Mirza the Governor General declared martial
law, dissolved central and provincial cabinets, abrogated the Constitution, banned all
political parties and appointed General Mohammed Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law
Administrator. The first section of this chapter addresses the impact of domestic,
international and Muslim world politics on Pakistan and its ramifications for the
Army. As the contextual background has illustrated the domestic and international
affairs of Pakistan were thoroughly immersed in the politics of religion and
continuing hostility with India. The Army had vital interests and stakes in these
politically significant matters infused with religious themes.

329
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence p. 34.
330
Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence, pp.44-45.
93
The Impact of Domestic, International politics and Islam on the Army

In domestic politics the demise of Jinnah and Liaquat so early in the

establishment of the political culture of the new state was disastrous to the legitimacy
of the political class, as those political figures that came after them took nine years to
provide a constitution. This was in comparison to India, which achieved a constitution
in 1950 and had not experienced the tumult of unstable governments that Pakistan
experienced during the same period. Soon the door was opened to other political
voices in Pakistan whose voices had been earlier muted by the dominance of Jinnah.
The issue of Islam and its relationship to the identity of Pakistan became a contested
issue. Muslim groups in these years saw their chance and their prospects of attaining
an Islamic state best served by democracy. 331 Previously quiescent or ambivalent
Muslim groups now had inklings of a greater role in the new state.

Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders had used Islam as a motivating
force to rally Muslims to the cause of Pakistan. The state the league was committed to
create would be secular not theocratic, as Jinnah was determined to make Pakistan a
constitutional democracy, with democratic control over government bureaucracy and
military. 332 Despite the democratic and secular visions of the new state the fact was
that Pakistan, together with Israel, would be one of only two modern states to derive
their basis on their adherence to one religion.

The tension between the perspectives adhered to by those who tended

towards the arguably more secular and Westernised ideals of Jinnah and Liaquat and
those of the religious leaders became more pronounced with the departure of these
two commanding figures. For instance, the East Pakistani Khwaja Nazimuddin, who
became prime minister, was critical of Western ways, though like other Pakistani
elites was not able to articulate what Pakistan would be. 333 Political figures with more

331
Safir Akhtar, ‘Pakistan Since Independence: The Political Role of the Ulama’, Unpublished PhD
Dissertation, University of York, Department of Politics, May 1989, pp. 168-169. Akhtar explores the
role of the Ulama at this time and notes that there was indeed considerable objection to the Lahore
resolution of 1940.
332
Mohamed Nawab bin Mohammed Osman, ‘The Ulama in Pakistani Politics’, in, ‘South Asia –
Journal of South Asian Studies’, Volume XXX11, Number 2, August 2009, p. 232.
333
Ian Stephens, ‘Horned Moon – An account of a Journey through Pakistan, Kashmir and
Afghanistan’, Chatto & Windus, London, 1954, p. 64.
94
pronounced religious inclinations such as Sir Zafrullah Khan noted for his erudite
pleas for Palestine, and other Muslim causes were amongst those seeking to attach the
identity of the new state to its Muslim heritage. Paradoxically, Zafrullah would be
cast as an unbeliever and be virulently denounced by the Ahrars, Jama’t i-Islami and
other conservative Islamic sects that instigated martial law in 1953 through their
rioting.

The agitation in 1953 against the Ahmadis would be by far the most serious
religious disturbances in the country and one that illustrated the frailty of Jinnah’s
dream of a Muslim homeland tolerant of its minorities and religious and ethnic
diversity. The report on the anti-Ahmadi riots commonly referred to as the ‘Munir
Report’ clearly identified a number of theological fissures the country had to
reconcile. The definition of a Muslim failed to be agreed upon and was contested. 334
These intra-Muslim fissures though seemingly dormant at first with Deobandi and
Barelvi streams of South Asian Islam working together, succumbed to sometimes
minor theological differences. 335 Furthermore, secularly minded Pakistanis
maintained an ‘indignant contempt for mullahs’ and did not desire a greater infusion
of Islam into the country or government agencies. 336 The tensions between the secular
and religious also overlapped and encompassed the ethnic and provincial tensions in
the new state that had historically never constituted a state.

In his address upon the proposal of consolidating the four provinces of West
Pakistan into one unit the East Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra
labelled the fissiparous tendencies the ‘venom of provincialism’. 337 Bogra highlighted
the danger to the integrity of the state if people did not overcome thinking of
themselves as Punjabis, Sindhis or Bengalis but rather as Muslims first and then
Pakistanis, which would result in the disintegration of Pakistan. 338 These messages
upon the possible disintegration of Pakistan were intolerable to the Army dedicated to

334
Report of the Court of Enquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to enquire into the Punjab
disturbances of 1953, Lahore, printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing Punjab 1954.
335
Akhtar, ‘Pakistan Since Independence, p. 235.
336
Ian Stephens, Horned Moon, Op.Cit., pp. 96-97, the example Stephens cites is a Muslim ‘Muhajir’
refugee originally from Patiala.
337
‘One Unit’ refers to the merging of the four West Pakistani provinces into one province. One aspect
of one unit was to arguably offset the Bengali majority from the province of East Pakistan.
338
Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra’s address on proposal of one unit on Radio Pakistan in 1953,
in, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Nb_s9sojY&feature=related, accessed 31 May 2012.

95
maintaining the structural integrity of the state. While Islam was being promoted as
the unifying element of identity, to many Bengalis, Baluchis and Pushtuns it was a
secondary factor to their ethnic, linguistic, tribal and clan loyalty and many were
dissatisfied with Punjabi domination of the government and military. 339 The entire
notion of ‘one God’, ‘one Prophet’, ‘one Pakistan’, and ‘one language’ was proving
problematic to the new nation as a unifying feature of the nation in the wake of deaths
during the language riots in East Pakistan in 1952 and the Ahmadiyya riots in 1953
where issues of language, ethnicity and even who was a Muslim were driving the
population apart. 340

The Army understood itself as the only body capable of maintaining internal
order and cohesion due largely to its homogeneous culture that maintained its own
vision of national unity. The Army believed from the experiences of partition and the
1948 War in Kashmir that Islam was central to the identity and motivation of the
Army. Islam was also central to the Army’s religious and nationalist vision of
Pakistan, though the Army was not representative of the major ethnic groups of the
new nation.

During government debates between 1952–54 defence and the capability of

the Army to defend the country were successfully projected as the priority of the
nation by the Army. The Army’s ability to control this debate became paramount with
Ayub the Army Commander in Chief having his tenure renewed as well as being
concurrently awarded the duties of Minister of Defence. 341 In all except for two
occasions, when an East Pakistani recommended the idea of martial races be
discarded, the entire defence policy formulation process promoted by the Army was
not questioned by members of the constituent assembly. 342

Because the narrative focused on the fear of India and as the Army was the
physical manifestation of protecting the Muslim homeland members did not question
the defence policy. Everyone it seemed recalled the tribulations of partition and the
339
Michael B. Bishku, ‘In Search of Identity and Security: Pakistan and the Middle East, 1947-77, The
Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. XII, No. 3, Summer 1992, pp. 30-31.
340
K.M. Arif, Khaki Shadows Pakistan 1947-1997, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2001, p. 96 &
Mussarat Jabeen, Amir Ali Chandio & Zarina Qasim, ‘Language Controversy: Impacts on National
Politics and Secession of East Pakistan’, South Asian Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, January-June 2010.
341
Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, ‘Pakistan’s Defence Policy, 1947-58’, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore,
1998, p. 126.
342
Cheema, ‘Pakistan’s Defence Policy’, pp. 126-127.
96
1947–48 War. The Army was appearing to promote a proposition as truth that there
was a confrontation of ideologies in the religious sense between the Army defending
an Islamic Pakistan and the threat from Hindu India.

This belief by the Army and political elites was accepted as part of the
strategic culture they inherited as the price of partition. Increasingly the Army
believed itself the only guarantor of this security. With no opposition from the
constituent assembly the Army also believed itself the only professional service free
of the miasma of political corruption that the Army believed would ultimately cause
Pakistan to fail. This perspective took root in the Army with Officers lamenting the
bribery and corruption that had become rife upon the departure of the British. Though
successive governments were not given the chance to work through the cycle of these
problems inherent of a fledgling political environment, the Army believed themselves
to be the solution. 343

Ayub the Commander in Chief of the Army, Minister of Defence and

favourite of the Americans viewed the continuous political upheavals and changes of
government as an unmitigated disaster. Ayub’s views were shared by his American
sponsors anxious to secure Pakistan’s place in the US arsenal of Cold War allies. 344

Internationally, Pakistan worked towards establishing its Islamic credentials

in the Muslim world and identifying with Muslim causes. 345

343
Shafaat Ali, ‘Memoirs of Colonel Shafaat Ali’, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2007, pp. 177-183
& NAM 7203-33-6, Pakistan Diary Vol.1 by C.J.W., pp. 47-48.
344
Roving Report: Ayub Khan (1)’, at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iPtL0jgC0o&feature=related, accessed on 30 August 2012. Ayub
Khan talks of the corruption endemic in the country prior to the coup & U.S. Department of State,
Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Volume VIII, (hereafter
USDOS), Document 224, Letter from the Ambassador (Langley) to the Assistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs (Rountree), Karachi, December 27, 1957.
345
Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy, p. 162.
97
 Liaquat Ali Khan though seemingly more secular minded as one of the elites
of the Muslim League had stated in 1951 that,

To us in Pakistan nothing is dearer than the prospect of the strengthening of the

world-wide Muslim brotherhood … part of the mission which Pakistan has set before
itself [is] to do everything in its power to promote closer fellowship and co-operation
between Muslim countries. 346

Between 1947 and 1954 Pakistan worked to consolidate its credentials in this
regard by hosting conferences attended by other Muslim majority states. 347 Pakistan
also sided with Muslim causes such as Tunisia in her dispute with France, condemned
Israeli aggression between 1951 and 1953, as well as receiving military goodwill
missions from other Muslim countries such as Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. 348 Pakistan
was thoroughly immersing itself in pan-Islamic political and cultural interests.

Pakistan’s pretension at becoming a leader amongst other emerging or newly

independent Muslim states was not always validated. King Farouq reportedly
ridiculed Pakistan’s Islamic pretentions, while other Muslim nationalist leaders from
Egypt and Indonesia publically stated that they preferred to look to India, which also
had a large Muslim population for nationalist support. 349

The Suez Crisis in 1956 resulted in Pakistan experiencing the largest

demonstrations since partition protesting the actions of Britain (Pakistan’s Baghdad
pact ally) and France. Crowds attacked British and French ffices in both wings of the
country in support of their Muslim brethren. 350 The most acrimonious international
relations for Pakistan during the period though was reserved for its eastern and
western neighbours, one Muslim and one from Pakistan’s perspective as Hindu.

In 1951 Pakistan countered Indian allegations of Pakistani violations of the

cease fire line and accusations that Pakistan was propagating Jihadist propaganda by

346
Government handout, E.No.484, 9 February 1951 as quoted in S.M. Burke, Mainsprings of Indian
and Pakistani Foreign Policies, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1974, p. 116.
347
Pakistan hosted the first International Islamic Economic Conference in 1949, again in 1954 as well
as the third and fourth sessions of the World Islamic Conferences in Karachi in 1949 and 1951, noted
in Bishku, ‘In Search of Identity and Security’, p. 35.
348
‘Chronology of Pakistan 1947-1957’, Kamel Publications, Karachi, 1957.
349
S.M. Burke, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy – An Historical Analysis, Oxford University Press, 1990, p.
66 & Bishku, ‘In Search of Identity and Security’, p. 35.
350
Burke, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 185-188.
98
arguing this was an Indian excuse to justify moving troops near the Pakistan
border. 351 In June, July and October 1951 troop concentrations and tensions with
India had nearly resulted in war. 352 These international political relations with India
confirmed numerous Army Officer’s beliefs of India’s enduring hostility and enmity
for Islam. Seen as yet more proof of Indian attempts to extinguish Pakistan was the
alleged Indian conniving with Afghanistan to create simultaneous border incidents.
Fears of the Indian influence on Afghanistan contributed to the foundations of the two
front fears of the Pakistan Army and the search for options to alleviate this threat. 353
Pakistan perceived itself wedged between a hostile Afghanistan allied to India’s grand
designs in the West and India itself in the East.

Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan featured almost continuous hostility

due to Afghanistan’s irredentist claims to much of the North West Frontier Province.
Afghanistan claimed large portions of Pakistani territory with significant trans-border
populations of Pakhtun tribes. This territory that Britain had excised from Afghanistan
was a primary source of Afghan hostility towards Pakistan. 354 In Pakistan’s view
India promoted this irredentism in a politically explicit and manifestly antagonistic
manner. From the Pakistani perspective this meant that India would commit to any
length in which to extinguish or in this case abet the seizure of those Afghan
contested portions of Pakistani territory. 355

The security concerns on its eastern and western borders fed Pakistan’s search
for security while igniting greater attention to forging an identity that would establish
cultural themes and traits distinct from their existential enemy: India. Islam could
clearly perform this role in regard to India but was problematic in regard to
Afghanistan.

351
Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1963, p.
130.
352
Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, p. 132.
353
Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, p. 133.
354
See ‘Pathanistan’ as promoted to an American in Afghanistan during the mid-1950s, in Edward
Hunter, An account of life in Afghanistan to-day; The Past Present, Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1959, p. 21 & pp. 342-347.
355
Chronology of Pakistan 1947-1957, Kamel Publications, Karachi, 1957, notes in June 1951 Pakistan
protested to India for allowing Sardar Najibullah Khan to make an anti-Pakistan speech on All-India
Radio, p. 71.
99
 Pakistan had sought British assistance in arms provision to effectively
establish all branches of its military, as Pakistan had consistently argued despite
contrary Indian arguments that they had not received their full share of military stores
at partition. 356 British Cabinet submissions—though noting that Pakistan had been
unfairly treated in the provision of arms, and though amenable to Pakistani requests—
were wary that Pakistan and India would use any weapons supplied to them against
each other. 357 The British tread carefully as they desired the economic opportunities
that relations with Pakistan and India would provide in the economically bleak 1950s.
Cold War realities also meant the British desired the military support of both nations
against communism. Britain was able to provide some supplies of materiel though it
was in no way comparable to that the US could provide with its Korean War surplus.

In the early 1950s Pakistan’s search for security would overlap with the US’s
search for Cold War allies in South Asia. The Americans lauded the martial character
and religious piety of the Pakistan Army. The American plaudits arguably acted as
another validation to the Pakistani Officers’ views of their inherent martial
superiority, inculcated by the British and intrinsically linked to Islam.

Admiral Radford, the US Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet, visited Pakistan

in 1952 and believed Pakistan important for US Cold War strategic interests with its
location close to Soviet Central Asia as well as communist China. 358 US Republican
minority leader William Knowland echoed Radford’s sentiments that Pakistan is on
par with Turkey, while he attacked India’s neutrality. 359 The Army had also made a
positive impression in regard to their apparent mix of British Regimental military
efficiency and Islamic martial traditions. Radford stated that Pakistan possessed, “a
trained armed force which no other friendly power can match, not even the Turks”. 360

356
Liaquat Ali Khan had written to Attlee for help in meeting Pakistan’s urgent defence requirements
in August 1951, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) CAB/129/49, Secret, C (52) 50, 20th February,
1952, Cabinet, Supply of Arms to India and Pakistan, Note by the Prime Minister and Minister of
Defence.
357
PRO, CAB/129/49, Supply of Arms.
358
James W. Spain, ‘Military Assistance for Pakistan’, ‘The American Political Science Review’, Vol.
48, No. 3 (September 1954), p. 738, & S.M. Burke, ‘Pakistan’s Foreign Policy – An Historical
Analysis’, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 152.
359
Burke, ‘Pakistan’s Foreign Policy’, p. 159 & Spain, ‘Military Assistance for Pakistan, p. 742.
360
Admiral Arthur Radford in, USDOS, Document 185, Memorandum on the Substance of Discussions
at a Department of State – Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, Washington, January 14, 1955.
100
Such statements arguably resonated strongly with the Army indoctrinated on these
same beliefs by their British training Officers.

The Americans courted the Pakistanis to secure a South Asian ally to help
thwart what John Foster Dulles in 1952 had referred to as the ongoing offensive by
communism. Dulles had stated that the US was just about ready to assist any power-
resisting communism. 361 The Americans understood their provision of weapons to
Pakistan would offend India who believed the weapons would be used against them to
resolve the Kashmir dispute.

The US did appreciate the propensity of the Pakistanis to use their weapons
against India. Prior to the announcement of the US-Pakistan pact Eisenhower
explicitly informed Nehru that the US pact was conditional on the weapons only
being provided for a communist threat. 362 Nehru though possibly aware of American
Cold War motives in eulogising their allies abilities was still alarmed at the tone of
American media hyperbole on arming a “gallant Pakistan Army of a million men to
fight communism”, which the British sought to assuage in discussions with Nehru. 363
The USSR, China and Afghanistan were also critical of Pakistan being armed by the
US with Afghanistan claiming the pact would turn Pakistan into a ‘colonial power’. 364

The Army’s promotion of its Islamic heritage was advantageous in this

period of the Cold War where the struggle was sometimes presented as being one
between the godless atheism of communism and the free world. Islam was a valuable
political tool for the Army at this point in time in securing valuable military aid.
Fortuitously for the Pakistanis the Western view of Islam’s repugnance of
communism coincided with Pakistani efforts to imbue Islam as the unifying ideology

361
John Foster Dulles interviewed by Henry Hazlitt and William Bradford Huie on, ‘Longines
Chronoscope’, CBS Television, 1952, at, www.youtube.com/watch?v=swd9HXt1rUQ, accessed 7
June 2012.
362
Eisenhower informed Nehru of the US’s intentions to improve both Pakistani and Turkish defence
capability as well as offering India a similar opportunity. Contained within, ‘Letter to Prime Minister
Nehru of India Concerning U.S. Military Aid to Pakistan’, dated February 24, 1954, & ‘Statement by
the President on Military Aid to Pakistan’, February 25, 1954, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the
United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and
Statements of the President, January 1 to December 31, 1954, Office of the Federal Register National
Archives and Records Service, Washington, 1960, pp. 284-286.
363
‘Record of conversation between the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the Prime
Minister of India, Mr Nehru, on 16th November, 1953’, in, PRO CAB/129/64, Secret C.(53) 335, 27th
November, 1953, Cabinet, Relations with India.
364
Spain, ‘Military Assistance for Pakistan’, pp. 740–741.
101
for their ethnically disparate country. Dulles, a devout Christian with an academic
interest in religion, was impressed with the Pakistanis. On his return to the US Dulles
delivered an address in which he stated his admiration for both the piety and martial
365
vigour of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan is the largest of the Moslem nations and occupies a high position in the
Moslem world. The strong spiritual faith and the martial spirit of the people make
them a dependable bulwark against communism. 366

Again such favourable statements were arguably not lost on the Officers of the
Pakistan Army from yet another powerful American politician. Such statements
arguably added to the establishment of the Army’s heroic self-image, where martial
race heritage and Muslim exceptionalism continued to be accepted wisdom.

The American rhetoric on the Army’s superior attributes, whether legitimate

or the excesses of diplomatic license, nevertheless provided a degree of comforting
external validation to Officers already saturated in belief of their martial prowess.
Rhetoric or not, the accolades coming from the great military superpower was
welcomed by Ayub and the Officer Corps. Dulles additionally ought to emphasise the
ideological ties between Pakistan and the US by referring to the strong religious faith
of both countries making them opposed to communist atheism. 367

American declarations of Pakistan’s impeccable martial qualities had also

been alluded to by Vice President Richard Nixon in his 1953 visit to South Asia.
Nixon dismissed Indian complaints in his belief that Ayub Khan was more anti-
communist than anti-Indian. 368 Nixon attributed Indian objections to Nehru’s own
thirst for influence in the developing world. 369

The US was critical of Nehru’s policy of non-alignment compared to the

willingness of the apparently martial Pakistanis. Views critical of Nehru were also

365
Michael A. Guhin, John Foster Dulles: A Statesman and his times, Columbia University Press, New
York, 1972, p. 117 & p. 120.
366
From text of speech delivered by US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles upon his visit to the
Middle East and South Asia, in ‘Text of Secretary Dulles Report on Near East Trip, in ‘New York
Times’, Tuesday, June 2, 1953. Accessed by ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times
(1851-2008).
367
Burke, ‘Pakistan’s Foreign Policy’, pp. 161-162.
368
Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1978, p. 133.
369
Nixon, The Memoirs, p. 132.
102
evident in the Truman administration where Nehru’s ‘holier than thou views’ and
lecturing to the US on their policy in French Indo-China was intensely disliked. 370

Accolades about Pakistan’s Islamic martial propensity as a US partner in

South Asia were widely reported and hardly able to be missed by the British trained
and English newspaper reading Pakistani Officers. These views of a pious martial
Pakistan, impervious to communism with an Army popularly promoted as a valiant
Army of redoubtable Muslim soldiers were doubly useful. Firstly, though the
American’s primary aim was seeking an ally close to Soviet Central Asia, the
American admiration seemed to be useful in securing American military largesse.
Secondly, the American plaudits again validated the Army’s self-image of itself as a
superior force that combined the best elements of its British Indian Army pedigree
and martial race Islamic heritage. For an Army of a nation with tenuous links to an
authentic national past these bouquets from Dulles were valuable precisely because of
their external validation of the Army’s connection to an Islamic martial heritage.

American enchantment with Pakistan though did wane towards the end of the
decade. By 1957 the perceptions of those closely involved in administering US
largesse from the pact came to increasingly view the positive generalisations about
Pakistan as a bulwark of strength against communism much more circumspectly.
Some of the Americans by this time, had with a more sober analysis, accurately
assessed the level of obsession and fear the Army had of India, and the Army’s
absolute willingness to entertain nearly any strategy with a view to finding additional
strategic counters to the Indian threat. In particular, Ambassador Langley argued the
questionable utility of the Pakistan Army to the US should even India fall to
371
communism. Langley had noted acerbically,

I fear that it would not be too difficult to make a rather convincing case that the
present military program is based on a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the
Soviet threat. 372

370
Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War – Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson
Years, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988, p. 195.
371
USDOS Document 224, ‘Letter from the Ambassador in Pakistan (Langley) to the Assistant
Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs (Rountree).
372
USDOS Document 224.
103
 Langley in analysing the motivations of the Pakistanis came to believe that
Pakistan’s pro-Western posture in the Baghdad Pact and SEATO was clearly dictated
in part, if not totally, by its hatred of India. 373 This was true with senior Pakistani
Officers confirming their materiel aims in obtaining American largesse and their
belief in the primary threat to them being India. Pakistani’s viewed the alliance
precisely as some degree of security against the Indian threat, as well as a means to
modernise its armed forces courtesy of American military aid. 374 There had been a
brief moment when there had been an element of truth to early Pakistani fears of a
communist Chinese threat through Tibet to East Pakistan, prior to the establishment of
friendly relations with China. 375 Though Pakistanis understood the US considered
SEATO actionable only in terms of communist aggression, some Pakistani’s argued
they would not have received defence aid under the pre-existing pact unless Pakistan
had joined the alliance. 376

Hans Morgenthau did not allow any diplomatic niceties to interfere with his
1956 analysis of Pakistan’s utility and prospects,

Pakistan is not a nation and hardly a state. It has no justification in history, ethnic
origin, language, civilization or the consciousness of those who make up its
population. They have no interest in common save one: fear of Hindu domination. It
is to that fear, and to nothing else that Pakistan owes its existence, and thus far its
survival, as an independent state. 377

Morgenthau furthermore argued that even Jinnah did not believe in

Pakistan’s viability, a proposition later supported in part by Jinnah’s own daughter. 378

373
USDOS Document 224.
374
Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy, p. 146 & Rahman a Pakistani Officer who attended these
meetings claims regional pact members discussed with him how much arms and materiel they could
extract from the Americans, in M. Attiqur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 2005, p. 90.
375
Cheema, ‘Pakistan’s Defence Policy, p. 143. Pakistan as a member of SEATO had up until as late as
November 1962 considered a real PLA threat to East Pakistan from Tibet, in, Damien Marc Fenton,
‘SEATO and the Defence of Southeast Asia 1955-1965, PhD thesis (unpublished) ADFA@UNSW,
2006, p. 102. The Pakistani’s argued their membership placed them in an exposed position to the
communists. The British though believing the claims exaggerated did not want Pakistan to fall into the
neutral camp, in PRO CAB/129/79, Secret C.P/(56) 24, 28th January, 1956, Cabinet, Provision of
equipment at concession prices to certain commonwealth countries.
376
Burke, ‘Pakistan’s Foreign Policy’ p. 167.
377
Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The Immaturity of Our Asian Policy – II Military Illusions, in, The New
Republic, March 19, 1956, p. 15.
378
Morgenthau, ‘The Immaturity of Our Asian Policy’, pp. 15-16. Dina Jinnah in an interview claimed
that her father had maintained that he did not ultimately want to break away from India and had utilised
104
A former US Ambassador to India had also criticised the US logic in entering the pact
with Pakistan believing this had contributed to the insecurity of the subcontinent. 379

Pakistan’s relations with the US and its apparent misconceptions about the
responsibilities of the signatories to the treaties and pacts was indicative of more than
just the substantive terms of the treaties. The misunderstandings and expectations also
had a great deal to do with respective strategic interests and two very different
military cultures. In this regard, it is important to understand the Army culture during
the period 1951 to 1958 and how British inspired ‘martial race’ beliefs converged
with Muslim exceptionalism and a mimicry of British Indian Army practice to foment
a uniquely Pakistani Army culture.

The Persistence of British influence on the Pakistan Army

The 1948 War with India had provided a much needed impetus to accelerate
the nationalisation of the Armed forces and imbue them with a national outlook. 380 As
noted in the previous chapter the importance of the shared tribulations during partition
and the Kashmir War helped to promote a group and national identity derived from
notions of India seeking to extinguish Pakistan. 381 The British influence on the
Pakistan Army remained tangible even after the departure of the last British
Commander in Chief acted upon the culture of the Army. This section is important in
understanding the seemingly paradoxical nature of an Army seeking to utilise Islam as
identity as well as elements being wedded to the practices of the departed colonial
master.

A number of British Officers stayed on, some returned to Pakistan for visits to
their old regiments, and Pakistani Officers visited former British colleagues in the
United Kingdom during the 1950s. Field Marshal Auchinleck returned to Pakistan on
a number of occasions until the end of the decade to lecture and visit Officers who

the imagery and symbolism of Islam to win the Muslim masses to his cause to gain concessions from
India, in, ‘The Secret Life of Mr Jinnah’, Hugh Purcell (Executive Producer), As It Happened, SBS
Television, Australia, 1999.
379
Spain, ‘Military Assistance for Pakistan’, p. 746.
380
Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy, p. 90.
381
The sacrifice in war and religions role in preserving beliefs of common origins provide examples of
collective sacrifice for emulation by subsequent generations in Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism
and Nationalism – A cultural approach, Routledge, United Kingdom, 2009, p. 47.
105
had served with him. 382 These senior British Army figures were greatly respected,
with some like Auchinleck and Gracey being especially revered, with their opinions
sought during meetings in the United Kingdom and on their visits to Pakistan. 383

Though many British Officers had left the Pakistan Army by the early to mid-
1950s British influence on Army culture persisted in official and unofficial aspects,
including in matters of professional orientation, and influence on dress, sporting and
social activities. Their persistence in Army culture was maintained even while the
Army was experiencing the tribulations of partition and Kashmir and realising Islam’s
pivotal role in Army identity and strategic culture. As noted earlier, Officers identified
that their British Indian Army heritage and their martial race reputation was a
powerful commodity in the early negotiation of the pact with the US.

The combination of martial race, Muslim martial exceptionalism and the

British Indian Army heritage were all part of the admired and accepted cultural
heritage of the Pakistan Army Officers of this period. Officers of the early 1950s
noted the continuity of British Indian Army social and cultural traditions. The
Peshawar Vale Fox Hunt for instance included senior Pakistan Army Officers from
Ayub down to junior Officers participating in and facilitating the hunt. 384 Officers
mimicked their former British Officers practice by dressing in English hunt clothing
such as ‘pinques’ and ‘tan top’ boots and following the hounds. 385 Arif recalls that his
Pakistani Commanding Officer in the early 1950s spent most of his time with polo
and hounds while leaving the work to his Captains which is remarkable given the
Islamic legal, though contestable, injunctions concerning the handling of dogs. 386 The
culture though diminishing, survived for some time after the departure of the British

382
Hamid the former secretary to Auchinleck notes Auchinleck visited on a number of occasions
including in 1956 when Shahid was Adjutant General, in Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan –
Including the period from August 1947 to 1959, Ferozsons, Karachi, 1993, p. 126 & Ian Stephens the
Pakistan Army’s official historian between 1957-1960 recounts meeting with Auchinleck in Pakistan
just after the 1958 coup, in Ian Stephens, Unmade Journey, Stacey International, London, 1977, p. 341.
383
Wajahat Husain relates going to England on leave in 1956 and staying with Gracey the last British
C-in-C, in ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Maj. Gen. (Retd) S. Wajahat Hussain,’ in Defence Journal,
Karachi, August 2002 & British and Pakistani Officers continued to attend regimental reunions in both
countries for instance the attendance by Pakistani Officers at the 16th Punjabi’s reunion in Britain in
1951 chaired by the former Indian Army Officer Lt. General Sir Ralph Deedes, NAM1951-11-33.
384
Shafaat Ali, Memoirs of Colonel Shafaat Ali, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 2007, p. 138.
385
Ali, Memoirs of Colonel Ali, p. 138.
386
K.M. Arif, ‘Khaki Shadows Pakistan 1947-1997’, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2001, p. 16.
106
with Officers in Quetta appearing in formal blue patrols for dinner as well as ladies’
nights where Pakistani ladies dressed in their finest Western wear. 387

Some social events included Officers demonstrating their stamina for such
un-Islamic practices such as drinking alcoholic beverages, while alcohol also featured
in the Gymkhana where winners were rewarded with bottles of beer. 388 According to
Stephens while alcohol consumption was lessening, it was still very evident during his
period as Army historian at Rawalpindi between 1957 and 1960 where he noted the
presence of the British Indian Army Regimental habit of evening whiskies amongst
Officers. 389 The party after Operation ‘Handicap’ in 1954—the largest training
exercise held in the subcontinent to that point and witnessed by foreign observers and
defence attachés—featured, it was claimed, tremendous levels of inebriation. 390 There
was still a club life as well during the mid-1950s within the liberal atmosphere of the
Rawalpindi club, where Army Officers, foreign men and women would drink, dance,
gamble and fight. 391

The Garrison in Quetta held distinctive formal black tie dinners hosted by the
Pakistani Commandant and included Officers pairing off with their colleague’s
spouses to prepare dinners. 392 A Pakistani Officer on the directing staff of the Staff
College wrote of the liberal atmosphere and freedom to mix socially between the
Pakistanis, foreign students and the remaining British. 393 The perceptions of a casual
liberal atmosphere among the Pakistani Officers were shared by a British Officer who

387
A.O. Mitha, Unlikely Beginnings: A Soldiers Life, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2003, p. 118 &
Memoirs of Colonel Ali, pp. 156-157.
388
Memoirs of Colonel Ali, p. 138.
389
Ian Stephens, Unmade Journey, Stacey International, London, 1977, p. 333 & Ayub Khan was
reportedly fond of whiskey in moderation and apologised to those more pious colleagues, in Maj.
General Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan Pataudi, ‘The Story of the Soldiering and Politics in India &
Pakistan’, Wajidalis, Karachi, 1978, p. 114. Alcohol of course was not unknown to Muslims in the
subcontinent with some Muslims indulgence in it noted from the first periods of British involvement
with the Moghuls, Deniis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608-1937, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
UK, 1973, pp. 15-16.
390
Pakistan Army web portal, ‘1949-1957 Introduction’,
http://www.pakistanarmy.gov.pk/AWPReview/TextContent.aspx?pId=187, accessed 23 August 2012
& Laftif notes those inebriated Officers being marshalled for dinner at 2.00 am for the band to play ‘for
he’s a jolly good fellow’ to the official guest, in Rahat Latif, ‘Plus Bhutto’s Episode – An
autobiography’, Jang Publishers, Lahore, 1994, p. 56.
391
Latif, Plus Bhutto’s Episode, pp. 62-65.
392
Memoirs of Colonel Ali, p. 161.
393
M. Attiqur Rahman, ‘Back to the Pavilion’, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, p. 84.
107
noted the mixing of males and females during social occasions. 394 The mixing of
males and females also transgressed a number of Islamic injunctions concerning the
mixing of the sexes. Attitudes to alcohol and some of these more liberal practices
more familiar to pre-partition times were changing though as the same Officer noted
the introduction of alcohol permits. 395

Stephens who was employed by the Pakistan Army as their historian between
1957 and 1960 noted,

In accent and turn of phrase in the kind of jokes they like or their mental approach to
a problem, these soldiers ... whatever their inward thoughts were outwardly patterned
on their former comrades-in-arms from an Island 4000 miles away. Close your eyes at
a Pakistani party in ‘Pindi’ and you might almost suppose yourself in Aldershot. 396

Listening to Ayub’s clipped British accent goes some way to understanding

Stephens’s perceptions in this regard. 397 Conversely, the Army still had a number of
‘Pakistani-British’ being those British Officers who like earlier generations of the
British Indian Army considered themselves more Pakistani than the Pakistanis. 398

It was with these types of Officers that the enduring concepts of martial race
and Muslim exceptionalism in martial culture were transmitted to the newer
generation of Pakistan Army Officers, while reinforcing these beliefs amongst the
older generation of Officers. The fact that some of these British Officers converted to
Islam, and others considered converting to Islam was another factor in the two way
cultural process, and attraction Officers had for the religion and culture of their
units. 399

Stephen’s perceptions are echoed by Slessor who after his visit to Pakistan in
the mid-1950s noted how he met Pakistani Officers who were more English than the

394
NAM 7203-33-6, Pakistan Diary Vol. 1 by C.J.W., p. 33.
395
NAM 7203-33-6, p. 11, & Cheema notes the emergence of a parallel tradition with the British and
changes in army culture towards the end of the 1950. email from Dean of Pakistan National Defence
University, Professor Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, 14 June 2012.
396
Ian Stephens, Horned Moon – An account of a Journey through Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan,
Chatto & Windus, London, 1954, p. 87.
397
President Ayub Khan Interview on conflict with India in the Rann of Kutch,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUp3cFGZfGg&feature=related, accessed 23 August 2012.
398
Stephens, Horned Moon, pp. 87-88.
399
Stephens, Horned Moon, p.88.
108
English and of the regimental blazer wearing Sandhurst trained ‘Muslim
Englishman’. 400

During the 1954 national horse show in Lahore the Army’s British image
was further enhanced in a martial spectacle, with Officers resplendent in regimental
ties and sports jackets entertaining an international audience of diplomats with drinks
around a bonfire. 401 The show gave a tremendous boost to the military’s national and
international image though in a seemingly incongruent manner as being
simultaneously a ‘chip off the old block’ of the old British Indian Army as well as
being lauded for their martial attributes and austere Islamic piety. 402 The sense for
more indigenisation of the Army was apparent though in light of the continued hostile
relationship with India in which Islam was needed to define the character of the
Pakistan Army as India could also refer to its own British Indian martial heritage.

Though the British connection with the Pakistan Army remained strong at the
PMA and JSPCTS new combinations of indigenous and Islamic symbolism were
gradually added to these institutions to replace the older British Indian Army
inheritance. The First Commander of the PMA, Brigadier Ingall, had himself
recognised that the PMA must instil in the Officer Cadets an appropriate esprit de
corps, and as Pakistan had no history or common heritage Ingall believed the
motivation had to come from Islam. 403

Ingall in concert with Muslim religious teachers, scholars and Officers decided
on the PMA’s Cadet company’s to be named after famous Muslim soldiers of the
past. The companies were named after Muslim military luminaries such as Khalid,
Tariq, Kasim and Salahuddin, while regimental colours, Cadet badges and the motto
of ‘Nasroon minihalhi wah fatroom quarib’ equating to ‘When God is with you then
victory is near’ was selected as an appropriate Islamic motto. 404

400
Tim Slessor, First Overland – The Story of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition,
Readers Book Club, London, 1957, p. 96, p. 106 & p. 119 & ‘A Scots tradition that is still flourishing
ten years after independence’, in President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O9IZUa1gIw&feature=fvwrel, accessed 23 August 2012.
401
A.R. Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality’, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1996, p. 41.
402
Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan, pp. 39-41.
403
Francis Ingall, The Last of the Bengal Lancers, Presidio Press, California, 1988, pp. 127-129.
404
Ingall, The Last of the Bengal Lancers, pp. 127-129. Studies and biographies of these famous
Muslim soldiers were also published by the Army Book Club.
109
 As the US relationship developed in the afterglow of Dulles’s eulogies of the
Army’s piety and martial pedigree the Army embarked on major training and
equipment acquisition programs that exposed them to the Americans.

The Army acquired more insight into American military culture. With the
signing of the pact with the US in 1954 and joining the Baghdad Pact in 1955 Officers
started noting the influence of American culture initiated by the United States
Information Service (USIS). 405 The benign introduction of American periodicals and
journals were believed intended to wean the Officers from their favourite British
newspapers and periodicals and introduce the Pakistani Officers to American military
and popular culture. 406 It was a culture shock for the Pakistanis and probably the
Americans. Pakistani Officers used to British Indian Army Officers who learnt Urdu
and who participated in religious and cultural festivals, and in a few instances
converted to Islam, thought the Americans to be insensitive to Pakistani customs,
which incurred resentment during their deployment to Pakistan. 407

American defence assistance during the 1950s provided opportunities for

Officers to undertake army courses in the US with some actively promoting Pakistan,
Islam and their martial race to the Americans. 408 At the time these Officers were
negotiating a course between the cultural pathways of the Western and Islamic in the
US these tensions were also being negotiated in Pakistan.

Though there was mimicry of aspects of British Indian Army culture there
was also evidence of tensions between Western, indigenous and Islamic culture noted
by Officers during the 1950s. Some junior Officers lamented that it was not
considered Officer like to wear non-Western clothes outside one’s home or the Mess.
Others noted that senior regimental Officers had maintained an aloof snobbishness
that some equated to the most pompous British practices. 409 The Mess at this time
maintained its British traditions by ensuring conversation centred on matters of
professional interest while discussion of politics and women were taboo. 410 In keeping
with the older British practices Urdu newspapers were not kept in the Mess and the

405
Siddiqi, The Military in Pakistan, p. 45.
406
Siddiqi, The Military in Pakistan, p. 45.
407
A.O. Mitha, Unlikely Beginnings: A Soldiers Life, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2003, p. 213.
408
Ali, Memoirs of Colonel Ali, pp. 168-183.
409
Arif, Khaki Shadows, p. 8.
410
Arif, Khaki Shadows, p. 9.
110
Officers talked amongst themselves in English, with an Anglicised Urdu accent, of
matters in the British newspapers.

The British Officers had been replaced by the brown sahibs who took visible pride in
imitating them. 411

Others noted more imperial pretensions creeping into the Officer Corps,

...we seemed bent on copying the outward trappings of power, and also in attempting
to graft on to our own society a largely alien culture. We adopted dress, language,
deportment, and all the assumed appurtenances of position – large cars, flags, star
plates, and the rest. 412

Tarzie Vittachi had coined the term ‘Brown Sahib’ in his critique of South Asian
elites in their failure to differentiate between their newly independent role and that of
their colonial predecessors. 413 The ‘Brown Sahib’ was a sentimental copy of the
former colonial masters adopted by the newly independent in the absence of their own
identity, or a belief that their indigenous identity was inimical to a particular role.

The Army continued older British Indian Army practices of ethnic exclusion,
which were consistent with British martial race preferences on the suitability of
certain ethnic groups as being fit for the Army, as noted in Chapters One and Two.
During the 1950s the Army remained resistant to the inclusion of other major ethnic
groups including the Bengalis who numerically constituted over half the population.
A number of officers in the Army were furthermore resentful of the few Bengalis who
exercised any political power over them. Prime Minister Nazimuddin was the subject
of ridicule by such officers in the Army with his portly figure and alleged gluttony
being equated with his greedy un-martial Bengali persona, which served as evidence
to Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers of their innate superiority over the Bengalis. 414
Senior Officers of the time claimed that Ayub, himself a Pakhtun, maintained ‘shades
of martial and non-martial class’ in his preference for Punjabis and Pakhtuns, while
Ayub later in his career is shown in his diaries to be clearly critical of Bengalis in his

411
Arif, Khaki Shadows, p. 9.
412
M. Attiqur Rahman, ‘Our Defence Cause’, White Lion Publishers, London, 1976, pp. 29-30.
413
Tarzie Vittachi, The Brown Sahib, Andrew Deutsch, 1962, p. 9.
414
Siddiqi, The Military in Pakistan, p. 20. Ayub Khan criticises Nazimuddin, Suhrawardy and Fazlul
Haq all former Bengali Chief Ministers of the undivided Bengal, where he alleges they were poor
decision makers and especially so Nazimuddin, in Khan, Friends Not Masters, pp. 23-24.
111
‘martial race’ references of their suffering from the impact of their humid climate and
marshy terrain that allegedly made them “mother-attached” and “inward looking”. 415

Officers believed that the security of the Muslim homeland could only be
ensured by the martial races, so lauded by existing and earlier generations of British
Officers and highlighted by the more recent approbations received from the
Americans.

Some in the Army did think the disproportionate representation from the
Punjab and the North West Frontier Province compared to that of Sindh, Baluchistan,
East Pakistan and the Muhajirs could be a problem. Suggestions of rectifying these
problems during the period included the establishment of a separate recruitment
standard for Bengalis, as well as additional military academies being established in
East Pakistan though these plans were largely unsuccessful. 416 An Army reform in
1956 had also considered the matter of ethnic recruitment and a number of recruiting
fairs were organised. Recruitment was opened up to a number of frontier classes that
had not been previously accepted in the Army, though even this simply opened up
recruitment to additional classes from the Punjab and NWFP. 417 Even if Officer
candidates were from Baluchistan or Sindh they could still be Punjabi or Pakhtun due
to internal migration and their better education standards.

Despite similarities suggesting the Pakistan Army was a replica of the British
Indian Army from which it had been formed, the Army was exhibiting behaviours in
stark contrast to the traditions and culture of the British Indian Army. The discovery
of the Rawalpindi conspiracy in 1951 when the Chief of General Staff of the Army,
ten other Officers and a number of civilians planned to overthrow the government and
military leadership was a shock to the political and military hierarchy. 418 The
ringleader of the conspiracy, a popular Sandhurst trained Officer, had led the covert
aspects of the 1948 Kashmir Operation and had been allegedly bitter of the failure to

415
M. Attiqur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, p. 91 & Siddiqi,
The Military in Pakistan, p. 35. Pataudi claims Ayub was biased against Bengali’s, Pataudi, ‘The Story
of the Soldiering, pp. 135-136 & Craig Baxter (Editor), Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub
Khan, 1966-1972, Oxford University Prerss, Dhaka, 2007, p.364.
416
Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy, p. 125.
417
Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan – Including the period from August 1947 to 1959,
Ferozsons, Karachi, 1993, pp. 122-123.
418
Cheema, Op.Cit, p. 117, & Hasan Zaheer, The Times and Trial of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy 1951,
Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998.
112
liberate the Muslims of Kashmir as well as being passed over for command of the
Army. 419

That a number of senior Army Officers so early in the new Army’s existence
could undertake such a radically uncharacteristic action on the part of Officers who
relished their British traditions illustrated the strong influence of religious attachments
below the ostensibly professional surface of the Army. The conspiracy and other
institutional weaknesses of the Army were driving tendencies more often seen in less
developed militaries. Officers were seeking early and unqualified promotions as well
as being more generally involved in a careerism that would have been viewed as
extremely gauche in the manners of the old British Indian Army. 420 It is to the matter
of Army development that the next section considers.

The disquiet within the Army was noticed by a senior British Officer and
was attributed to the new Officer class’s ignorance of higher order military
organisation and lack of experience. 421 The lack of experienced Officers was noted by
foreign and Pakistani officer with the US military pact a factor in hopefully improving
the effectiveness of the Army, with over two hundred artillery Officers for instance
attending training courses in the US between 1955 and 1958. 422 The Army also
embarked on a program to improve its organisational effectiveness as well as
attempting to instil more of a Pakistani identity into the Army.

Institutional Development – structure, training and Islamic symbolism

From Ayub’s assumption of command in 1951 he commenced an Army

reorganisation that was wide ranging and included amongst other developments

419
Akbar Khan the Officer involved adopted the nom de guerre ‘Tariq’ after the Muslim conqueror of
Spain, offers an account of his exploits during the first Kashmir war and his subsequent arrest for his
role in the coup, Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, Waifai Printing, Islamabad, 1970 & Zaheer,
Rawalpindi Conspiracy, p. xvi.
420
Ayub Khan refers to this phenomenon at the time in which he claimed Officers had raised
expectations and fantastic ambitions, in Mohammed Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford
University Press, London, 1967, pp. 37-38, while Hussain stated that when visiting General Gracey the
former Commander of the Pakistan Army in Britain in early 1956 Gracey had warned of the younger
Officers unrealised ambitions, in ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Interview with Major General Wajahat
Hussain’, in Defence Journal, (Ed) Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal, Karachi, August 2002, p. 6.
421
NAM 7203-33-6, Pakistan Diary Vol. 1 by C.J.W. (1949), p. 10 & p. 28. (The Officer concerned
was Maj. General Loftus-Tottenham).
422
Maj. Gen (Retd) Shaukat Riza, Izzat-O-Iqbal, Published by School of Artillery, Nowshera, 1980, p.
122 & Qasim was one of these Officers who undertook Artillery training at Fort Sill, in Syed Shah
Abul Qasim, Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel, Karachi, 2003, p. 73.
113
establishing training centres, refitting old training centres, as well as developing new
military schools of instruction and attention to military doctrine. 423 An Army planning
board was formed and set about designing new operational concepts and reviewing
regulations and procedures. The board also addressed the reorganisation and
amalgamation of regiments of similar tradition and territorial affiliation that reduced
the existing eleven regiments into four, which was achieved in April 1956. 424

With Pakistan becoming a republic in 1956 the British Crown, a symbol of

the imperial past, was removed from most army nomenclatures, with battalions
removing old titles and affiliations with British Royalty, though this process was not
universal and some units chose to retain some old popular martial titles. 425 The
amalgamation process caused some distress in the regimentally traditionally inclined
Officers of the British Indian generation, but was ameliorated to some extent by
retaining a few old traditions and combining them with new religious and national
identity motifs. 426

In planning to introduce religious and national identity motifs a committee

examined the system of awards, decorations, ceremonial standards, marching songs
and tunes. The committee planned to replace those British Indian Army standards
with more symbolic manifestations of Pakistani religion and culture. It was hoped
these changes would resonate with the Islamic ethos of the country and unify and
motivate the Army as Brigadier Ingall had sought to undertake at the PMA. 427 For the
Army the process initially involved the inscription of the words ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ (God
is Great) in Urdu upon Unit standards as well as having the Army Service Corps
identify poems and statements from national poets to add to marching tunes. The
national anthem for Pakistan was chosen because of its emphasis on Pakistan as the
citadel of Islamic faith while its author Hafiz Jullundhri, the Urdu poet wounded
fighting in Kashmir, was appointed Director of Army Morals by Ayub Khan.

The Army instituted an eclectic mix of the Islamic and Imperial British with
suggestions on martial themes being elicited from old British Indian Army luminaries

423
Arif, Khaki Shadows, p. 13.
424
Rafiuddin Ahmed, History of the Baloch Regiment, The Naval and Military Press Ltd, East Sussex,
2005, p. 234.
425
Ahmed, Baloch Regiment p. 236.
426
Ahmed, Baloch Regiment pp. 236-238.
427
Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan, pp. 121-122.
114
such as Field Marshal Auchinleck who was again visiting Pakistan. 428 These
initiatives though initially modest served to reinforce the Islamic nature of the new
Army onto its developing cultural identity, while also seeking to emphasise belief in
its professionalism and martial traditions. The Army was nurturing martial race
themes concurrently with Islamic themes and in this way martial tradition and Islam
were one and the same.

The changing nature of the Army was also manifested in how Officers were
selected, trained and indoctrinated in their professional education, religious and
martial heritage. The Cadet body originating from the families of earlier generations
of Officers, consisted of unmarried young men, as well as some from the ranks, and a
few with wives and family. 429 Training as an Army Officer in the 1950s began with
an initial six month assessment undertaken with potential Officer recruits from the
Navy, Air Force and Army at the JSPCTS at Quetta. 430 Life at the JSPCTS reflected
both indigenous and inherited traditions with meals being taken with knife and fork in
the British tradition, while dress included regimental style blazers in the British
tradition, as well as a ‘militarised’ version of the Sherwani in the indigenous Muslim
tradition. 431

Life at the PMA while austere included Western conveniences and cultural
traditions such as cinema nights as well as access to a canteen, billiard tables and a
variety of sporting and hobby clubs. 432 The attrition rates were moderate with the
seventh PMA Long Course that graduated on 14 February 1953 for instance passing
out with seventy-four Cadet s out of a total of one hundred and three that had begun
the course. During the heightened tensions with India in 1951 the fifth PMA course
was passed out six months prematurely in order to help deal with the Indian threat. 433

The PMA during this period still had a complement of British Officers,
NCOs and a British Regimental Sergeant Major for drill and discipline. 434 More direct

428
Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan, p. 122.
429
Akhtar Khan, 7th PMA Long Course.
430
Interview of Lt. General Imtiaz Waraich, in Ikhram ul-Majeed Seghal (Ed), ‘Defence Journal’,
October 2001, Vol. 5, No. 3, Karachi, 2001, pp. 7-9.
431
Muhammad Akhtar Khan, ‘7th PMA Long Course & 4th Pre-Cadet Training School’, in I.Ikhram
Seghal, ‘Defence Journal’, Karachi, February, 2002.
432
Akhtar Khan, 7th PMA Long Course.
433
Akhtar Khan, 7th PMA Long Course.
434
Akhtar Khan, 7th PMA Long Course.
115
British Army connections continued as well with some Officer Cadets, including
Ayub’s own son, undertaking their Officer training at Sandhurst. 435 Apart from
Islamic appellations being introduced to the PMA the institution became known as
‘The First Pakistan Battalion’ (Quaid-e-Azam) to promote the nationalist ethos in the
PMA in honouring Jinnah the creator of Pakistan. The curriculum at the PMA like the
JSPCTS was divided between military and academic training that emphasised
Western battles and leaders. 436

Islamic appellations and the names of famous Muslim leaders and battles
were however used at the PMA for other purposes. Officer Cadets were assessed on
week long outdoor exercises with names derived from Islamic martial themes such as
the exercise ‘Yarmuk’ named after the battle in which Khalid Ibn al-Walid ‘the Sword
of Islam’ (also the name of a Cadet company at PMA) defeated the Eastern Roman
Empire in battle in Syria. The passing out ceremony for PMA Cadets in the early
1950s included a mix of British-Indian Army traditions as well as more overt symbols
of Islam and Pakistani nationalism. These parades drew on a Muslim military pageant
style that had been evolving since partition. The Army ceremonies introduced Islamic
elements such as the consecration of the colours by a Maulvi and an Islamic prayer
program that had been evident as early as 1948 in a presenting the colours
ceremony. 437

Conclusion

This chapter described how the combination of early domestic and

international political factors combined with partition and the tribulations endured by
those Officers who had served in Kashmir contributed to a national culture of
insecurity. Politically, the early collapse of any real apparent embrace of Jinnah’s
vision of a secular, tolerant, democratic Pakistan because of internecine religious and
ethnic violence induced the Army to undertake functions of the state normally left to
other civil agencies. The Army’s implementation of martial law in Lahore in 1953 and

435
Gohar Ayub Khan, Glimpses into the Corridors of Power, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2007,
p. 23.
436
Akhtar Khan, 7th PMA Long Course.
437
See for instance the ceremonial booklet with prayer lists and consecration ceremony details for the
presentation of the colours to Quaid-I-Azam’s sister Fatimah Jinnah on 15 April 1948 in NAM1965-
04077-2.
116
the Army’s recognition of its own superiority in administering justice in this and other
occasions amplified an increasingly critical view of the politician’s ability to secure
the stability and interests of the country.

Internationally, Pakistan’s enduring hostilities with India, though perhaps

overstated, and problems with Afghanistan enabled the military to dominate the
political discourse of the country. The military’s domination of a political discourse
centred on security and military development that was attuned to a growing lack of
confidence in the political system to maintain national cohesion. This enabled the
military from the early 1950s to establish itself as the dominant arm of government on
which the Muslim homeland either flourished or fell.

Military domination of the government was established through Ayub’s

gradually increasing role and importance in government from Commander in Chief, to
Defence Minister to eventually assuming full power in 1958. This enabled the
military to virtually control the economy, through its domination of budgetary
expenditure, as well as dominating foreign policy in managing the security threat
from India which was the ‘myth’ that maintained the primacy of the Army while they
courted the US.

Senior Army Officers during the period 1951 to 1958, though still imbued
with much British tradition, commenced a process of structural reform as well as
beginning to imbue the Army with a more national and Islamic outlook believed as
necessary and fundamentally important in building on the binding experiences of the
Kashmir war and hostility with India.

The next chapter addresses the period 1958 to 1970 and encompasses a period
of successive Army rule. The chapter explores the impact of the Army’s continued
involvement in politics as well as the influence of conflicts with India and
Afghanistan in which peculiarly Islamic notions of warfare were instituted.

117
118
 Chapter IV Birth of the Praetorian State: 1958–1970

The Indian rulers were never reconciled to the establishment of an independent Pakistan where
Muslims could build a homeland of their own. All their military preparations during the last 18 years
have been directed against us.

(President and Field Marshall Ayub Khan, 1965) 438

Introduction

On 7 October 1958 Ayub Khan, Commander in Chief of the Army and

Defence Minister, was asked by President Iskander Mirza to establish martial law and
rule the country. Mirza informed Ayub that the country had reached such a point of
political chaos that it needed the military to take control. Mirza’s concerns may have
been less about chaos and more about a belief that leftists and politicians from the
East Wing were gaining too much influence. Ayub nevertheless took control in a
bloodless action and within three weeks he had also bundled off Mirza, whose
allegedly fickle and conspiratorial dealings he decided the country could also do
without, to exile in London. 439 Ayub would remain in power until protests and strikes
against his rule reached a crescendo in March 1969 and he was replaced by Pakistan’s
second military ruler General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan who had been applying
pressure on Ayub to step down. 440

This chapter considers the history of the Pakistan Army over the period 1958
to the commencement of political agitation in East Pakistan in 1970 in four sections.
Initially, the chapter examines the impact of Ayub’s political and cultural experiments
in Pakistan and their impact on the Army. This is followed by an examination of the
Army’s problematic relationship with the US.

In the third section an examination of doctrinal and training developments in

the Army, including the Army’s consideration of a number of asymmetrical warfare

438
‘Go Forward and meet the enemy: call to the nation on India’s Aggression, Special Broadcast to the
Nation, September 6, 1965’, Speeches and Statements Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan President
of Pakistan, Volume – VIII, July 1965 – June 1966, Din Muhammad Press, Karachi, 1966, pp. 24-25.
439
Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, Oxford University Press, London, 1967, pp.74-75.
440
Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords – Pakistan – Its Army, and the Wars Within, Oxford University
Press, Karachi, 2008, pp.242-243.
119
methods including Islamist and Maoist methods of warfare, is undertaken. Some
examination is also made of Chinese assistance to the Army. This section also
includes a consideration of the impact of martial law upon the professional ethos of
the Army, as well as internal criticism of Ayub’s succession planning. Some attention
to training conducted in the Army during this period is also provided.

The last section of the chapter concerns the Army’s engagement in armed
conflicts with India and Pakistan, including the Islamically motivated strategies in
Operation Gibraltar and faulty Army appreciations of anticipated Indian responses.

Together these issues traverse the political, cultural, religious and purely
military aspects of this period of the Army’s history. The chapter concludes that the
Army at the end of this period had, by its involvement in politics, fundamentally
broken with the established British Indian Army traditions of no involvement in
politics that was addressed in Chapter One. Similarly, the Army’s explicit use of
Islam in the 1965 War and beforehand contributed to the Army’s developing strategic
culture that discovered solutions to the Indian threat by recourse to these innovative
solutions founded in notions of Islamic resistance. The Indian threat to the Islamic
homeland remained the essential element of the Pakistani strategic culture founded in
the tribulations of partition and the 1947–48 Kashmir War revealed in Chapter Two.

Islamic solutions to Pakistan’s security problems arose as well from the

disappointment with the US alliance. The alliance had been degraded from the effects
of the American response to India’s defeat at China’s hands in 1962. There was also
declining interest from a Democratic Party not as enamoured with Pakistan’s
credentials as the Republicans had been, and increasingly drawn into a focus on South
East Asian political developments in the containment of communism. It is to a
discussion of the overarching political context that the thesis now moves.

An examination of the politics of the period dominated by Field Marshal Ayub

Khan and subsequently by General Yahya Khan is imperative in understanding how
the assumption of power by the Army influenced Pakistan and the Army. Ayub’s
social and political experiments in the form of basic democracies, policies on East
Pakistan, his tinkering with religious law and cultural practices, as well as his
brokering of alliances and relationships with the US and China, had very real

120
implications for the Army, which this chapter explores. An examination of these
themes provides insight into what was occurring in the Army some twenty years after
its inception, by examining the cultural changes that increasingly came to cut the
Army adrift of its singular professional culture inherited from the British Indian
Army.

Chapter Three noted the paradoxical elements of Pakistani Army culture

during the period up to 1958 in which the Army was balancing American views of its
piety and superiority against residual and popular elements of British Indian Army
culture. Chapter Three also noted that the threat from India remained the Army’s
primary security concern and to a lesser degree that presented by Afghanistan. In this
regard the Army sought to develop its own particularly Islamic culture in the early
developments of Brigadier Ingall at the PMA as well as the Army committees that
considered other simple measures from ‘marching songs’ and the eradication of
imperial symbols with Pakistan becoming a republic in 1956. Advantageously for
Pakistan, the chapter noted that the American relationship was providing Pakistan
with valuable materiel and training to develop the Army as well as a validation of
their martial and Islamic nature. The chapter noted that the Army had effectively
assumed control of the debate on domestic and international security policy, with the
Army increasingly concerned over the ability of politicians to maintain the territorial
and ideological integrity of the state.

The Army increasingly drew upon a parallel culture that rationalised the
Army’s role as saviour of the state. This culture rationalised the usurping of the
politicians to save Jinnah’s Pakistan as well as the more visceral call of rescuing the
subcontinent’s Muslims from Hindu hegemony. The expedient use of nationalist and
religious themes to cement the unity of the state, or as a casus belli in its skirmishes
and wars with India over Kashmir, served the Army well in its justification for control
of the state. The first section of this chapter addresses these political and cultural
experiments of Ayub’s regime.

On 7 October 1958 President Iskander Mirza abrogated the constitution,

proclaimed martial law throughout the country, dismissed central and provincial
governments and assemblies and appointed General Ayub Khan, Commander in Chief

121
of the Army and Defence Minister as Chief Martial Law Administrator. 441 Ayub’s
contempt for the politicians was as profound as was his belief in the Army being the
sole guarantor of Pakistan’s continued sovereignty, with his contempt for politicians
being well known to many in the Army prior to his assumption of power. 442

Ayub Khan’s coup, political rule and Islam

Ayub’s assumption of power was portrayed by him as a ‘revolution’, with

Pakistan to be revolutionised in terms of a new democratic system free of colonial
accretions and more suitable to Pakistan’s Islamic and cultural heritage. 443 Ayub,
according to one of his Martial Law Administrators, was of the opinion that most of
the country’s political ills to date were attributable to the Western democratic system
that the country had tried to institute. 444 A British diplomat who knew Ayub said
Ayub possessed a view that democracy only worked for ‘cool and phlegmatic people
in cold climates’, a view remarkably aligned to aspects of martial race theories. 445
Toynbee who had met Ayub and was admired by Pakistani Officers, possibly arising
from his lectures at the Pakistan Military Academy, had concurred with Ayub.

...that the majority of the people of Pakistan are still immature politically to be able to
make a success of Anglo-American parliamentary democracy. 446

Ayub was determined that his democratic system would be one that the
people of Pakistan could understand free of the complexities and dominance of the
former political class that he deemed had failed the country so much. Even in the
twilight of his reign in 1968 Ayub had continued to critique Western style democracy
and asserted that he had liberated the country from a burdensome legacy of colonial

441
Ayub had been Minister of Defence in the Cabinet since 1954 & Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends
Not Masters, Oxford University Press, London, 1967, pp. 70-71.
442
Ayub’s distrust and disappointment with the politicians and the political process in Pakistan more
generally is a consistent theme throughout his memoirs and diaries & Interview with Tajammal, p. 14.
443
See page one in, Bureau of National Reconstruction Government of Pakistan, Introduction of basic
democracies in Pakistan, Ferozsons, Pakistan, where it quotes Ayub referring to, ‘...the Revolutionary
Government...’
444
Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1999, p. 39.
445
Sir Morrice James (Lord St. Brides), Pakistan Chronicle – edited with an introduction by Peter
Lyon, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1993, p. 61.
446
Between Oxus and Jumna, p. 183.
122
days. 447 Ayub’s new system was known as ‘basic democracies’. 448 He noted in his
first address to the nation on 8 October 1959,

Let me announce in unequivocal terms that our ultimate aim is to restore democracy,
but of the type that people can understand and work. 449 [my emphasis]

Ayub believed that democracy needed to come from the base upwards and in
this regard his revolutionary government announced plans for a four-tiered system of
representative government that,

...basic democracy can ensure real representation of the people. Our existing
percentage of literacy being lamentably low, the Western pattern of democracy
becomes socially untenable. 450

Ayub was driven by a ‘modernising mission and reformist zeal’ to exploit the
natural advantages of the Pakistani people. 451 While not secular he also sought to
address what he thought of as the ‘ill-effects of Islamic orthodoxy’.

Ayub believed Islamic orthodoxy was inimical to progress and contributed to

inertia, fatalism and sectarianism when what Pakistan needed was a proportionate
balance between Islam and secularism. 452 Ayub himself was arguably an Islamic
modernist, with a liking for the poet Iqbal who he credited as a symbol of Muslim
renaissance, and he vigorously promoted the idea of the progressive use of science to
advance Muslim nationalism. Ayub ultimately failed and the resistance he was met
with from the orthodox Muslims he equated with the earlier resistance against such

447
President’s broadcast to the nation, Pakistan Day 23rd March 1968, Department of Films and
Publications, Government of Pakistan [booklet], Karachi, p. 4.
448
The objectives, functions and role of ‘Basic Democracies’ and ‘Basic Democrats’, is fully detailed
in ‘The Basic Democracies Order, 1959’, Government of Pakistan Printer.
449
Ayub Khan quoted in Bureau of National Reconstruction Government of Pakistan, Introduction of
basic democracies in Pakistan, Ferozsons, Pakistan, p. 1.
450
The Department of Films and Publications Government of Pakistan, Guidelines – basic democracies
Karachi, p. 5.
451
Hamid Yusuf, Pakistan - A Study of Political Developments: 1947-97, Maktaba Jadeed Press,
Lahore, 1998, p. 70.
452
‘Islam – A Dynamic and Progressive Movement’, convocation address at the Darul Uloom Islamia,
Tando Allahyar, on May 3, 1959, in Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements –
Volume 1: October 1958-June 1959, publisher [nfd], 1961, pp. 110-114.
123
other South Asian Muslim luminaries as Jinnah, Shah Walliullah, Sir Syed and
Allama Iqbal. 453

Ayub’s attempts at tinkering and improving Pakistan’s burgeoning population

problem through amendments to family law were calculated to improve Pakistan’s
economic and lifestyle standards. His government tried to educate the public about
these issues through programs that highlighted the impact of uncontrolled population
growth on Pakistan. The importance of this issue to Ayub was one he maintained
throughout his rule and one that he raised within the international community. 454
Ayub’s government had tried to reform the family laws through drawing upon
arguments that other Muslim countries had previously done so. 455 Ayub’s government
produced booklets that refuted customs against contraception by citing eminent
Islamic jurists such as Al-Ghazzali as well as the strategic impact of unregulated
population growth on the nation’s progress. 456 Ayub hoped to drag Pakistan from
feudalism to an enlightened Muslim nation state and was fighting a battle within the
religious domain that the Ulema were not ready to concede. Ayub’s frustration is
evident in his diary entries over the course of his years in power,

...the followers of Maududi, the Deoband group, the Ahrars, etc., are spreading all
sorts of dissatisfaction against me. They are criticizing the family law which has
brought so much relief to the poor women ... The idiots or rascals are calling these
things anti-Islamic ... their religion and their philosophy has not the slightest affinity
into the true spirit of Islam... 457

453
‘Speeches and Statements, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan President of Pakistan, Volume –
VII, July 1964 – June 1965, Din Muhammadi Press, Karachi, 1965, p. 172, pp. 7-9 & pp. 208-209.
454
Ayub had raised the problem of Pakistan’s population growth to the Americans, see for instance
where population growth formed part of Ayub’s speech to President Johnson, December 14, 1965, in
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, Containing the Public
Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, Book II, June 1 to December 31, 1965, Office of
the Federal Register National Archives and Records Service, Washington, 1966, p. 1155.
455
For instance in The Department of Films and Publications Government of Pakistan, Guidelines –
Muslim family laws ordinance, 1961, Karachi, a number of examples from the Arab world as Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan & Morocco are noted as well as Iran. Saudi Arabia’s abolition of slavery act (1963) is
also cited.
456
From a booklet produced by the Ayub government on the risks of uncontrolled population growth
which sought to identify the risks to the country’s development as well as dispel misconceptions of the
policy, in The Department of Films and Publications Government of Pakistan, Guidelines – family
planning in Pakistan, Karachi, p. 7.
457
Ayub Khan’s diary entry from 6 September 1966, in Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub
Khan, 1966-1972, Edited and annotated by Craig Baxter, The University Press Dhaka & Oxford
University Press, Dhaka, 2007, p. 5.
124
Ayub’s laments about the nature of the religious opposition were arguably predictable
and emanating from the degree of contested religious and national identity amply
illustrated within the Munir Report on the 1953 Ahmadiyya rioting noted in Chapter
Three.

Ayub’s opposition to Maududi who had rebounded remarkably after the

annulment of his death penalty and the Jama’at-i-Islami (JI) was well founded as the
JI were as keenly opposed to Ayub as he was opposed to them. The JI were
disappointed in his new constitution and its lack of Islamic qualities. 458

Internationally, the 1962 China-India War was a disaster for India as well as
Pakistan. When the Indians had been decisively beaten in the field by the Chinese, the
anti-communist free world rushed to supply weaponry and assistance to the ostensibly
neutral India. Pakistan remained suspicious of the West’s assistance to India and
charged the West with a naiveté in arming India, as the Indians had previously
charged when Pakistan was being armed by the Americans. It is to the American
relationship that this chapter now addresses.

Ayub, the Army and the United States

The importance of the US relationship to Pakistan continued to be a dominant

theme. Ayub was determined to cement his utility to the Americans and gain moral,
political and military support, and aid to bolster the country’s economy and his Army.
As noted in the previous chapter Ayub, the Army and Pakistan had made an
impression upon Dulles, Nixon and Eisenhower before the 1958 coup. Ayub
continued to court the Republicans during the early years of his rule, though the
incoming democratic administration were not so enamoured with the Pakistanis. The
Republicans though maintained their practice of lauding their ostensible Cold War
ally for their martial qualities and Islamic piety, despite some questions over who the
defence materiel would be used against, as well as not venturing significantly into the
politics of Pakistan’s stalled democracy.

458
Kalim Bahadur, The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan, Progressive Books, Lahore, 1978, pp. 102-103 &
The Constitution of the Republic of Pakistan, Government Printer, Karachi, 1962, pp. 95-96.
125
 The approbations of President Eisenhower, the American victor who had
conquered the Germans in Western Europe, was equal to anything Dulles had offered
and equally well appreciated,

In the deepest values of life, we feel with you a very close kinship ... We have always
admired the courage .... of the Pakistan people, and have respected them because of
their religious and spiritual devotion. Our two countries both believe in human
dignity and the brotherhood of man under God. 459

Eisenhower had also emphasised the role of US military assistance to

Pakistan and how this was contributing to the collective security of the free
world. 460 Ayub attuned to the US strategic focus on communism continued to
highlight Pakistan’s strategic value to the US. During Ayub’s 1961 visit to the US and
perhaps cognisant of a lessened US interest in Pakistan after the administration
change stated to the Americans that “...any country that falters in Asia, for even a year
or two, will find itself subjugated to communism”. 461

Officers of the time knew very well that apart from Ayub’s concern at the
communist aspects of the Rawalpindi conspiracy that his real motives were not any
fear of communism. The Indian threat remained paramount even after Khrushchev’s
threats over Pakistan’s role in the U2 incident. 462 A senior Pakistani Army
representative at the CENTO meetings noted that the regional members of the pact,
including Pakistan, were indeed in the pact to see how much arms they could extract
from the Americans, to qualitatively and quantitatively improve their armed forces. 463
As noted in the previous chapter the Americans were beginning to be more
circumspect about Pakistan’s claims of prowess and fidelity as a Cold War ally while
the Pakistani’s were disturbed by aspects of American assistance.

459
Contained within, ‘Remarks at the Citizens’ Welcome for President Eisenhower, the Polo Field,
Karachi, December 8, 1959, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, January 1 to
December 31, 1959, Office of the Federal Register National Archives and Records Service,
Washington, 1960, p. 302.
460
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ibid, pp. 816-818.
461
Public Papers, John. F. Kennedy, Ayub speech, p. 503.
462
Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1999, p. 36.
The U2 aircraft had commenced its flight from a Pakistani airfield near Peshawar.
463
M. Attiqur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, p. 90.
126
 Ayub maintained an acute awareness of the Army’s deficiencies of arms and
equipment, and in this regard had been pivotal in countering American USMAAG
attempts to shape all the Pakistani capabilities into a purely defensive role. The
Americans had also tried to direct the Pakistanis to scrap their older equipment with
one Officer noting that Ayub had prevented the Army suffering a relative loss in
strength with India. 464 How the Americans coordinated the USMAAG agreement was
objectionable to sovereignty minded Officers with it being especially galling at how
American aid came with intolerable pre-conditions. Apart from American equipment
being subject to technical inspections by US technicians, Officers complained that,

...the US military assistance advisory group ... Officers interpreted ‘assistance’ and
‘advice’ to include supervision of Pakistani chain of command... 465

As the Americans had to report to the Pentagon upon the distribution of

military aid, they believed this entitled them to also control the deployment of
Pakistan Army Officers returning from US courses, with this sometimes leading to
tense confrontations. 466 The Commander of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps noted
how the Americans had even tried to reclaim spares such as armoured recovery
vehicles and armament that they believed Pakistan were not using during the 1965
War. 467 It was at this time that the Army, allegedly starved of equipment by the
Americans, had shipped in equipment and ammunition from other countries.

The US had stopped the provision of arms and materiel to Pakistan

progressively after the Rann of Kutch encounter with India and then completely after
the 1965 War. 468 The American embargo was not relaxed until 1966 by which time
Pakistan had begun to acquire weapons from North Korea, the Soviets and

464
September ‘65, pp. 20-21.
465
Maj. Gen. Shaukat Riza (Retd), The Pakistan Army – War 1965, Services Book Club, Lahore, 1984,
p. 47.
466
Riza, The Pakistan Army – War 1965, p. 47.
467
Brig. (Retd) M.A.H. Ansari, Co. (Retd) Mahboob Elahi & Brig. (Retd) M.H. Hyrdri, History of the
Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps: 1947-1992, Ordnance History Cell, Pakistan, 1993, p. 145 & p. 151.
468
History of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps: 1947-1992, p. 154. The ‘Rann of Kutch’ is a small
area between Mumbai and Karachi covered for much of the year in brackish water with little economic
or other interest that was nevertheless the site of a small tactical success in April 1965 for the Pakistan
Army in pushing out a small Indian force. The real significance of the small campaign was the
inordinately high sense of superiority of Pakistan arms over the Indian arms it gave the Pakistanis and
the belief in a demoralised and inept Indian military which had only just three years previously been
also trumped by the Chinese.
127
Czechoslovakia, paradoxically while Pakistan was still a member of SEATO. 469
Pakistan’s intent on making an alliance with the Chinese was greeted with incredulity
by Pakistan’s Western allies in SEATO who thought the Pakistanis “either extremely
naive or extremely duplicitous in its pursuit of Chinese support against India”. 470

After the 1965 War with India, Pakistani indignation at the failure of the US to
assist them in their war against India resulted in Pakistan—despite their membership
of SEATO—seeking Chinese military assistance. Ayub never recovered from the
1965 War or his belief in American perfidy despite the explicitly clear terms of the
SEATO alliance making it clear that Pakistan could not expect any US assistance
where the aggressor was not communist. The next section of this chapter addresses
the impact of developments in Army culture, training and doctrine.

Ayub Khan was determined in creating the best-equipped military Pakistan

could attain within the limits of its own meagre resources, as well as leveraging off
American and Western largesse. Ayub maintained throughout his rule that India posed
an enduring threat to the state of Pakistan. The discourse on the ‘Indian threat’ largely
revolved around Pakistani indignation of India refusing to commit to the United
Nations plebiscite on Kashmir. Pakistan continued in its failure to grasp the realist
imperatives of India in declining to negotiate Kashmir in terms acceptable to Pakistan.
The notion of the threat from India persisted in the Pakistani imagination as a real
threat and was reproduced as an inherent element of strategic security concerns held
by the Army. The threat was maintained as not simply a threat from an adjoining
country harbouring irredentist claims, though this was also an aspect of fear in the
Pakistani strategic culture. The fear remained couched in terms of the Hindu threat to
the territorial and ideological integrity of Muslim Pakistan. This factor, noted in
Chapter Two as having developed from the Army’s outset, remained a thread of
continuity in the strategic culture of the Army in which Islam remained as identity
with their notions of martial race to the Army in their quest to deter and defeat any
challenges from the Indian hegemon.

469
History of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps: 1947-1992, p. 154.
470
Ayub Khan’s diary entry from 2 September 1966, in Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub
Khan, 1966-1972, Edited and annotated by Craig Baxter, The University Press Dhaka & Oxford
University Press, Dhaka, 2007, p. 5 & Damien Marc Fenton, ‘SEATO and the Defence of Southeast
Asia’, unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 2006, pp. 249-250.
128
 On 27 October 1958 Mohammad Musa Khan succeeded Ayub as the second
indigenous Pakistani Commander in Chief of the Army. 471 Musa, a Shiite Hazara born
in Quetta, had joined the British Indian Army in 1926 and had served with many of
the Indian Officers who were to be his contemporaries and adversaries. 472 Musa
though a pious and humane Officer was resented for his perceived subservience to
Ayub with beliefs Ayub had promoted him precisely because of this quality over
much more effective Officers. 473 Lieutenant General Habibullah, his main rival for
the position, had been claimed to be a superior candidate and who was allegedly
disqualified because he would have represented a professional threat to Ayub. 474
Some Officers attributed Ayub’s practice in selecting ‘safe’ generals to have been the
onset of institutionalised nepotism and sycophancy over-riding merit in the selections
of senior Officers for the Army. 475

The promotion of Musa was a disappointment to most of us and was interpreted that
efficiency was not important for promotion only personal loyalty counted. 476

A senior Officer did concede however that Ayub’s practices may have been
derived from the fact that that there remained fears of a reoccurrence of another
Rawalpindi conspiracy.

During the late 1950s there was claimed to be endemic dissatisfaction and
unrest within what was described as the ‘megalomaniacal corps of senior Officers’
who believed themselves to be just as equally qualified to be the Commander in
Chief. 477 Gul claims that suspicion of Officers after the Rawalpindi conspiracy and
the general suspicion of anyone who may deviate from accepted opinion resulted in

471
Mohammad Musa, Jawan to General – Recollections of a Pakistani Soldier, East & West
Publishing, Karachi, 1984, p. 132.
472
Musa, Jawan to General, p. 12.
473
Gul Hassan Khan, Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1993,
p. 134.
474
Interview of Naseerullah, p. 17 & see for instance the claims made by Ali Kuli Khan about Musa’s
appointment, in A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Lt-Gen (Retd) Ali Kuli Khan,
in I. ul-Majeed Seghal, (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5, Karachi, December 2001, pp. 10-11.
475
A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Lt-Gen (Retd) Ali Kuli Khan, in I. ul-
Majeed Seghal (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5, Karachi, December 2001, p. 7.
476
Interview of Zahir Alam Khan, p. 5 & the Adjutant General and former ADC of Auchinleck claims
he was consulted by Ayub upon the merits of Habibullah and Musa and that he informed Ayub that if
he wanted someone independent to choose Habibullah, and if he wanted someone to do what he said to
choose Musa, in Major General S. Shahid Hamid, Early Years of Pakistan – Including the Period from
August, 1947 to 1959, Ferozsons, Karachi, 1993, p. 128.
477
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, pp. 132-133.
129
unwelcome attention from military intelligence. 478 An Officer in the ISI at Lahore
during this period noted that Ayub did rely on the ISI for internal and external
intelligence concerning anti-state activities. 479

Gul notes that in removing potential threats from the Army Ayub had disposed
of both the mediocre and the talented. Ayub’s action inspired a fear of the ‘purge’
within the Officer Corps that also contributed to what was described as a “blind
obedience bordering on obsequiousness”. 480

Doctrinal and training developments in the Army

The Pakistan Army in its continuing strategic focus upon India in 1958
established a cell to study and prepare indigenous tactical doctrines more attuned to
their terrain, conditions and personnel. The plan featured the introduction of
‘empowered’ leadership at the lower levels of command, in a move designed to create
a culture of initiative amongst Officers fearful of undertaking any alternative outside
of the chain of command. 481 The plan seemingly contradicts what Gul argued was
occurring in the Army during the time, though other opinions also claimed the time to
be one of immense productivity and initiative; for example, the Director of Weapons
and Equipment at GHQ from 1959 to 1961 believed the period following Ayub’s
martial law to be characterised by productivity and in the streamlining of the Army to
make it more mobile and hard-hitting. 482

The idea of irregular warfare being a potential solution to Pakistan’s security

problems was mooted in a theory put forward in 1960. The theory drew on an older
study arguing Afghanistan and Pakistan’s security lay in their fusion, by force if
necessary. 483 The theory maintained that Mao’s guerrilla warfare theories when
combined with the ‘Jihad’ tradition of Pakistan’s martial races would prove to be an
irregular warfare advantage. 484 The consideration of such innovations was outside the
ken of previous British Indian tactical and strategic notions though that Army had

478
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, pp. 153-154
479
Jahan Dad Khan, Pakistan Leadership Challenges, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1999, p. 31.
480
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, p. 133.
481
Memoirs of Lt. Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, p. 160.
482
Amjad Ali Khan, September ’65: Before and After, Ferozsons Ltd, Lahore, 1977, pp. 20-21.
483
W.K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia,
Oxford University Press, London, 1950, pp. 299-300.
484
Aslam Siddiqi, Pakistan Seeks Security, Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd, Lahore, 1960, pp. 52-66.
130
established an excellence in aspects of irregular warfare in combating the tribesmen of
the Anglo-Afghan Frontier. The nomination of such theories though was interesting in
their dilution of Jihad tactics of the tribals with Maoist insurgency practices.

The Army was moving towards the adoption of a number of irregular warfare
solutions that were not dissimilar and drew upon tribal methods and Islamic
motivation. Before the 1965 War Musa sought to inspire morale and unite the Army
through Islamic motivation in the Army and a focus on the martial themes of Islamic
injunctions upon warfare. Musa instituted the distribution of specially marked
versions of the Quran that highlighted the warfare and motivational portions of the
Quran referring to martyrdom, integrity and justice prominently. 485 Musa believed the
Pakistan Army had performed well in the 1965 War and that much of this success had
been attributable to the Army’s Islamic culture that he had sought to indoctrinate it
with.

In the war, the real motivating force for the superb performance of the armed forces
was their spirit of Jihad. In the final analysis, Islam and the concept of ‘Ghazi’ or
‘Shaheed’ provides the motivation, the esprit de corps, the élan and the fighting spirit
for the Pakistani soldiers and this concept must be nurtured and preserved. 486

The Army had in response to the war inducted a number of strategies to

exploit the martial ardour of the tribals called to Jihad. The British Indian Army
pedigree did not prevent the Pakistani adoption of more expedient and indigenous
forms of military culture and development during this period. Such developments
were borne of a frustration and desperation in their inability to acquire needed
materiel from the Americans. The increasing recognition of the necessity of
capitalising on indigenous elements in Pakistan that could become force multipliers
was also becoming the subject of serious consideration.

The very nature of unconventional warfare being developed by the Army was
typified in the ‘Operation Gibraltar’ plan prior to the 1965 War and discussed more
fully in the next section. During the war Musa approved a number of irregular warfare
formations including: a Mujahidin volunteer company, tribal Lashkars from the
NWFP, and a Lashkar of Hur tribesmen under the guidance of their spiritual leader

485
My Version, pp. 97-98.
486
My Version, p. 111.
131
the Pir of Pagara. 487 These formations were diverse in their ethnic as well as
sectarian differences with the tribal Lashkars and Hur tribesmen’s organisation
representing different traditions of Islamic adherence and cultural difference. The
Army utilised Islam as a means to motivate all of these irregulars with calls to Jihad
and raising the hue and cry of ‘Islam in danger’ in its presentation of the Indian
enemy in religious terms as the Hindu aggressor.

Additional material and doctrinal assistance was provided by the Chinese. The
Chinese offered weapons and defence materiel including the establishment of a small
arms factory in East Pakistan. 488 The Chinese also provided strategic guidance to
Pakistan and advised the Pakistanis that their war establishment was too cumbersome
and fatally based on the British pattern, which needed rectification. 489 The Chinese
suggested that the Pakistanis endeavour to defeat any invading Indian Forces by
attrition. 490 The Pakistani’s, concerned with their lack of ‘strategic depth’, believed
success was intimately tied to being able to deliver a decisive counter-attack. The
Army believed that conducting a defence near their borders was a great risk as
Pakistan was a geographically narrow country with its major cities near its borders. 491
It was felt that for the enemy to move west of Lahore would mean the loss of the
country. Though not taking up these Chinese suggestions on non-traditional warfare,
the Pakistanis, as noted, strove to develop their own unorthodox methods of strategy
and fighting. 492

The Army also looked to expand its recruitment base and its training as
another means of addressing the comparative numerical strengths with the Indian
Army, which was a realistic imperative, though incongruent with supposed Islamic
superiority in overcoming great odds.

During the 1960s the Army attempted to diversify recruitment of ethnic

groups into the Army, which was still dominated by Punjabi and Pakhtun personnel.
An Adjutant General endeavoured to recruit more Sindhis and Balochis into the Army

487
M. Attiqur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005, p. 122. &
My Version, pp. 72-83.
488
History of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps: 1947-1992, p. 154.
489
Muhammad Musa, My Version: India-Pakistan War 1965, Wajidalis, Lahore, 1983, p. 27.
490
My Version, p. 27.
491
My Version, p. 28.
492
My Version, p. 28.
132
through a publicity campaign in these provinces. The campaign failed due to what
was claimed to be cultural problems with Balochi tribal elders, recruits not wishing to
be posted out of their province and refusals to undertake basic induction requirements
such as medical examinations. 493 It was claimed the recruitment of Bengali Officers
was hampered by language problems and poor physical standards. 494 Such alleged
problems with the Bengali Officers may also have been derived from martial race
perceptions on the allegedly inadequate physiognomy of the Bengali, and the fact that
the Bengali’s were proudly attached to Bengali culture and language. Nevertheless in
the period up to 1965 there were three East Pakistani infantry units raised, with more
being raised after 1966.

Training within the Army during the late 1950s and early 1960s largely
remained the same as that for the period prior to 1958. Officers graduating in 1959
noted the hard physical training and austerity of the PMA, with their training
continuing during the Muslim holy period of Ramadan. 495 Ayub Khan delivered a
passing out parade address at the PMA in 1959 and drew attention to the necessity of
its austerity. Ayub encouraged the graduating Officers to live as unostentatious
Muslims and warned them how greed and corruption had led to the stagnation of the
Muslim world. 496 While Ayub encouraged Officers to live a Muslim lifestyle,
Officers such as Musharraf who entered the PMA in 1961 noted the continuance of
some British Indian Army traditions including offensive ones such as ‘ragging’. 497

Officers of this generation discovered other continuities with the British Indian
Army with an Officer of the 12th Baloch in 1964 noting he was taught by a Subedar
whose father had trained his own father thirty years previously in the British Indian

493
Back to the Pavilion, p. 115.
494
A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Brig. (Retd) Zahir Alam Khan, in I. ul-
Majeed Seghal (Ed), Defence Journal, at, http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/april/zakhan.htm,
accessed 2 October 2012, p. 6.
495
A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Lt-Gen (Retd) Ali Kuli Khan, in I. ul-
Majeed Seghal, (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5, Karachi, December 2001, p. 9. Remembering
Our Warriors – Interview of Brig. (Retd) Saeed Ismat’, in I. ul-Majeed Seghal (Ed), Defence Journal,
Vol. 5, No. 4, November 2001, p. 14. A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Interview of Maj.
Gen (Retd) Hidayatullah Khan Niazi’, in I. ul-Majeed Seghal (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1,
August 2001, pp. 11-12.
496
‘Address to Pakistan Military Academy’ – passing out parade at the Pakistan Military Academy
Kakul on April 25, 1959, in Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements – Volume
1: October 1958-June 1959, publisher [nfd], 1961.
497
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Free Press, New York, 2006, pp. 40-41.
133
Army. 498 Some compared the Army unfavourably with the period 1947 to 1958, and
argued that the Army had been ruined by the implementation of martial law and the
assumption of power of Ayub.

Officers with this perspective argued that after 1958 loyalty to Ayub became
of primary importance while training came second. Some claimed that examinations
in the Army had become simple rote tests of memory rather than the application of
acquired knowledge. 499 Some also alleged there developed a propensity for senior
Officers to indulge in wealth accumulation. Such practices were clearly incongruent
with the statements made by Ayub in the previous paragraph on the necessity of
austerity. 500 There were other complaints about how the training infrastructure was
organised, with arguments that the Staff College be moved to the Punjab or Sindh.
Students could then familiarise themselves in the terrain they believed they would
actually fight India in, instead of the wilds of Baluchistan where the British had
instructed them on Western conflicts. 501 Other problems existed with inter-arm
rivalry, personality cults and patronage networks believed to have been endemic. 502
With Yahya Khan succeeding Musa in September 1966 it was believed the
management of the Army began to improve. 503

Training and deployment opportunities became more varied after the 1965
War with Officers undertaking training in the USSR and deployments to the Arab
world, such as Jordan, as well as UN missions to such locations as the Congo. 504
Officers in the technical branches also gained experience from their involvement in
the great civil engineering schemes of the day with the Army Field Engineers working
on the Indus Valley Road (Karakorum Highway). Officers also benefitted from
Chinese technical assistance as well as calling upon the skills of those remaining
veterans of the 14th Army road building operations in Burma. 505 Domestically, the
Army continued to perform in such variegated tasks as locust destruction, anti-

498
Interview of Ali Kuli Khan pp. 13-15.
499
Interview of Zahir Alam Khan, p. 7.
500
Interview of Tajammal, p. 13.
501
Interview of Hidyatullah, p. 21
502
Interview with Naseerullah, p. 12.
503
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, p. 295.
504
Interview with Kuli Khan, p. 21 & Naseerullah, p. 17. Interview with Zahir Alam Khan, p. 11.
History of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Corps: 1947-199, p. 147.
505
Interview with Hidyatullah, p. 12.
134
smuggling operations and cyclone relief—such as that provided in East Pakistan
during December 1970. 506 The Army had also been involved in hostilities with
Afghanistan and India. The next section considers the hostilities that Pakistan was
involved in during this period.

The Army, Islam and Conflict

Between 1958 and 1970 the Army continued to respond to border incursions
on its eastern and western borders. Afghan propaganda and incursions kept the
relationship between the two countries in an atmosphere of foment with the Afghans
attempting on one occasion to infiltrate a Lashkar of 25,000 men into Pakistan. 507
These operations were fraught with military and political sensitivities in dealing with
tribal populations inhabiting both sides of the border with tenuous links to national
identity and sensitive attitudes to religion. These Pakistan Army operations were
conducted deftly to instil a sense of awe so as to maintain relations with tribesmen on
the Pakistan side of the border. 508

Pakistan primed the 1965 War by initiating an insurgency action in Kashmir

code named ‘Operation Gibraltar’. In brief the plan in keeping with the Army’s
developing Islamic ethos was predicated on notions of pan-Islamic religious unity and
Muslim nationalist aspirations. Operation Gibraltar’s ultimate success resided on a
spontaneous uprising of Muslims in the Vale of Kashmir who would eject the Indians
and await liberation from their Muslim brethren in the Pakistan Army. Pakistani
intelligence on the Kashmiri Muslims’ propensity to actually undertake such an
uprising was disastrously miscalculated. The Kashmiri’s neither participated in any
large measure and furthermore had on some occasion’s actually notified Indian
Security Forces of the presence of Pakistan Army Special Forces in the Vale.

The reality between what had been achieved by Gibraltar and the stirring
Islamically themed announcements by Ayub were striking. Statements by Ayub in a
public broadcast on 1 September 1965 claimed that a popular revolt was underway in
Kashmir led by local freedom fighters. Ayub stated that India could hardly blame any

506
Interview with Naseerullah, p. 17.
507
Back to the Pavilion, p. 105.
508
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, pp. 105-106.
135
Pakistani from wanting to go to the assistance of their Muslim brethren. 509 Operation
Gibraltar and the following military response ‘Operation Grand Slam’ resulted in a
stalemate with India and a legion of recriminations within the Army for the indifferent
outcome.

One Special Forces Officer claimed that the covert operation designed to
inspire the revolt had—even before its commencement—been suspected as a potential
fiasco greater than the ‘Bay of Pigs’. 510 Musa, the Commander in Chief, was the
primary target of blame. Musa in turn blamed Bhutto the Foreign Minister and Ayub
the President, for not heeding the Army’s warnings on the lack of preparation, or
propensity for the operation to inspire a generalised revolt against the Indians. 511

The policy-makers thwarted the professional assessment and advice on a matter

having grave military implications because of their miscalculation of the politico-
strategic situation and over-ambitiousness of a few individuals involved in the
decision making who were prompted by their desire to achieve some quick and
spectacular results in Kashmir by clandestine operations. 512

Gul claimed that Musa and the Chief of General Staff Sher Bahadur had
viewed Gibraltar from its inception negatively,

...as a bastard child born of the liaison between the foreign office and HQ 12
Division. 513

The Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was blamed by Musa and a number
of other Officers for Bhutto’s hawkish attitudes and his misconstrued views upon the
morale of the Indian Armed Forces after earlier Pakistani successes against the
Indians in the Rann of Kutch encounter. The plans for the Gibraltar operation had
been cloaked in secrecy with no written records being kept by the Kashmir cell
established by the government to oversight the strategy. Gul, who had been DMO at

509
Speeches and Statements – Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan President of Pakistan, Volume –
VIII, July 1965 – June 1966, pp. 20-21.
510
The ‘Bay of Pigs’ here refers to the April 17, 1961 failed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles. The
operation like ‘Gibraltar’ was meant to be covert and reliant on its success by the anticipated support of
the Cuban population and elements of the military & Zahir Alam Khan, Op.Cit, p. 11.
511
My Version, p. 4 & Musa’s account is corroborated by the DMO Gul Hassan who though highly
critical of Musa’s leadership did note that Musa had sent ‘unambiguous’ advice to the government that
the Indians would not limit their retaliation to Kashmir alone, in Gul Hassan Khan, Op.Cit, p. 181.
512
My Version, p. 4.
513
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, p. 223.
136
the time, acknowledged his own role in the debacle, and noted that the entire
operation been hampered by the confusion created by multiple levels of secrecy and
information silos. As a result confusion reigned as to the levels of estimated assistance
that could be expected from Kashmir, as well as the amount of communications and
preparatory work that had been undertaken. Gul acerbically noted,

...continuous references to Sheikh Abdullah, Mirza Afzal Beg and a host of other
leaders from the Indian held part of Kashmir. This raised my morale because I gained
the impression that the civilian members of the cell and these leaders were
inseparable chums! And that the latter were more than anxious to rid their part of
Kashmir of the Indian Army with some help from us... 514

The opinions on Operation Gibraltar and the 1965 War that it prompted were
divisive and riven with bitter claims and counter-claims of fault and alleged
responsibility. Some of the material written shortly after the war though was still
saturated with jingoism celebrating the superiority of Muslims and the innate martial
qualities of the Pakistan soldier. Ayub himself had claimed in a public broadcast that
the war had caused a resurgence of Islamic faith in Pakistan. Ayub the modernist
Muslim announced that the blood of Pakistan’s martyred soldiers had purified the
country by their sacrifice against the Indian aggressors. 515 For the East Pakistanis all
the war indicated was a confirmation of their second-class status in the country with
the Army’s strategic notion of their defence lying in the West.

Officers persisted in their belief that the Indians had been comprehensively
beaten and that this victory was obtained precisely because of the allegedly Islamic
qualities of Pakistan’s Army. Some drew analogies between the Pakistan Army and
the Islamic Ghazi’s of antiquity in battles in which the prophet had overcome hordes
of the enemies of the faith in the battles of Uhud and Badr. 516 More vitriolically, some
extolled the superiority of the martyrdom seeking Pakistani soldiers compared to the
allegedly ‘rum’ soaked, whining Indian soldier, and played upon bigoted caricatures

514
Memoirs of Lt-Gen. Gul Hassan Khan, pp. 115-116.
515
Speeches and Statements, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan, Volume-
VIII, July 1965 – June 1966, Din Muhaamed Press, Karachi, 1966, p. 66 & p. 156.
516
A.H. Amin, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Maj. (Retd) Raja Nadir Pervaiz, in I. ul-
Majeed Seghal (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3, Karachi, October, 2002, p. 17.
Brig. (Retd) Gulzar Ahmed, Pakistan Meets Indian Challenge, Al Mukhtar Publishers, Rawalpindi,
1967, p. 7.
137
of the Hindu being inspired by the teachings of the ancient Hindu strategist
Kautilya. 517

Many though thought less jingoistically and believed that Pakistan should
have won the war comprehensively and attributed blame to the personality cult that
Ayub had allowed the Army to become invested with. 518 Others were disgusted with
what they claimed was the Army’s culture of narcissism in awarding what one
described as bogus service awards in the aftermath of the war. Such views were
prominent amongst that group of Officers who considered Ayub’s impact on the
Army to have been entirely damaging to its professional development. 519

Operation Gibraltar had initially caught the Indians off guard until they had
become aware of armed intruders entering Kashmir. The Indians had received
accounts of “...armed men approaching Kashmiri herdsmen and offering them money
for information on deployment of Indian troops”. 520 While the operation itself
ultimately failed, the intruders did manage to recruit some locals as guides and to
achieve some level of disruption but did not succeed in causing the rebellion on which
the success of the operation hinged. 521 In this the Army had significantly
miscalculated both the appeal and ability of the Kashmiri’s to undertake such an
Islamically martial revolt.

Others more pragmatically saw cultural lessons in the outcome of the war.
One regimental history in rebutting the jingoism prevalent during and immediately
after the war argued that the war had in fact dispelled the myth prevalent at the time
about the alleged lack of fighting prowess of the Hindu Army. These myths and
perceptions of the Hindu soldier were redolent with martial race stereotypes and had
been rampant in the Army, and in Pakistan more generally, immediately after the
Pakistani success in the Rann of Kutch encounter.

517
Pakistan Meets Indian Challenge p. 50. Kautilya’s major work was the Arthasastra a treatise on
statecraft that is often provided as an example of the allegedly inherent treachery of the Hindu, while
Beg argued the nature of Hinduism was essentially intolerant and full of hatred for those who were not
Hindu, Aziz Beg, Pakistan Faces India, Babur and Amer Publications, Lahore, 1966, p. 194.
518
Zahir Alam Khan, p. 8, Muhammd Taj, p. 13 & Naseerullah, p. 16.
519
Interview with Tajammal, p. 18.
520
R.D. Pradhan, 1965 War The Inside Story – Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan’s Diary of India-
Pakistan War, Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi, 2007, p. 5 & 1965 War The Inside Story, p. 5.
521
Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul, The Untold Story, Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1967, p. 472.
138
 The bubble of a myth was pricked, that Indian soldiers were incapable of fighting,
that they had no staying power, and so on. This had been inculcated among the
younger lot, both Officers and me, by those who should have known better. Once in
combat they received a rude jolt, and realised that the Indians were as good or as bad
as anybody, and that both sides made the same blunders in combat. 522

Conclusion

Ayub’s rule had increased the divisions between West and East Pakistan in his
natural assumption of the locus of political and military control in West Pakistan by
West Pakistanis. Ayub also wrongly assumed his program of basic democracies, an
allegedly revolutionary system of controlled democracy, to be the solution to
Pakistan’s political woes. Ayub also miscalculated the countries preference for
parliamentary democracy over presidential rule. Despite the amount of politicking and
explanation in which Ayub would promote his progressive policies he failed to
prevent a religious and social backlash to his programs aimed at addressing problems
such as population growth and the inequities of Islamic family law. Ayub had also
significantly miscalculated Indian responses to what the Pakistani’s hoped would be a
localised response to Operation Gibraltar. Ayub would not recover from the
indifferent result obtained by the Army in the war.

The next conflict the Pakistan Army was involved in was in the eastern wing
of their country where the increasing clamour for representation and rights would
develop into a full-blown movement for independence. While the next chapter shall
address the war and its impact upon Pakistan and its Army, it can be briefly recounted
that the war, which was by its nature initially a civil war, was one of unremitting
brutality. Both sides committed atrocities, but the ideological slant with which the
Army would undertake the operations in East Pakistan would invest the conflict with
religious and ethnic undertones. The Army would commit prodigious human rights
violations and mass murder that their detractors would label a form of genocide. The
martial race persona of the Officers involved was a significant element in the debacle
that followed where these same Officers believed they were engaged in a Jihad to
save the unity of Pakistan. These Officers believed they were engaged in the

522
M.Y. Effendi, Punjab Cavalry: Evolution, Role, Organisation and Tactical Doctrine, 11 Cavalry
(Frontier Force) 1849-1971, Oxford University Press, 2007, Karachi, p. 198.
139
eradication of Indian inspired fifth columnists amongst the Hindu population as well
as the pernicious effects of Hinduism. These Officers would also view their fellow
East Pakistani Muslim citizens as having been tainted by these elements and that they
were all now somehow failed Muslims.

140
141
 Chapter V War, Islam and Dismemberment:
1970–1971

We believed that we were men of destiny, selected for special service in defence of Pakistan –

a country created in the name of Islam. We became convinced of our indestructibility...

523
(Major General Arshad Qureshi on beliefs of the Army in East Pakistan in 1970)

Introduction

In response to the West Pakistani denial of Mujib—the leader of the Awami

League in being able to take up his position as Prime Minister in the wake of his
decisive election win—agitation in the East against the West Pakistani government
increased dramatically. East Pakistani grievances were expressed through the East
Pakistani media and Free Bangladesh media in Calcutta, which seemed particularly
adept at demoralising the West Pakistani troops. The flying of Bangladeshi flags as
well as the isolation of West Pakistani officials and military in Pakistan was enacted
to impress upon the West Pakistani authorities the extent of East Pakistani grievances.
The Army sought to counter this via an unsuccessful media campaign that sought to
emphasise the alleged Indian, communist and atheist identities of the East Pakistanis
as opposed to the Islam for which the state had been formed and which the Army still
guarded.

The aim of this chapter through four sections is to explore how Islam became
the centrepiece of the contested struggle to maintain control of East Pakistan, through
its mobilisation by the Pakistani military government and its connection to the
motivation of its Army in East Pakistan. Initially, some background to the conflict
between West and East Pakistan shall be provided. Secondly, the chapter will
examine the role of Islam in the Army during the late 1960s, leading into the conflict
with a particular focus on how Officers had begun to exhibit a more pronounced

523
Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 111.
142
Islamic consciousness. This will be undertaken by considering, amongst other
evidence, Army Officers submissions to Army publications in which they argued for a
greater role for Islam in the Army. Additionally, the comparisons some of these
Officers made upon the religious nature of the Pakistan Army and Israel Defence
Force(IDF) and their respective strategic environments shall be examined.

The comparisons between Israel and the Army are important in

comprehending how Army Officers had internalised beliefs in regard to how the
Army could exploit its Islamic character as they claimed the Jewish state had
comparatively undertaken with Judaism within the Israel Defence Forces. The
comparison with the IDF was driven by the realisation that Israel like Pakistan had
been formed as a religious homeland and a belief that without a contemporary Islamic
model the Pakistan Army could derive lessons from the Israeli’s in how to integrate
religion into the military and use it as a model for cohesive nationalisation and
sacralisation of the military. The third section will explore how certain elements of the
Army became involved in unmitigated brutality and how some of these brutal
responses sought justification in religious terms. Lastly, an examination of how
religion was invoked in the conflict in an attempt to attribute blame for the
secessionist Awami League on Indian influence. Attention is also given to what the
benefits to the Army were in having their role Islamised in opposition to the alleged
Hindu, socialist and atheist nature of the East Pakistani opposition.

Sheikh Mujibur ur-Rehman the leader of the Awami League in opposition to

the military government of Ayub and then Yahya Khan sought greater representation
and provincial autonomy for the East Pakistanis who had a distinct culture and
ethnicity. East Pakistan also had a substantial Hindu population. Mujibur desired the
cessation of ethnic and institutional discrimination of East Pakistanis and in 1970 he
had won a populous following. Mujibur’s popularity was translated into electoral
success in 1970 and he should have been invited to form a government. 524 Ultimately
Yahya Khan’s decision not to invite Mujibur to form a government triggered a
popular uprising that protested yet a further example of West Pakistani discrimination.

524
Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League emerged as the single largest party in the Pakistan National
Assembly followed by Bhutto’s PPP. Pakistan 1947-97 – 50 Years of Independence, p.154.
143
 The civil unrest in turn prompted a West Pakistan security response that
involved the Army. Large numbers of civil police and other government functionaries
who were East Pakistani had left their posts out of fear of the West Pakistani response
and or support for Mujibur. The Army had been placed into a difficult position and
while its own Commander, Yahya Khan, prevaricated and Bhutto remained
obstinately against allowing Mujibur to form an Awami League dominated
government that he could not control, the Army was taking on the invidious
complexion of an Army of occupation. Furthermore, though placed into this position,
not all Army Officers viewed the East Pakistan situation as one simplistically
involving treacherous elements challenging the writ of the national government that
were inspired by revolutionaries and the Indians.

Some Officers disagreed with what they perceived as Yahya’s and the
governments poorly conceived and inept management of the situation. Internally these
differences were exhibited in response to ignoring specific orders in East Pakistan, or
by refusal to undertake duty in East Pakistan, or ultimately by resigning rather than
executing duties they saw as incongruent to their roles as professional Army
Officers. 525

East Pakistan, Islam and Identity

The belief that the situation in East Pakistan was escalating into a Civil War
also affected the willingness of Officers to deploy to East Pakistan. Other senior
Officers of the time saw such actions by Officers as derelictions of duty that were
incrementally contributing to the emboldening of the Bengalis. 526 Some were
evolving or already maintained theories that involved blame of the East Pakistan
Hindu minority for politically influencing the minds of the Bengalis against Pakistan.
Still others frankly concluded that Islam with the vast cultural difference between the
two wings had simply never been enough to hold the two wings together. Such

525
The Officer commanding East Pakistan, Lt. General Yaqub Khan refused Yahya’s orders to fire at
the mobs and resigned his command, in Brig. (Retd) A.R. Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan: Image and
Reality’, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1996, pp. 184-185; former Pakistan Commander in Chief Musa
described Yaqub as ‘morally courageous’, in General Mohammad Musa, ‘Jawan to General –
Recollections of a Pakistani Soldier’, East & West Publishing, Karachi, 1984 & Interview of
Muhammad Taj, p. 14.
526
Memoirs of Lt. Gen. Gul Hassan Khan’, OUP, Karachi, 1993.

144
opinions were arguably correct as there were stark differences between the West and
East culturally, linguistically and religiously. There were doubts held as to whether
Islam in a manner acceptable to both wings of the country would ever be an effective
bond. Such attitudes were supported by some research undertaken during the mid-
1960s. This research suggested West Pakistanis’ believed Islam to be a far more
effective bond than did their fellow East Pakistani citizens. 527 The research had shown
Islam to be an effective unifying bond only if it could be proven that ‘Islam was in
danger’. 528 Islam in danger in context of the 1947–48 Kashmir War was analysed in
Chapter Two.

To Mujibur and the East Pakistanis the issue was not about whether or not
they were good Muslims, but rather why they were treated as second-class citizens by
their numerically inferior fellow Muslim citizens from the western wing of the
country. Decades of suffering, low representation in the government, especially so in
the Officer Corps of the Army, as well as a belief that the West was profiting from
such Eastern based industries as Jute were issues of abiding importance to the East
Pakistanis who had never had an effective voice in government. East Pakistani lack of
representation had been near total with the successive military governments of Ayub
and now Yahya effectively closing out any political representation. These concerns,
together with a perceived lack of response to the cataclysmic 1970 cyclones that had
ravaged East Pakistan, had deeply embittered the East Pakistanis. These grievances
had exponentially increased the popularity of Mujibur’s Awami Party, and their claim
for autonomy and parity. The East Pakistani political agenda was articulated in their
‘Six Point’ claim that was rejected outright by the Yahya regime as a device to break
up the nation. 529

Mujibur and the Awami League had described their grievances in the language
of politics and their lack of representation. The West Pakistani’s who refused to

527
Khalid Bin Sayeed, ‘Islam and National Integration in Pakistan’, in South Asian Politics and
Religion, (Ed) Donald Eugene Smith, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966, pp.
408-409.
528
Zahir Alam Khan, Ibid, pp. 15-16, & Khalid Bin Sayeed, ‘Islam and National Integration in
Pakistan’, pp. 408-409.
529
The ‘Six Points’ included demands for provincial taxation and revenue collection as East Pakistan
had always felt discriminated against in regard to profits for their Jute industry, and while seeing
Defence and Foreign Affairs as a Federal responsibility desired their own militia or paramilitary force,
an aspect perhaps of East Pakistani rejections of West Pakistani notions that the East’s defence lies in
the West.
145
acknowledge Mujibur’s decisive win in the 1970 election and who were determined to
maintain West Pakistani dominance over the East came to increasingly describe
Mujibur’s and the East Pakistani protest as one driven by a melange of interests
opposed to West Pakistan and critically opposed to Islam. The West Pakistanis
harried by East Pakistani domestic propaganda domestically as well as that from East
Pakistani patriots in Calcutta had no effective response. The Bengali propaganda had
also contributed to the development of West Pakistani Officers keen mistrust of their
East Pakistani Army colleagues. This mistrust would prove to be fatal in many
instances. Some Special Force Officers had wanted to take the fight to the Indians
very early on in the disturbances, to strike back at the ‘Hindu’ inspired propaganda.
One Officer suggested an innovative raid on Calcutta to attack the support network of
the East Pakistani separatists. 530 The Pakistanis, seeking a decisive response to quash
the East Pakistani unrest, decided on a major operation in March 1971 to eradicate the
anti-state forces. This initiative was to be known as Operation Searchlight.

Concerns over the reliability of the East Pakistani members of the Army led
the Army hierarchy to institute the separation of Bengali personnel into small
contingents. The Army effectively created West Pakistani defence perimeters within
compounds shared by personnel from both wings. 531 The eventual forcible
disarmament of their Bengali colleagues led to pitched battles being fought within
unit lines, with Bengali prisoners who had served in some units since their inception
being taken out and shot by their erstwhile colleagues. 532 Other Bengali members of
the Pakistan Army fled and joined the Mukhti Bahini and subsequently planned and
executed offensive operations against their former comrades. 533

Internationally, the West Pakistanis had become isolated with the Indians
successfully drawing world attention to the burgeoning refugee crisis that the conflict
was generating. India was subject to a massive refugee influx of East Pakistanis
fleeing the Army and their Islamist paramilitaries. Though the West Pakistani’s held
out hopes for either their Chinese or American friends to aid them it was never really

530
Interview of Zahir Alam Khan, pp. 11-12.
531
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, pp. 259-262.
532
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998
533
Rafiqul Islam, A Tale of Millions – Bangladesh Liberation War-1971, Chittaranjan Press, Dhaka,
1974.
146
forthcoming though American warships did reach the Bay of Bengal ostensibly to
protect American interests.

Signficant figures in the US Administration, though hopeful that Pakistan

would retain its unity, were bemused by the attitude General Yahya Khan and his
clique of Generals persisted with. Kissinger, who had come to acknowledge the
American faults in US perceptions of Pakistan as an ally against communist
aggression, had not appreciated the extent of the Pakistani focus on India. 534 As
Pakistan approached war with India in 1971 the Americans were surprised at the
arrogance and naiveté of the Pakistan Army Generals’ belief in their martial race
identity and Islamic exceptionalism to rescue them from their developing debacle,

When I asked as tactfully as I could about the Indian advantage in numbers and
equipment, Yahya and his colleagues answered with bravado about the historic
superiority of Moslem fighters. 535

India who was at the forefront of the crisis and sheltering the refugees exiting
East Pakistan continued to lay much blame on American decisions. The Indians
blamed the US for accelerating tensions on the subcontinent and by their provision of
arms to Pakistan between 1954 and 1965. Indira Gandhi, echoing Morgenthau’s
critical 1956 appraisal of Pakistan noted in Chapter Three, opined that the only thing
holding Pakistan together was its hatred for India. 536

The widespread reporting of the brutalities that the Army was perpetrating
including by one of its own former army journalists had effectively made the Army a
pariah in world opinion. In executing Operation Searchlight the Army undertook a
number of highly criticised operations aimed at neutralising the East Pakistani
opposition. India eventually provided support to these opposition separatists and
created logistics and training cells in India close to the East Pakistani frontier. The
Army apart from its in-direct suppression operations had included the
disproportionate use of lethal force including tanks firing against the lightly or
unarmed Bengalis in Dhaka. The Army had also initiated a number of unconventional
warfare tactics in seeking to extinguish the East Pakistani opposition.

534
Henry Kissinger, The White House Years, Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1979, p. 845.
535
The White House Years, p. 861
536
The White House Years, p. 881
147
 These tactics had their foundations in those asymmetric operations noted in
the previous chapter in which the Army had organised Mujahidin units and the
recruitment of the Hur tribesmen in West Pakistan. The Army now co-opted members
of the Chakma Hill tribes in the south of East Pakistan to inform upon rebel activity.
Similarly, the Army also employed Mizo tribesmen who had recently moved to the
Pakistani side of the border after their militant activity against the Indians, and
organised three battalions of these tribesmen to help clear the hill tracts area. 537 The
next section of this chapter examines how Islam was itself gaining political
momentum in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s.

The invocation of Islam by Yahya for an Army consisting nearly entirely of

Muslims had not been unusual in itself, though the contested nature of this conflict,
which in the first instance was against fellow Muslims, made it so.

Islam and the Army from the mid-60’s to the cusp of War

The emergence of Islam as something more than a discrete identity factor in

the Army had been emerging and was already apparent in internal Pakistan Army
publications written by mid-ranking Officers from the mid-1960s onward. Notions of
faith enabling Muslim soldiers to overcome disparities in comparative strength of
their adversaries, as well as materiel and technological strength were common themes
in Army publications. These themes were popularly discussed in the Pakistan Army
Journal. This was despite some Officers having viewed the 1965 War as an
opportunity to dispense with the notion of inherent Pakistan Islamic martial race
superiority over the inferior Hindu Indian. 538

Such introspection was not apparently widespread as many Officers persisted

in believing in and promoting the idea that Islamic piety as well as their martial
heritage provided them an authentic comparative advantage over their adversaries.
The Army, some argued, required a robust Islamic indoctrination process through

537
Interview with Zahir Alam Khan, pp. 14-15. Zahir writes that the alliance with Mizo’s was
dependent upon the supply of food and medical support. Zahir notes that he employed one Mizo
battalion with an SSG company to clear Mahalchari and Khagrachari up to the border with India.
538
Though COAS Musa had made notable comments about ‘Martial spirit’ and Islam in the wake of
the 1965 war others saw it differently. See for instance the comments made upon the myth of Indian
martial incapability being ‘pricked’, in M.Y. Effendi, Punjab Cavalry: Evolution, Role, Organisation
and Tactical Doctrine, 11 Cavalry (Frontier Force) 1849-1971, Oxford University Press, 2007,
Karachi, p. 198.
148
Officer Corps and enlisted personnel alike. This process required a dedicated and
methodical process of indoctrination by Maulvis and committed Army Officers pious
in outlook and qualified in religious instruction. It was argued that this would
revolutionise the Army and allow it to break free of its colonial rituals, pompous
British Indian baggage, practices, and pageantry that had shackled the innate
advantages of an Islamic inheritance that Pakistani Army Officers had not totally
exploited to date. 539

Officers also considered other methodologies from beyond the Muslim world
and cited examples from the communist bloc similar to those arguments made in 1960
and discussed in the previous chapter combining Maoist and South Asian Jihadist
traditions. In this way some Officers cited the tactical and strategic success of the
Vietcong during this time against the US as worthy of careful analysis. However,
these publications contained a significant emphasis on how religious and ideological
indoctrination could contribute to success. Whether the focus on religious themes in
these journals was the impact of the mounting protests at West Pakistani dominance
by autonomy minded East Pakistanis is unknown. Equally unknown is whether this
was part of the nascent Army process of psychological and ideological inoculation
against the rampant secularism and socialism they associated with the Awami League.
The Army’s interests in analysing the role of religion in establishing an effective
Army were diverse and from unexpected quarters.

Arguing the ideological similarities as being valid, some Officers during the
period drew analogies between the Pakistan Army and the Israeli Defence Forces
(IDF). A number of Officers devoted considerable thought on these matters delving
significantly below shallow comparisons, arguing that Israel had similarly been
formed in the late 1940s as a religious homeland and attained only after great
tribulations. Officers argued that Pakistan—like Israel—was outnumbered and
encircled by enemies. Though Officers acknowledged that Islam was clearly the
superior of the three Abrahamic religions in being the final revealed message, there
were valuable lessons to be drawn from the Jewish state and its acknowledged

539
Major Masud Akhtar Zaigham, ‘Of Nerves and Guts’, in Maj. Moinuddin (Ed), Pakistan Army
Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 1, June, 1971, pp. 46.
149
military successes. Equally important were the Israeli successes in utilising the IDF as
a vehicle for national cohesion.

These analogies in some ways were not unusual as Pakistan’s revered poet,
philosopher and politician Sir Muhammad Iqbal—credited with having inspired the
idea of Pakistan before his death in 1938— had drawn comparisons between the
plight of South Asia’s Muslims and the Israelites. Iqbal had written on such
comparisons in comparing the tribulations of the Muslims and Jews in his poem the
Rumuz-e Bekhudi (Mysteries of Selflessness) in which Iqbal’s focus on the endurance
of the Jews in the diaspora was used as an example that South Asia’s Muslims could
usefully follow. 540

Officers interested in this analogy between 1967 and 1971 likewise believed
the lessons to be gleaned from how the Jews had established their nation against
tremendous opposition were comparable to the tribulations experienced by the
Muslims during partition. 541

It is detestable for us to find anything in common with this mischievous state but we
must admit that we are similarly small in area and badly outnumbered in men and
material by our most implacable potential enemy. 542

The analysis by these Officers clearly identified the fact that while the state
of Israel was repugnant there could be aspects of its strategic organisation and means
of defence of clear use to Pakistan. The analogies between the two states, especially
the belief in being surrounded by enemies bent on their annihilation, forged by
initially poorly equipped armies against more numerous enemies had in fact generated
martial myths of similar context in both states. Similar to Pakistan’s objectives, the
Israeli myths worked to maintain awareness of their heroism, sacrifice, loss and grief
from Israel’s existential 1948 War and subsequent conflicts. 543 This was precisely

540
Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion – Pakistan as a Political Idea, Hurst & Company, London, 2013, p. 116.
541
See for example articles in the Pakistan Army Journal in 1970-71 that reflect this interest, Maj.
Moinuddin, ‘The Lesson – An analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War’, in (Ed) Maj. Moinuddin,
Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. XII, No. 1, June, 1970, GHQ Rawalpindi, pp. 17-33, Major Masud Akhtar
Zaigham, ‘Of Nerves and Guts’, in Maj. Moinuddin (Ed), Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 1,
June, 1971.
542
Maj. Anis Ahmed, ‘A case for an Integrated Defence Force in Pakistan’, in (Ed) Maj. S.A.A. Abidi,
Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2, December 1967, GHQ, Rawalpinid, p. 6.
543
Martin Van Creveld, The Land of Blood and Honey – The Rise of Modern Israel, Thomas Dunne
Books, New York, 2010, p. 66.
150
how the Army’s strategic culture also inducted religion, grief and loss into their
narratives of the lost opportunities of their own 1948 Kashmir War. The effective
management and conflation of religion and martial myth by the Israeli’s in creating a
national identity was a particularly appealing aspect of the Israeli example.

Some saw an almost miraculous nature in the Israeli successes of the late
1960s with this being attributed to the skilful Israeli management of religion and
national ideology. One Officer argued in a case study of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War
that the foundations of Israeli success were certainly attributable to their effective
religious and ideological indoctrination. This Officer argued that Pakistan could learn
from the Israeli example and that Pakistan had been negligent in having not exploited
the ‘martial’ advantages of Islam. The Officer concluded that this advantage could be
reclaimed by the Army embarking on a more authentic religious indoctrination of the
Officer Corps and Army than had occurred to date. 544

The consideration by these Officers of the IDF which had experienced

celebrated victories and success during the 1960s is instructive on how these Officers
sought comparison in a state formed as a religious homeland like themselves. These
Officers in comparison had not chosen the example of their larger Chinese or
ostensible American allies whose martial myths were significantly different.
Communist China was ideologically atheist and America’s frontier myths had little
similarity to Pakistan except for some comparisons with the North West Frontier.
Ironically, in another similarity between the two nations formed as religious
homelands was the mimicry and devotion of Pakistani Officers for their British Indian
military heritage. Eminent Israeli Army Officers such as Haim Laskov who had
founded Israel’s first Officer School also shared an admiration for British Army
culture. 545

The Pakistanis, in lamenting their tardiness in attempting to combine religious

and ideological motivation to their Officer Corps in comparison to the Israelis, were
perhaps referring to the role of the IDF rabbinate the ha-rabbanut ha-tzeva’it formed
in 1949. Ben Gurion had envisioned the rabbinate undertaking a role in the unification

544
The Lesson – An analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War’, in (Ed) Maj. Moinuddin, Pakistan Army
Journal, Vol. XII, No. 1, June, 1970, GHQ Rawalpindi, p. 30.
545
Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars – War and Peace in the Middle East, Arms and Armour
Press, 1982, p. 48 & p. 63.
151
and homogenising of the newly formed Israeli society. 546 Israel formed from a single
religious group like Pakistan possessed a population of different sectarian divides as
well as different languages and traditions, also like Pakistan.

The Israelis had emphasised in their early wars the religious themes inherent
in their efforts to seize and protect the holy land gifted to them by Yahweh. The
Israeli successes in the 1956 Suez campaign—as noted in Chapter Three so abhorred
by Pakistanis—were for the Israelis particularly redolent with ‘religious-mythical’
connotations. 547 Israel had also undertaken a process to unify the disparate linguistic,
religious and ethnic divide of their country by a dedicated process of education and
the promotion of the unifying aspects of Hebrew for which the IDF was especially
prominent. 548 The Pakistan Army had not followed a similar inclusionary path as had
the IDF and the Army remained dominated by the Punjabis and to a lesser degree the
Pakhtuns. The efforts devoted to instituting Urdu as their national language had
collided with the cultural preferences of the Bengalis for their own language and
culture.

While Hebrew resonated with the antiquity of Jewish claims to the holy land,
Urdu could not fulfil the same holy space for Pakistan. While Urdu had been the
language of the British Indian Army it was not even native to West Pakistan. Arabic
also could not be pressed into service as the national language, despite some who had
suggested this, as it was simply not achievable in terms of trying to re-educate the
teeming populations of East and West Pakistan in a language that was foreign to
them, except in its recital of the Quran. Essentially the example of Israel and the IDF
were a model of what could be achieved if a new state founded on religion could
effectively harness religion as an integrational and motivational force for military and
state notwithstanding the significant differences between the two states.

Pakistan continued to experience troubles in promoting Urdu beyond the

upper echelons of military and civil service in the western wing of the country where
a number of distinct regional and sub-regional languages existed. Pakistan, in

546
Stuart A. Cohen, ‘From Integration to Segregation: The Role of Religion in the IDF’, Armed Forces
and Society, Vol. 25, No. 3, Spring 1999, pp. 388-389.
547
Martin Van Creveld, The Land of Blood and Honey – The Rise of Modern Israel, Thomas Dunne
Books, New York, 2010, p. 123.
548
Martin Van Creveld, The Land of Blood and Honey – The Rise of Modern Israel, Thomas Dunne
Books, New York, 2010, pp. 92-93.
152
promulgating Urdu like Indonesia had in promoting Bahasa Indonesia, was attempting
to introduce a language foreign to a large number of its citizens. Pakistan was also
hamstrung by the fact that its exercise in uniting the people by religion and language
was being undertaken within a much larger and less educated population than Israel
had to manage. The Indonesians, like Pakistan and its Punjabi domination, had
problems securing unity driven from a Javanese powerbase. The Indonesians also had
ruminated on their identity and whether they should pursue a doctrinaire form of
Islam or become a secular state with guaranteed freedom of religion. 549 Religion had
initially only been considered by the Indonesian revolutionary forces “as a factor
contributing to the morale and morals of individual fighting men”. 550 Indonesia
though independent continued to suffer from internecine rebellions and autonomy
movements that the Army was perennially seeking to subdue. 551

Pakistani Officers in the late 1960s and on the cusp of the war with India
were attempting to inculcate a sense of awe and appreciation of great military leaders
from within the Islamic world. Acknowledging their indigenous and Islamic
characters they desired valid models from the Islamic world instead of the Western
military figures and battles that had been the standard in both the British Indian and
early post-partition period of the Army. Such arguments were in effect attempting to
normalise the celebration of indigenous and Islamic military leaders as the
benchmarks of a Pakistani and Islamic tradition instead of Frederick the Great,
Wellington (who had regrettably obtained a great deal of his renown from his actions
in the subcontinent) and others who had achieved their fame in crushing colonial
adversaries.

Instead of these Western figures the Muslim Officers of this generation called
for the genuine celebration of examples from the history of renowned Muslim military
leaders such as Saladin. Officers also argued renewed attention as to why these
Muslim leaders were successful and reminded their audience of the importance of
attention to the qualities and spiritual details of true Mujahids and their achievements
in the early battles of the Muslim community. These were not glib or crank references

549
Howard M. Federspiel, ‘The Military and Islam in Sukarno’s Indonesia’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 46,
No. 3 (Autumn 1973), p. 409.
550
Federspiel, ‘The Military and Islam in Sukarno’s Indonesia’, p. 410.
551
Ken Conboy, Kopassus: Inside Indonesia’s Special Forces, Equinox Publishing, Indonesia, 2006.
153
to Islam. The arguments of these Officers were presented passionately and
authentically within the pages of Army journals urging their fellow Officers to a
return to the pure ways of Islam and to cleanse the Army of cultural and military
practices that were un-Islamic. 552

These articles published in 1971 on the cusp of the greatest debacle to befall
the Pakistan Army, were almost prescient in their calls for a greater inclusion of Islam
into the Army. These same arguments would attain an unprecedented popularity
amongst other middle ranking Officers less than one year after their publication. The
East Pakistan debacle would be blamed on the slavish debaucheries and thoroughly
un-Islamic practices of Yahya Khan and his coterie of alleged sycophants populating
Pakistan Army headquarters and command positions in East Pakistan.

It must be noted that not all Officers desired the thorough Islamisation of the
Army but rather expressed opinions along a continuum of moderate to significant
inclusion of Islam into the Army. Islam seemed to be becoming more relevant to the
culture of the Officer Corps amid some of the regional and global development
inherent in the resurgence of Islamic consciousness during the late 1960s and rapidly
increasing into the 1970s. 553

Aiding this Islamic consciousness was perhaps the earlier mentioned

phenomena of the younger generation of Officers born from 1947 onwards having,
unlike their predecessors, not lived in close proximity to large non-Muslim
communities. These Officers who had never served in a multi-ethnic and a religiously
diverse army as the British Indian Army and the post-independence Indian Army,
lacked a familiarity of who the Indians were. These Officers had been fed on a near
continuous rhetoric of Muslim exceptionalism, as well as patently jingoistic, biased
and bigoted literature denigrating Indian military prowess and India more generally.
The Indian Army itself could not indulge in such practices as it consisted of Sikh,
Hindu and Muslim elements.
552
Col. Sirdar Hasan Mahmud, ‘Tradition – a spur or a shackle’ and Brig. Sardar Ahmad, ‘The Shining
Star of Islam’, in (Ed) Maj.Muhammad Tariq, Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 2, December
1971, GHQ, Rawalpindi.
553
For a discussion of the Islamic resurgence globally from the late 1960s to early new millennium as
well as Pakistan during the 1970s to 1988 see, Gilles Keppel, Jihad – The Trail of Political Islam, I.B.
Tauris, London, 2002, pp. 98-105 and especially, Sohail Mahmood, Islamic Fundamentalism in
Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1995.

154
 It was because the Army was so thoroughly infused with a sense of religious
righteousness, in the belief they were preventing the disintegration of the country
from non-Muslim and allegedly Indian inspired fellow citizens engaged in an
unmitigated savagery that in some respects was justified on religious grounds. It is to
this subject that the final section of this chapter now moves.

Brutality and righteousness in the 1971 conflict

It became apparent that some in the Army were determined to eradicate all
opposition from Mujibur’s Awami League and other perceived enemies, in a conflict
that had become coloured by notions of religion and ethnicity. Officers noted how
they had received orders to kill any Hindus they found and that they were assisted in
these killings by members of the paramilitary al-Badr and al-Shams groups of the
radicalised East Pakistan branch of Maududi’s Jama’at-i-Islami. 554
Officers acknowledged the imperialistic nature of the Army in East Pakistan
and noted the differences and foreign customs of the Bengali’s. The majority of senior
ranks hailed from the Punjab and North West Frontier Province where the
geographical, ethnic and religious dissimilarities were strikingly different. There was
a stark contrast from the riverine environment of East Pakistan where the population
were physiologically different as well. Numerous Officers manifested a striking level
of bigotry towards the Bengalis, and a profound contempt for Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman the Chairman of the Awami League. Many Officers believed Mujibur to be
nothing more than a stooge of the Indians, while the large native Hindu population
were considered fifth columnists in the employ of the Indians. 555 Like earlier
generations of Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers serving in areas beyond Dacca they
thought of themselves as being immersed in a foreign country. The most bigoted
thought the country to be populated by a contemptuous population of aliens speaking

554
One of these Officers was Colonel Nadir Ali, ‘A khaki dissident on 1971’, in Viewpoint, Online
Issue No. 129, November 2012, http://www.viewpointonline.net/a-khaki-dissident-on-1971.html,
accessed, 6 December 2012. Ali had served under Z.A Khan (also a source in this chapter) in the
Special Forces and with Khan took part in the arrest of Mujib & Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard
of the Islamic Revolution – The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan, University of California Press, Los
Angeles, 1994, pp. 168-169. The Jama’at-I-Islami was opposed to the nationalist aspirations of the
Bengalis, which they saw as anathema to the more important objective of creating an Islamic state. Al-
Badr and Al-Shams units were paramilitary units recruited from the local Bihari population to
counteract the impact of the Mukhti Bahini they were oversighted by the Pakistan Army.
555
Brig. (R) Karrar Ali Agha, Witness to Carnage, Salman Art Press (Pvt) Ltd, Lahore, 2011, p. 28.
155
a foreign language and practising a suspect form of Islam influenced by
overfamiliarity with and close proximity to Hindu culture. 556

An Army public relations Officer considered the West Pakistani soldiers to

have been thoroughly imbued with these notions of their own superiority. The Officer
furthermore noted the Army believed themselves to be the invincible and righteous
soldiers of Islam reflecting the attitude noted in the epigraph that began this chapter.
Such beliefs had made nearly any act legitimate if it served to rout out the rebels, and
could be justified as preserving the unity of the sacred Muslim homeland of
Pakistan. 557 The murder of Bengalis including the mass killings at such places as
Santahar in North East Pakistan, were in this way justified as legitimate retribution for
the killing of West Pakistani soldiers committed by mutineering East Pakistani
personnel and the Mukhti Bahini. 558 The Bengalis had become perceived as simply
mutinous and their claims for autonomy as Indian inspired. In this way the Muslim
Bengalis had been transformed in the view of the West Pakistani soldiers as
somewhat akin to Hindus, and hence worthy targets of punishment. 559

The level of ferocity and violence meted out to the Bengalis though was far
from the nature of a righteously waged Jihad. The mass rape of Bengali women and
their abduction to be kept as sex slaves in army camps by some Officers was simple
criminal barbarism, and completely outside the ken of any Sunnah on the waging of
Islamic warfare. These behaviours were also abhorred by other West Pakistanis who
came to know of them. Anguish was felt at the irreligious brutality meted out on

556
Brig. (R) Karrar Ali Agha, Witness to Carnage, Salman Art Press (Pvt) Ltd, Lahore, 2011, p. 15 &
Brig. A.R. Siddiqi, The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1996, p.
188.
557
Brig. A.R. Siddiqi, The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1996, p.
197.

558
Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 104.
559
See the interviews of one hundred and twenty three retired Pakistan Army personnel who had
served in East Pakistan conducted in 2004, in Yasmin Saikia, ‘Listening to the Enemy: The Pakistan
Army, Violence and Memories of 1971’, in Beyond Crisis – Re-evaluating Pakistan, (Ed) Naveeda
Khan, Routledge, New Delhi, 2010, p. 192. & See interviews of East Bengali refugees upon the rapes,
murders and other atrocities committed by the Al-Badr, Razakars and Pakistan Army in Amita Malik,
The Year of the Vulture, Orient Longmans, New Delhi, 1972.

156
fellow Muslims by an allegedly Muslim Army. 560 In many other ways the Army’s
actions placed itself beyond the pale of a religiously conducted Jihad with behaviours
not recorded in any Islamic guide to warfare. The atrocities committed by the Army
during the course of the conflict had also included its use of unconventional methods,
such as the distribution of poisoned food and booby-trapped weapons. The Special
Forces (SSG) had also used child agents to identify rebels. A large proportion of these
tactics initiated by the SSG contradicted the precepts of Jihad as well as the laws of
the Geneva Convention. 561 Similarly, the Army’s recruitment of three Battalions of
Mizo tribesmen in the southeast to fight the Mukti Bahini was an unconventional
tactic that manipulated a marginalised community to achieve aims the tribesmen had
little stake in and which was ultimately detrimental to their future.

The brutality of the Army response and its ethnic dimensions was evident to
many foreign expatriates in East Pakistan. Many witnessed an array of brutalities
committed by the Army from the systematic burning of Hindu villages to young
Bengali women and men being abducted by the Army. 562 The breakdown in
governance caused by the conflict and the Army’s targeting of Hindus also acted as an
impetus to other sectarian and communal violence. Some Muslim Bengalis
expediently took the opportunity to settle old grievances with Hindu neighbours and
themselves engaged in the looting of Hindu properties and the rape and murder of
Hindu women. 563

The atrocities being perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and their paramilitary
right wing Muslim allies such as the Al-Badr units became the subject of a compelling
literature of atrocity by the Indian and international press. Fatally for the Pakistan
Army, the contemporary coverage of their atrocities was reported by one of their own
journalists who had been tasked with presenting the Army response in East Pakistan
as a legitimate response to an Indian inspired and supported insurgency. Anthony
Mascarenhas, a Pakistani of Goan descent, was deployed to the Army’s 16th Division
Headquarters and accompanied detachments on ‘kill and burn’ missions.
560
Yasmin Saikia, ‘Listening to the Enemy’, pp. 192-196 & V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers – An
Islamic Journey, Andre Deutsch, London, 1981, p. 115.
561
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, p. 306-307.
562
Viggo Olsen, Daktar – Diplomat in Bangladesh, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI, USA,
1973, pp. 258-284
563
Olsen, Daktar – Diplomat in Bangladesh, pp. 258-284.
157
Mascarenhas, who subsequently sought and was provided asylum in Britain, claimed
senior Pakistani Officers had stated they would cleanse East Pakistan of secessionists.
These Officers swore that this objective would be lethally achieved even if it required
the Army to kill two million people and rule the province for the next thirty years as a
colony. 564 The brutality attested to was equated with genocide and the systematic rape
of Bengali women even thought by some Bengalis to be some measure to alter the
genetic pattern of East Pakistan. 565 This merciless aspect seemed to exponentially
increase as the conflict expanded and eventually encompassed the war with India.

The nature of the hostilities leading up to the outbreak of war in 1971 had
taken on this merciless hue redolent with religious and ethnic tones. Officers viewed
the ‘Mukhti Bahini’ not as freedom fighters but as tainted Muslims, as traitors trained
by the Hindu Indians to break up the Muslim homeland. West Pakistani Officers
inherently believing the Army to be the ideological saviour of the state thought these
‘traitors’ needed to be dealt with mercilessly, “They were faceless, cruel and
merciless; they were therefore accordingly dealt with”. 566 It is to how the war came to
be cast in such religious terms that the final section of this chapter now addresses.

War and the invocation of Jihad

During the course of the war the Army high command had sought to define the
war in terms of a religious conflict between those who were righteous Muslims and
were fighting for the united Pakistan of ‘Jinnah’s’ vision against those who were
defined by their repudiation of the unity of the state and their alleged connections to
India. An Indian diplomat in Karachi in April 1971 noted how the Pakistanis had tried
to conflate the two evils of ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Judaism’ during the conflict. Lal noted
that the Pakistani Urdu print media sought to equate India with Israel in order to
generate support for Pakistan against India in the Muslim world. 567 Lal also noted that
the press during this time in Karachi seemed to be engaged in an organised hate

564
Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangladesh, Vikas Publishing, New Delhi, 1971, pp. 18-26 &
pp. 116-117.
565
Rafiqul Islam, A Tale of Millions – Bangladesh Liberation War-1971, Chitaranjan Saha, Dhaka,
1974 p. 165.
566
Interview of Pervaiz, p. 20
567
Kishori Lal, The Mind of Pakistan, Manas Publications, New Delhi, 2010, p. 61.
158
campaign. Lal argued these actions specifically sought to use Islam in the creation of
a popular ‘mass hysteria’ against a Hindu India. 568

Such campaigns to stir up hate against the Hindus and India were arguably no
doubt influential on a number of Pakistan Army Officers being deployed to East
Pakistan. Many of these same Officers then experienced the impact of the East
Pakistani propaganda campaign noted earlier in the chapter. The combined impact of
both forms of propaganda perhaps induced some of these Officers to engage in the
brutality discussed in the previous section.

Some did not need much convincing about the religious nature of the conflict
and that the conflict was one in which ‘Islam was in danger’ from a Hindu India.
Again both the anti-Indian propaganda noted by Lal as well as that directed on the
Pakistan Army Officers deployed to East Pakistan were influential. Such emotional
announcements not only effectively cast the conflict as one involving religion, but
also acted to motivate retaliation arguably in the guise of Jihad. A Director of Staff
duties at Army headquarters provided an example of the heightened emotional
responses to the conflict imbibed by a number of the West Pakistani Officers,

One got the impression that ... East Pakistan would slip into Indian hands. I am a
devoted Muslim and I became very emotional. I sent a personal letter ... to Chief of
Staff Eastern Command ... saying we would not let East Pakistan become Spain in the
History of Islam. 569

This same Officer—with a fine appreciation for Islamic military history—

once deployed to East Pakistan noted that he endeavoured to inspire his troops with
selections of appropriate Quranic Ayat. This Officer incited his soldiers to bravery
with examples of Muslim military feats and prowess from the history of Islam. He
particularly sought to incite his soldiers by the examples where Muslims had
triumphed against overwhelming odds, as that was precisely the situation the Army
found itself in, amidst a hostile population and a numerically superior Indian Army. 570

The use of Islam was curious in some respects, in that General Yahya Khan a
hard drinking, womanising soldier of the old British Indian School mould was

568
Kishori Lal, The Mind of Pakistan, Manas Publications, New Delhi, 2010, p. 66.
569
Interview of Tajammal, p. 19.
570
Interview with Tajammal, pp. 20-21.
159
reportedly far from being a devout Muslim. Yahya nevertheless perceived the benefits
of actively promoting the invocation of Islam. Yahya cast the Army as soldiers of
Islam conducting a holy campaign against Bengali traitors and their infidel Indian
allies who sought to rent the country asunder. 571 The soldiers were encouraged to
identify themselves as fighting in the tradition of true Mujahids against Kafir
insurgents and a Kafir Indian army. 572

In the case of the Pakistan Army the call to Islam was pragmatic. The call to
Islam resonated with the ideological basis of the formation of the state as well as the
Army having already taken on the mantle as the ideological defenders of the Muslim
state, which the Bengalis now sought to dismantle. Yahya had arguably also
responded to the calls of right wing religious leaders in the call for the ‘Jihad’ against
the rebels and the Indians. 573

The religious nature of the war was emphasised with the Army co-opting the
right wing Jama’at-e-Islami (JI) and it’s Al-Badr and Al-Shams volunteer corps to
help the Army suppress the Mukti Bahini and other perceived enemies of Pakistan. 574
Abul Ala Maududi, the leader of the JI, appealed to the ‘genuine Muslims’ in
Bangladesh to help the Army identify and detain the Awami Leaguers. Maududi’s call
to ‘genuine Muslims’ was an influential voice to an Army already assured of its
martial and Islamic attributes by its leaders’ announcements. With the memory of the
1965 War and 1948 Kashmir Jihad formative experiences for numerous senior
Officers who were not moulded firmly in the culture of the old British Indian Army.
Maududi had further fed the Hindu conspiracy claims by having claimed the
Bangladesh freedom movement was orchestrated by an array of the enemies of Islam
that included Hindus, communists, and atheists, as well as agents of Western
imperialism and Jews to eliminate Muslims. 575

571
Rafiqul Islam, A Tale of Millions – Bangladesh Liberation War – 1971, Chittaranjan Saha, Dhaka,
1974, pp. 262-263.
572
Brig. (R) A.R. Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality’, Vanguard Books, Lahore,
1996, p. 197.
573
See ‘A Desperate Man Hesitates in the face of War’, in The Economist, Vol. 241, No. 6673,
December 4, 1971, p. 33 & ‘India V. Pakistan’, The Economist, Vol. 241, No. 6694, December 11,
1971, pp. 21-22.
574
Rafiqul Islam, A Tale of Millions – Bangladesh Liberation War – 1971, Chittaranjan Saha, Dhaka,
1974, pp. ix-x.
575
Kalim Bahadur, ‘The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan’, Progessive Books, Lahore, 1978, pp. 132-133.

160
 Conspiracies in the Pakistan Army were not lightly dismissed even such all-
encompassing ones as that proposed by Maududi. The ‘Hindu myth’ of an
irreconcilable Hindu India with the aim of re-absorbing Pakistan into its vastness was
accepted by a large proportion of that first generation of Pakistani Officers as well as
those in training between 1947 and 1951 noted in Chapter Two. Some of these same
Officers—as well as ones such as Arshad Qureshi influenced as a youth in the 1947
Jihad and quoted in the epigraph beginning this chapter—were now senior Officers in
the Army. Many of these had joined the Army precisely to smite India and prevent its
anti-Islamic designs on Pakistan. In this regard the announcement of conspiracies
against Islam, even if consisting of a doubtfully tremendous array of conspirators
engaged in an unlikely alliance, was not necessarily dismissed. The subsequent
actions of Maududi’s JI paramilitaries and elements of the Pakistan Army also attest
to the unfortunate credence given to such conspiracies by those under the sway of a
significant theologian such as Maududi and the Jihadist calls by its own leaders. 576

The demonisation of Bengalis, both Hindu and Muslim, was amplified by

Maududi characterising all those in rebellion against the state as having suffered from
the pernicious and degenerative affects imparted by Hindu professors and Hinduised
Bengali literature. 577 The Bengali love for their culture—be it Muslim or Hindu—and
for such luminaries as Rabindranath Tagore had always been viewed suspiciously by
right wing Islamists in West Pakistan who believed East Pakistani culture was
thoroughly compromised by Hindu elements. Furthermore, the nationalist and
socialist nature of Sheikh Mujibur’s platform for greater autonomy for East Pakistan
was also inherently repugnant to the JI due to it being inimical to the growth of an
Islamic state in Pakistan. 578 On a visit to East Pakistan Tufayl Muhammad, the acting
Amir of JI, had been more specific in legitimising violence in his call for those true
Muslims to not delay in killing all those involved in the revolt against the
government. 579 Major General Qureshi lauded the support provided to the Army of

576
A Bengali who had been a member of the Pakistan Army and subsequently joined the Mukhti
Bahini noted that the lethal effect of the Al-Badar and Al-Shams Brigades coordinated by Major
General Rao Farman Ali were perhaps worse than the Pakistan Army, Rafiqul Islam, A Tale of Millions
– Bangladesh Liberation War – 1971, Chittaranjan Saha, Dhaka, 1974, p. 223.
577
Kalim Bahadur, ‘The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan’, Progessive Books, Lahore, 1978, p. 133.
578
Ayed Riaz Ahmed, Maulana Maududi and the Islamic State, Peoples Publishing House, Lahore,
1976, p. 102.
579
Kalim Bahadur, ‘The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan’, Progessive Books, Lahore, 1978, p. 133.
161
these paramilitary Islamist groups influenced by the JI who he noted would have gone
to their graves in the name of Islam if the Army had not surrendered. 580

The alleged ideological failing of the East Pakistanis declaimed by JI religious

leaders sealed their position as being complicit stooges of India, Hindus and
unbelievers, especially so in light of Mujibur’s arrest for his involvement in what was
called the Agartala conspiracy. 581 In the eyes of the Pakistani High Command
Mujibur and his Awami League Party’s socialist rhetoric together with the Hindu
population constituted a large suspect population of individuals opposed to the
continuance of Pakistan as the sacred Muslim homeland of South Asia.

As a result it was perhaps entirely understandable that at the beginning of the

East Pakistan campaign General Niazi, the commander in East Pakistan, had taken up
the religious theme enthusiastically by quoting from the Quran, Sunnah and history of
Islam in his motivational talks and haranguing of the troops. 582 Niazi exalted in true
martial race parlance the superiority of the West Pakistani soldier and his ability to
overcome enemies many times superior in number. 583 At one level this was a tactic of
expediency in trying to motivate an army in a ‘foreign’ environment while it was also
perhaps indicative of a nascent Islamic consciousness discussed earlier in this chapter
becoming more apparent in the Army.

The Army had also extended its wartime Islamism to captured Indian soldiers.
According to one Indian POW Officer the Army enforced religious observance upon
the captured Indian soldiers. Muslim POWs were made to perform their Namaz
(prayers) five times a day, arguably with a view to convince them of Pakistan’s
Islamic credentials and induce them to desert to the Pakistan Army. 584 Such an

580
Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 92.
581
The Agartala conspiracy in which Mujib and others were charged was named after a town just
across the East Pakistani border with India in which he was alleged to have conspired with Indian
authorities upon the secession of East Pakistan.
582
Brig. (R) A.R. Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality’, Vanguard Books, Lahore,
1996, p. 204.
583
Brig. (R) A.R. Siddiqi, ‘The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality’, Vanguard Books, Lahore,
1996, pp. 214-215 & Qureshi refers to this in regard to the impossible numerical odds as well as
geographical odds in trying to defend East Pakistan in Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971
Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 95.
584
Lt. Colonel S.S. Chowdhary, I was a Prisoner of War in Pakistan, Lancer International, New Delhi,
1985, p. 51.
162
outcome would also have served as a significant propaganda coup for the beleaguered
Pakistan Army who was abjectly failing the war of ideas with India.

Upon the entry of the Indian Army into East Pakistan the Pakistan Army was
decisively defeated and surrendered over 90,000 personnel to the Indians despite
claims by its commanders that it would fight to the finish. It is to the aftermath of the
war that the next chapter considers.

Conclusion

This chapter has explained how the Pakistan Army—still led by a generation
largely made up of Officers from the British Indian era or commissioned shortly after
partition—became involved in a conflict where Islam became a core motif in
justifications to ensure East Pakistan remained part of a united Pakistan. The chapter
noted how Islam was employed to galvanise and motivate the Army to view the East
Pakistani claims for autonomy as un-Islamic and even Hindu inspired. The Army,
together with assistance from Islamic right wing militias, engaged in a brutal
suppression of the East Pakistani population in an attempt to retain the unity of the
country. Not all West Pakistani Officers thought this prudent and in fact some
resigned rather than become involved. Equally though, the chapter noted the
heightened Islamic awareness in the Army and that a number of offficers desired a
greater induction of Islam into the Army. Some viewed Israeli successes as linked to
their effective religious indoctrination practices. These Officers saw this as a useful
model for the Pakistan Army that could be more authentically imprinted into the
strategic culture of the Army.

The next chapter examines the aftermath of the war and the strategic shock
delivered to the Army by the defeat and the reasons the Army saw as contributing to
its defeat. The chapter analyses how a number of Officers in the wake of the defeat
viewed Yahya’s and the high command’s call to Jihad and other Islamic
pronouncements as in-authentic and the high command to have contributed to the
defeat by virtue of their irreligiosity and slavish devotion to Western devices. The
chapter considers these elements within the context of the revitalisation and
resurgence of Islam globally and regionally. In undertaking this, the chapter examines
the brief rule of Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto and the subsequent Islamisation period of
163
General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, and the convergence of this period with significant
events in the Islamic world such as the assertiveness of OPEC, the Iranian revolution
and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

164
165
 Chapter VI Bangladesh, Bhutto, Zia and the
Institutionalisation of Islam: 1971–1988

...the professional soldier in a Muslim army, pursuing the goals of a Muslim state, CANNOT {original

emphasis) become ‘professional’ if in all his activities he does not take on ‘the colour of Allah.

585
(General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq – Foreword to the ‘The Quranic Concept of War’)

Introduction

While the insurrection in East Pakistan had occurred over the course of 1970
and into 1971 the actual war with India lasted barely two and a half weeks. By the
time the war ended the Pakistan Army was left defeated, discredited, humiliated and
generally held culpable for committing genocide on its own population.

Chapter Five noted that during the course of attempting to suppress the
insurrection occurring in East Pakistan, and the subsequent war against India—even
before it was declared—that the Army had used religion to define their enemies. The
Army had also utilised Islam as a means of motivation and as an inducement to right
wing Muslim militias to act in support of the Army. This had effectively acted as a
means of demonising and categorising East Pakistani Bengali Muslim opposition in
the perceptions of many in the Army as being an enemy of Islam. The Army High
Command and right wing religious parties had demonised the East Pakistanis as being
tainted by the allegedly insidious nature of Hindu Indian culture and political
influence, as well as blame also being cast on the large Hindu population. In this way
the East Pakistanis, both Muslim and Hindu, became synonymous with intransigence
and sedition with the Muslim Bengalis being cast as tainted Muslims and so both
became a target for concerted Army violence. 586

585
Brigadier S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, Himalayan Books, New Delhi, 1986, [1976].
586
The Hindu population of East Pakistan was 23 per cent according to a 1951 census, in Ian Talbot,
Pakistan: A Modern History, Hurst & Company, London, 1998, p. 24 & According to Mascarenhas a
Pakistani Journalist attached to the Army in East Pakistan prior to seeking asylum in England, the
Punjabi Officers unceasingly questioned the loyalty of the Bengalis to Islam who they denounced as
Kafirs (ungrateful unbelievers) and Hindus, in Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangladesh, Vikas
Publishing, New Delhi, 1971.

166
 This chapter examines in three sections the period 1971 to 1988. The first
section examines the aftermath of the 1971 War and how the impact of the loss of the
war was a ‘strategic shock’ for the Army that caused it to question both its leadership
and culture. A strategic shock or a strategic surprise may be explained as,

Strategic surprises … are those … events that, if they occur, would make a big
difference to the future, force decision makers to challenge their own assumptions of
how the world works, and require hard choices today. 587

In particular, this chapter notes how a belief emerged that attributed blame for
the loss to a great degree on the moral turpitude of the senior Officer Corps. These
Officers came to be thought of as irreligious and slavish followers of the inherited
culture from the British Indian Army. Some of the dissatisfaction with the senior
Officer Corps had been demonstrated in uncharacteristically boisterous and vocal
behaviour protesting the actions of the Army leadership as well as a number of senior
Officers fearing a mutiny by disaffected more junior Officers.

The second section examines the brief, tumultuous rule of Zulfiqar Bhutto and
his relationship with the Army, and his use of Islam in an attempt to shore up his
power domestically and internationally. The last section examines the rule of General
Mohammed Zia ul-Haq and his eleven-year period of rule over Pakistan as well as his
command of the Army during the same period. This section examines Zia’s
Islamisation project for Pakistan during an intense period of a global resurgence of
Islam that encompassed the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the occupation of
Afghanistan by the Soviet Army, the Islamisation of the Army and his visions of a
grand Islamic alliance. The chapter will also show how this turn towards Islam was
part of a greater resurgence in Islamic identity globally. This desire to inculcate a
more Islamic culture to the Army had already been manifested in the work of a
number of mid-level Officers in the Pakistan Army during the late 1960s and early
1970s noted in the previous chapter.

587
A strategic shock may also be explained as an event that has an important impact on the country
and/or stretches conventional wisdom with fundamental implications, or as Freier explains more
informally, “a game changing event that changes the nature of the game”, Nathan Freier, ‘Known
Unknowns: Unconventional “Strategic Shocks” in Defense Strategy Development’, United States
Strategic Studies Institute, November 2008, http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/,
pp. 4-5.
167
Strategic Shock – the aftermath of the 1971 War

Islam had been called upon as a means of motivation and justification for the
war in East Pakistan, and the loss of the war in 1971 was similarly understood in
terms of religion as the issue of irreligiosity and moral decay and Western vices
allegedly rampant in the high command that were the subject of vehement complaint.

The defeat in 1971 was a thorough shock and unexpected to the population
of West Pakistan who had been led to believe the Army would be victorious. Crowds
furiously expressed their dissatisfaction for Yahya Khan for bringing defeat upon the
nation and losing half the country. 588 The shock of the loss of the East was
compounded by the ceasefire two days later of the hostilities that were occurring in
the West, especially so after Yahya had announced that the war would go on. 589 The
humiliating defeat by India became a national tragedy lamented by the public and
Army alike of West Pakistan. 590

The Officer Corps were traumatised and shocked by the war’s outcome as
well. The aftermath of the war was disastrous for the Army with the Officer Corps in
near revolt with indignation amongst more junior ranks as to how the war had been
conducted. The Army suffered on a number of levels, the reputation and morale of the
Army was grievously affected, while the organisational impact from the loss of
Officers killed and interned amongst the over 90,000 prisoners of war in India. The
tumult and malaise inspired conflicting views upon the role and culture of the Army
and indeed the nature of the Pakistani state now that effectively half of it had been lost
less than twenty-five years from its inception as the sanctuary for South Asia’s
Muslims.

In the search for scapegoats there was an almost immediate attribution of

blame to General Niazi, the Officer commanding the Army in East Pakistan, who was
not allowed to forget that he had sworn to fight to the end. Niazi had told newsmen on
December 13 three days before he surrendered with over 90,000 Army personnel that

588
M. Attiqur Rahman, ‘Back to the Pavilion’, OUP, Karachi, 2005, pp. 187-188 & see this reporting
by the Rawalpindi based correspondent for ‘The Economist’ in The Economist, Vol. 241, No. 6696, p.
27.
589
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998,p. 349.
590
Dervla Murphy, Where the Indus is Young, Arrow Books, London, 1977, pp. 21-22.
168
Dacca would fall only over his dead body. 591 Niazi previously nicknamed ‘Tiger’ in
recognition for his decoration for bravery during the Second World War was now
renamed less flatteringly the ‘Jackal’. 592 The Army though had hardly performed
much better in the west and had in fact suffered a number of grievous setbacks, with
Officers who were in this theatre of operations complaining of how the Army’s plans
were haphazard and undefined. Officers in the west had noted other problems
including poor morale. Some Officers experienced trouble with their unit’s reluctance
to deploy and took additional security precautions in fear of a mutiny. 593

Significant in Officers’ commentaries on the defeat, such as Major General

Qureshi, was the reference to a lack of identity in the Army with many referring to the
lack of Islamic values in public and private conduct of the Officer Corps. 594 Junior
Officers in response had demanded the eradication of un-Islamic practices. Many
Officers demanded that the Messes be declared ‘dry’ and had criticised the social
habits of senior Officers whose behaviour was believed incongruent to a Muslim
state. Within the junior Officer Corps a perception had formed that the failure had
been inextricably linked to these moral failings and the superficial religious adherence
and general irreligiosity of the senior Officers. 595 In this regard it was symbolic of
these beliefs in the Army and with the general public that liquor stores and Yahya’s
own house were burnt down by mobs humiliated by the defeat. 596 Yahya whose
professional abilities were respected by most senior Officers had a poor moral image
with many believing his utterances concerning Islam to be a hypocritical pretence as
he was claimed to be widely known as a notorious lecher and drunk. 597

591
Maj.-Gen. Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 177.
592
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, p. 349.
593
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, p. 335.
594
Maj.-Gen. Hakeen Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 26.
595
Gul Hassan Khan, ‘Memoirs of Lt. General Gul Hassan Khan, OUP, Karachi, 1993, p. 341.
596
Fazal Muqeem Khan, Pakistan’s Crisis in Leadership’, National Book Foundation, Islamabad,
1973, p. 248. Maj. General Qureshi notes that the consumption of alcohol at this point in time though
not Islamic was not as socially unacceptable as it would become in later years, Maj.-Gen. Hakeem
Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford University Press, Karachi,
2002, p. 88.
597
The Report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War, Vanguard, Lahore,
ND, Chapter Twenty Six of the report titled ‘The Moral Aspect’ notes the almost universal belief in the
moral degeneration of the senior army Officers of this period, p. 291.
169
 Yahya Khan stood down after significant pressure from many more junior
officers in the Army and rule of the country was returned to civil society with the
passing of power to the leader of the the Pakistan People’s Party Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
on 20 December 1971. 598 Pakistans demographic and strategic outlook were
significantly altered by the loss of East Pakistan, with the country losing the majority
of its non-Muslim population and Bhutto reorienting Pakistan’s geo-strategic outlook
towards West Asia and the Muslim Middle East for monetary support. 599 Lieutenant
General Gul Hassan Khan was appointed the new Commander in Chief of the Army
on 20 December 1971. The Army, suffering from the impact of the Officers killed
during the insurgency and subsequent war as well as those Officers amongst the
90,000 prisoners of war, had to replenish itself. Many Officers had also been
dismissed from service once Bhutto took power and Gul took over command as an
immediate response to the Army’s poor performance and as casualties of political
infighting.

The impact of the defeat and imprisonment on many on those prisoners of

war incarcerated in India had also induced an epiphany in many Officers. Many
previously tepid Muslims became much more devout with Major General Qureshi
undergoing such an experience during his time with the Pakistani prisoners of war in
Agra Jail. 600

It is important to understand that the perception of moral failure in the Army

in the wake of the defeat and more specifically moral failure of the leadership of the
Army was profound. The failure in the war had produced a significant shock to the
entire edifice of confidence and superiority of the Army, and Officers were anxious to
discover where the fundamental flaw in the Army lay.

To many they attributed it to a belief that senior Officers who led them
during the debacle were slavish followers of Western vices who had in-authentically
made Islamic exhortations during the war more out of expediency than real belief.
These calls for a more authentic Islamic leadership of the Army, which were more
congruent with societal standards of Islam, coincided importantly during a nascent

598
Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords, pp.320-321.
599
Ian Talbot, Pakistan a New History, pp.97-98.
600
Maj.-Gen. Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 211.
170
period of global Islamic resurgence. Significantly, the Army was concerned that its
stability had been irreparably damaged from the outcome of the war with the
complaints against the senior Officer Corps at risk of developing into a rebellion by
more junior Officers.

The acrimony within the Army had been palpable with Gul Hassan Khan
noting that during an address on the terms of the surrender by General Hamid that
Officers “were near rebellion and had unprecedentedly shouted down, abused and
interrupted Hamid”. 601 Qureshi had earlier noted similar incidents upon Niazi’s
surrender in the east. 602 Gul similarly relates receiving telephone calls from
commanders worried their personnel were mutinous and who were demanding they be
addressed on the loss of East Pakistan. 603 In one instance the 6th Armoured Division
had threatened to march on Rawalpindi if Yahya did not immediately hand over
power. 604 This acrimony was felt by devout and non-devout Officers alike and
transgressed professional and personal enmities with all being described as being in a
state of ‘seething anger’. 605

Despite the alleged moral failings of those who led the Pakistan Army into
the 1971 War, not everyone subscribed to this argument that laid the blame purely on
the morality and religious failings of the senior Officer Corps. Some Officers argued
that the problem was not derived from any lack of piety in the Army. Some argued
that the Army’s malaise could be traced to a much more pragmatic explanation.
Muqeem, a former Major General and author of books on the Army, argued the blame
lay with the internal politics of the Army caused in large part by Ayub’s actions in
staving off challenges to his power.

Those who follow this argument believed Ayub had left the Army populated
by a large senior corps of allegedly obsequious sycophants. Furthermore, Muqeem
argued that the lack of experienced Officers was directly attributed to the engineered
retiring of forty Generals between 1955 to November 1971 in which only four

601
Gul Hassan Khan, ‘Memoirs of Lt. General Gul Hassan Khan, OUP, Karachi, 1993, pp. 339-341.
602
Maj.-Gen. Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers Narrative, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 2002, p. 177.
603
Gul, ‘Memoirs of Lt. General Gul Hassan Khan, pp. 339-341.
604
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, pp. 359-365.
605
A.O. Mitha, ‘Unlikely Beginnings A soldiers life’, OUP, Karachi , 2003, p. 353.

171
Generals had reached their retirement age. 606 If such a state existed in the terms that
Muqeem described and without further explanation as to the retiring of these Officers
it would indeed have supported his ideas of a deficit of leadership experience, as well
as those remaining senior Officers possibly fearful of who would next be retired on
Ayub’s whim. Muqeem believed that any Officer who had showed any distinctive
flair or even some initiative were those who were retired first. Conversely, he
contentiously agued those that lacked moral integrity were the most obsequious ‘yes
men’ kept on by Ayub. 607 In support of Muqeem’s contentions, Chapter Four did note
a number of Officers who held Ayub responsible for the declining efficiency of the
Army after Ayub’s coup and his alleged cult of personality in his promotion of only
those he deemed would provide him blind obedience. Gul was one of these critics of
Ayub’s leadership style noted in Chapter Four. Gul the incoming Chief of Army Staff
appointed by Bhutto in 1971 was himself unceremoniously retired by Bhutto and did
not serve his full term.

Due to the pervasive fear of mutiny at the time many of those innocent of
such conspiracies had their careers ruined by being retired prematurely from the
Army. 608 Inter-services intelligence and military intelligence undertook the
surveillance of Officers in fear of another Rawalpindi type conspiracy. The fears were
widespread and included new measures for every unit to submit an intelligence report
on their Officers’ political beliefs. 609

The defeat resulted in Pakistan’s second military Head of State, General

Yahya Khan, resigning as Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Army. The
Army returned to barracks and made way for the charismatic leadership of Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto. This section of the chapter now addresses Bhutto’s period as president of
Pakistan from 1971 to 1977.

Bhutto, the Army and Islamisation

Bhutto led the country for nearly six years in a period that saw him struggle
to establish an ascendancy over the Army. Bhutto established his own parallel
606
Fazal Muqeem Khan, Pakistan’s Crisis in Leadership’, National Book Foundation, Islamabad,
1973, p. 258.
607
Fazal Muqeem Khan, Pakistan’s Crisis in Leadership’, p. 258.
608
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, pp. 371-374.
609
Brig. Z.A. Khan (R) ‘The Way It Was’, Ahbab Printers, Karachi, 1998, p. 380.
172
security force the ‘Federal Security Force’ in order to have a personal and malleable
form of coercion so he would not be reliant on the Army. Bhutto ultimately had to
rely on the Army to crush yet another self-autonomy movement in Baluchistan.

In an era of rising Muslim consciousness Bhutto also understood the power

and influence available to those who could successfully court the conservative
Muslim power base in Pakistan as well as those abroad. Bhutto undertook a number
of initiatives in order to capture for Pakistan a leading role in the Islamic world. In
1974 Bhutto promoted himself as a leader of the Muslim world by hosting the 1975
Islamic summit in Lahore. Bhutto took the opportunity to recognise Bangladesh so
Mujibur could attend the summit. Religious groups such as the JI were still bitter over
the loss of East Pakistan and were vehemently opposed to Bhutto’s recognition of
Bangladesh and his allowing the socialist Mujibur to attend the summit. 610

Bhutto had also cannily understood the destabilising effects of militant Islam
against struggling secular minded governments in the Muslim world. Bhutto actively
fomented Islamism as a means of destabilising Afghanistan and its persistent attempts
to reignite its Pukhtunistan claims on Pakistan. In this way Bhutto sought to utilise
Islam as a spoiler to Afghanistan’s continuing secularly motivated irredentism.

In the demise of the Army’s reputation in the aftermath of the 1971 War,
Bhutto, in his continuing objective of acquiring a pliant Army subject to democratic
oversight, had attempted to obtain leverage over the Army by injecting himself into
the process of selecting senior Army Commanders. More pragmatically, such
objectives were also hoped to be an effective pre-emptive tactic in acquiring
intelligence of any incipient Army coups. 611 In pursuing this goal Bhutto employed a
national security advisor, ironically the disgraced former Major General Akbar Khan
who was himself the architect of the 1950 Rawalpindi conspiracy and 1948 Jihadi
leader in Kashmir described in Chapter Two. 612

In highlighting the Islamic card though Bhutto had also reignited older
prejudices. Officers noted that the renewed attention to Islam resulted in the

610
Lt. Gen. Jahan Dad Khan, ‘Pakistan Leadership Challenges’, OUP, Karachi, 1999, p.140.
611
Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C., 2004, p.
139.
612
Gul Hassan Khan, ‘Memoirs of Lt.General Gul Hassan Khan, OUP, Karachi, 1993, pp. 361-363.
173
amplification of prejudices against groups in the Officer Corps such as the Ahmadis,
previously the victims of right wing Islamist fury noted in Chapter Three. The
renewed attention by Bhutto to alleged Islamic purity culminated in Bhutto’s
declaration in 1974 that the Ahmadis were not Muslim. The declaration caused further
fractures in the Army and the loss of more talented Officers who in this case
happened to be Ahmadiya and who found continued service in the Army
intolerable. 613

Bhutto also turned to education as another area in which to take the initiative
to prove his Islamic credentials by making the teaching of the Quran a compulsory
subject in education on 17 April 1977. Bhutto’s initial euphoric popularity as leader
built on his charismatic qualities declined as the religious right and opposition parties
contested his rule. Bhutto in his last throes of power announced bans on drinking
alcohol, horseracing and the closure of nightclubs. 614 Media of the day saw these
announcements by Bhutto as sops in an attempt to undercut the opposition from the
religious right. Bhutto enacted a number of initiatives believed to be transparently
aimed at retaining his power. Bhutto raised the pay of the Army, police and civil
service to retain their support amidst mounting civil disobedience protesting his
rule. 615

The Pakistani ‘Shurafaa’ (the middle class) did not believe Bhutto’s Islamic
posturing. The Shurafaa were thoroughly disenchanted with Bhutto who they
believed was essentially an un-Islamic socialist, who was anti-middle class and who
had upset many by his nationalisation of industry, while his posturing’s on Islam were
opposed to the ideology of Pakistan. 616

Eventually Bhutto’s leadership was perceived as despotic and there was a

contested election and increasing domestic turmoil, much of it driven from the
religiously conservative. Amidst the civil disobedience Bhutto had his Chief of Army

613
V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers – An Islamic Journey, Andre Deutsch, London, 1981, p. 202 &
Sana Haroon, “The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and its implications in
Colonial India and Pakistan 1914-1996’, in David Taylor (Ed), Islam in South Asia, Routledge,
Abingdon, UK, 2011, p. 151.
614
Lt. Gen. Fais Ali Chishti (Retd) ‘Betrayals of another kind – Islam, democracy and the army in
Pakistan’, Jang publishers Lahore, 1996, p. 79 & p. 98.
615
The Economist, Vol. 263, No. 6973, April 23, 1977, pp. 65-66.
616
Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10, October 1988,
p. 1087.
174
Staff General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq declare martial law. Martial law was declared,
an election was promised, and Pakistan’s third military ruler in thirty years assumed
power for the next eleven years. Ironically, the General who took power from Bhutto
had been chosen by Bhutto because of his alleged submissiveness and willingness to
enforce Bhutto’s policies. 617 Bhutto would become embroiled in allegations of
electoral fraud and murder and despite international pleas for his clemency was tried
and executed by Zia.

Zia was not a Punjabi or a Pakhtun or from a martial race which Bhutto had
thought acted against Zia’s propensity to mount a challenge to power, but the General
was known to be pious and possess a pronounced sympathy for the Shurafaa and the
Jama’at-i Islami.

Zia and Islamisation

Though many attested to Zia’s piety and humility, others such as Lieutenant
General Chishti noted that he had to stay in power to simply save his own life after
the arrest of Bhutto. 618 Chishti did concede though that Zia was known as being pious
though this had not caused any undue concern to the senior Officer Corps. 619

Zia’s assumption of leadership of Pakistan coincided roughly with a number

of cataclysmic events in the Islamic world. OPEC’s rise in power after the 1973 oil
crisis had provided a number of Muslim countries previously unrivalled influence as
well as the finance to assist poorer Muslim nations. There were two influential events
in two Muslim countries neighbouring Pakistan. The Iranian revolution of 1979 had
installed an Islamist government bent on Islamising the country and its institutions.
Confrontationally, Iranian Islamist revolutionaries had also taken a number of
American hostages in the United States Embassy in Tehran. A militant takeover of the
Grand Mosque in Mecca had also seized the attention of the Muslim world. The
mistaken attribution of American involvement in the takeover of the Grand Mosque
had resulted in the storming of the US Embassy in Islamabad and the killing of a

617
Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, p. 139.
618
Lt. Gen. Faz Ali Chishti (Retd) Betrayals of another kind – Islam, democracy and the army in
Pakistan, Jang publishers Lahore, 1996, p. 203 & analysis of those who thought Zia pious and those
who thought he had cynically manipulated Islam, Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, Hurst &
Company, London, 1998, pp. 246-248.
619
Chishti, Betrayals of another kind, p. 140.
175
number of American citizens. 620 These actions were generally symptomatic of
contemporary Islamic militancy challenging their own secular domestic governments,
as well as the writ of the West. Arguably, Zia though a pious Muslim was responsive
to these portentous events and the expediencies they offered in securing power.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 would provide

Zia with much needed recognition by a US keen to exploit and disrupt the Soviet
presence in Afghanistan. The realpolitik of the day allowed the US, in providing such
assistance, to overlook such issues as Zia’s recent execution of Bhutto, his pursuit of
nuclear capability and his introduction of Islamic law. The punishment and
evidentiary provisions in Zia’s promulgation of Islamic law were particularly
abhorred by Western jurists, Amnesty International, and feminists alike. 621 The
promulgation of the Hudood ordinances and their prescribed Hadd punishments
involving death and amputation captured the imagination of the West. 622 Though
some argued that the harsher aspects of these laws involving the death penalty and
amputations were rarely implemented, it is arguably hard to deny that the application
of a public flogging in front of a large crowd for adultery was not barbarous no matter
how often it was inflicted. 623

The following section of this chapter addresses Zia’s program of Islamisation

of Pakistan and the Pakistan Army including his visions of a grand Islamic military
alliance.

The Soviet invasion provided the raison d’etre for a holy war. It
institutionalised army support for clandestine and insurgent warfare as an accepted
form of warfare, funded and provided for by Saudi Arabia and the US. Arguably, the
onset of the war and Pakistan’s frontline utility to the US added to Zia’s longevity.

620
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Penguin Books, London, 2004, pp. 21-37.
621
Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, Hurst & Company, London, 1998, p. 250.
622
‘Off with their hands’, The Economist, Issue 6985, London, England, July 16, 1977, p. 61 &
‘Stressing the soft side of Islam’, The Economist, Issue 7058, London, England, December, 9, 1978, p.
721.
623
Sardar describes a dinner in which Zia explicitly described the Islamic punishments that lawbreakers
would incur while explaining that the Sharia was being demanded by the people. Ziauddin Sardar,
Desperately Seeking Paradise – Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, Granta Books, London, 2004, pp.
218-219 & Christina Lamb, Waiting for Allah – Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, Viking Penguin
Books, New Delhi, 1991, p. 85. Lamb notes Zia’s implementation of the repressive Islamic laws and
argues there was a reluctance to enact them, while Talbot notes the public floggings in Ian Talbot,
Pakistan: A Modern History, Hurst & Company, London, 1998, p. 250.
176
The insurgency against the Soviets allowed Zia to promulgate warfare in religious
terms. Zia had provided the imprimatur for the use of specific Islamic injunctions as
to the conduct of war and the promotion of what amounted to ‘total war’ in his
approval of a work published on the subject during the period by a Pakistan Army
Brigadier. 624

More generally, Officers at the commencement of Zia’s period of rule could

not have failed to notice the manifestations of political Islam occurring not only in
Iran but also throughout much of the Muslim world. Chapter Five noted how many
Officers in the Army had already been displaying a desire for a greater inclusion of
Islam into the Army as a motivational and ethical element. Officers had been writing
explicitly on arguments for a greater role for Islam as well as the expunging of
colonial customs from the late 1960s.

The revolution in neighbouring Iran had ushered in a regime that had

thoroughly rejected the Shah’s attempts to Westernise the country. The Islamic
revolution had prompted significant changes in the Iranian military. Many of their
higher ranks had been executed or forced to flee while the new Islamic Army was
indoctrinated with Quranic injunctions interpreted to justify Iran’s national
security. 625 Article 144 of the Islamic Constitution of Iran for example had mandated
that the Army be one of believers committed to Islamic revolution. 626

The Iranian revolutionary authorities after having instigated the purge of the
Officer Corps had sought to rebuild the Officer Corps upon an ideological basis. The
Iranians allocated nearly forty per cent of their training towards the Islamic
ideological and political curriculum. The Iranian objective was to fully integrate the
Officer Corps with the Islamic Ummah (community) of Iran. The newly installed
Iranian Islamic revolutionary government endeavoured to ensure the piety and
allegiance to the revolution of the armed forces was of such a level that they would
enthusiastically martyr themselves in defence of the new Islamic Republic. Those
Basij recruited from the Iranian Ummah to repel the Iraqi’s during the Iran-Iraq War

624
See Zia’s approval for an Islamic way of warfare in his foreword to, Brigadier S.K. Malik, The
Quranic Concept of War, Himalayan Books, New Delhi, (First Indian Reprint 1986). See the Islamic
outline of total war on p. 144.
625
Sepehr Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War, Routledge, London, 1988, p. 136.
626
Zabih, The Iranian Military, p. 136.
177
displayed this willingness to martyrdom. 627 Though these changes occurred in context
of a Shia revolution it was viewed favourably by many in the Islamic world.

Zia, arguably aware of the Iranian desire to eradicate the imperial

characteristics of the Iranian Army, and expunge all traces of the Shah’s rule, may
have considered some of these developments in the context of his own Islamisation
plan, and his dislike of the inherited British Indian Army culture. 628

My faith in God and his teachings was strong enough to be able to resist adopting the
life style common among the officers of the British Indian Cavalry and the Pakistan
Armoured Corps. 629

Many of Zia’s early political announcements, like the Iranian changes, were
aimed precisely at the eradication of the Imperial characteristics of both civil and
military practice inherited from the British. Zia’s method of Islamising the Army was
less dramatic though than what had occurred during the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Zia’s purges of the Army were not by firing squad but by having less piously minded
Officers overlooked and quietly removed. Zia did though imprison many of his
opposition, and above all had Bhutto executed. Zia also imprisoned those Officers
guilty of conspiracy to overthrow him or who had committed other substantive
offences. Major General Tajammal Hussein Malik for example wished to establish a
fundamentalist Islamic state based on the pattern of the Khulafah-i-Rashidun after he
had disposed of Zia and the high command. Malik’s planned coup though was foiled
when his Colonel staff informed on him and had Malik arrested. 630

Zia had implemented an operation coordinated by the Inter-Services

Intelligence Directorate to identify, arrest and imprison dissidents within the military.
Operation Galaxy was instituted with the objective of identifying and arresting

627
Sepehr Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War, Routledge, London, 1988, p. 146.
628
Zabih, The Iranian Military, pp. 136-137.
629
Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988’, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10, October 1988,
p. 1085.
630
Maj. General (Retd) Tajammal Hussain Malik, The Story of my struggle, JANG publishers, Lahore,
1991, pp. 205-206. On the Khulafa-i-Rashidun note its reference in Chapter One of this thesis as well
as, Cyril Glasse, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Harper-Collins, Essex, 1991, pp. 84-85.
178
dissident military Officers. A number of Officers were arrested and imprisoned for
their plotting against Zia, which he had termed as ‘waging war against Pakistan’. 631

Zia instituted an Islamisation plan for Pakistan and the Pakistan Army aimed
at redressing those colonial hangovers from the British days. Zia sought to install a
more authentic Pakistani and Islamic culture to the nation as a whole as well as the
Army and all other state institutions. Zia also believed that Pakistanis wanted
Islamisation and he sought to introduce both Islamisation as well as a return to some
indigenous Pakistani customs, some of these indigenous programs were as mundane
as a simple return to indigenous clothing. 632 To expedite Islamisation Zia announced
changes across a wide range of cultural and educational areas from the revision of
school textbooks and replacing English language instruction in English medium
schools to Urdu as the medium of instruction.

Zia’s Islamist agenda also included the introduction of new economic

reforms that would abolish usury and embed Islamic tithing into the economic system,
which intensified Islamic sectarian differences between Shias and Sunnis in
Pakistan. 633 Under Zia, Islam in Pakistan became more fractious and Zia incurred the
wrath firstly of the Shia community by introducing Zakat provisions, and then the
Sunni community in their response to his retraction of the Zakat provisions to the Shia
community. Zia’s tinkering with the laws had even exacerbated the differences
between the more literalist Deobandis and the more syncretic folk minded Barelvis
the two dominant streams of Sunni Islam in Pakistan. 634 Zia also introduced changes
to radio and television content to encourage positive reflections on the state and the
Islamisation process. 635

631
Major Aftab Ahmed, General I Accuse You, Jumhoori Publications, Lahore, 2004, pp. 15-18.
632
Zia notes this ‘shyness of people talking about Islam and the propagation of un-Islamic ideologies as
well as the need to identify non-Islamic aspects of law inherited from the imperialist power’, in
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, The President on Pakistan’s
Ideological Basis – Address by President General Mohammad Zia-Ul-Haq, at the inauguration of
Shariat Faculty of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, October 8, 1979, Barqsons’ Printers,
Islamabad, [nfd], pp. 2-5.
633
Introduction of Islamic Laws – Address to the Nation, pp. 6-12.
634
Iftikhar H. Malik, State and Civil Society in Pakistan – Politics of Authority, Ideology and Ethnicity,
Macmillan Press Ltd., Basingstoke, 1997, pp. 158-159.
635
Ministry of information and Broadcasting, Introduction of Islamic Laws – Address to the Nation,
President General Mohammed Zia-Ul-Haq, Islamabad, February 10, 1979, Printing Corporation of
Pakistan, Islamabad, [nfd], pp. 3-4.
179
 V.S. Naipaul visiting Pakistan during Zia’s regime argued that Zia’s
Islamisation program had set out to re-interpret the role and history of Islam in
Pakistan. Naipaul claimed that Zia’s Islamisation included the fabrication of the
historical identity of the Pakistanis with Zia now proposing that the Pakistanis were
the progeny of Islamic conquerors and heirs of the Turk, Arab or Mogul conquerors
of the subcontinent. 636 Naipaul’s contention effectively grasped one of the most
significant paradoxes of Zia’s Islamisation. While Zia wished to cleanse Pakistan of
Western and non-Islamic influences, he relied to some extent on the propagation of
martial myths that had been essential props to British Indian Army concepts of martial
race noted in Chapter One of this thesis.

As noted in Chapter One the British had used these concepts for an entirely
different reason in the wake of the mutiny. The British had instigated martial race to
exclude the politically active and as a measure of division within ethnic and religious
communities to support the continuance of British rule. Zia, who himself would not
have been categorised as one of the ideal martial races within the preferred British
categories, conflated these heroic concepts of martial race with Islam in Pakistan. As
noted above, Zia though had created more turmoil than unity in the case of the Shia
and Sunni communities. Furthermore, in his reconstruction of history referred to by
Naipaul, Zia had neglected some facts on the emergence of Islam in South Asia. The
Pakhtuns and others including Hindus had indeed been noted for their warlike
propensities long before ‘martial race’ became accepted doctrine in the late nineteenth
century. Contentiously though, many of those same ‘martial races’ feted by the British
until 1947 and the Pakistan Army afterwards, had in fact been converted from
Hinduism after the onset of Muslim invasions as well as the active proselytisation
activities of Muslim Sufi orders. Some of the conversions to Islam as well as to
Sikhism had been in order to escape the life choices of being a lower caste Hindu.

As with Naipaul’s observations others who had visited Pakistan during Zia’s
era noticed the demarcations in martial and ethnic identity. There were substantial
divergences between not only Muslim and non-Muslim but also between Pakhtun and
Punjabi. Some Pakhtun beliefs were highly critical of Punjabi martial identity, and

636
V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers – An Islamic Journey, Andre Deutsch, London, 1981, pp. 134-
135.
180
were redolent of martial race parlance that would have been familiar to such arch
martial race theorists such as Lieutenant General MacMunn noted in Chapter One.
Some Pakhtuns for instance, considered even the differences in diet between the
‘meat eating’ Pakhtuns and the ‘pulse eating’ Punjabis as contributing to the Pakhtuns
martial superiority. 637 During Zia’s period the sloganeering and announcements on
Islamisation, indigenous identity and government policies had sometimes become so
prolific, confusing and contradictory that the acronym for Zia’s title of ‘Chief Martial
Law Administrator’ (CMLA) was instead referred to as ‘cancel my last
announcement’.

A number of Pakistanis during Zia’s period of rule noted that Zia’s

Islamisation was riven with facile sloganeering about Islamisation and that it had led
to a bureaucratisation, which in turn had led to claims of it being thoroughly
compromised by hypocrisy and intolerance. 638 Perhaps the most demonstrative aspect
of the new Islamist system and certainly in the way of international attention was
Zia’s vision for the introduction of Islamic law in Pakistan. Zia had also attempted to
capture international attention in his quest to garner alliances for Pakistan.

Militarily, Zia harboured a grand strategic future for an Islamised Pakistan

and Pakistan Army that included an eventual confederation amalgamating Pakistan
and Afghanistan and eventually the five Muslim Soviet Republics. It was claimed that
this vision—which seemed to share aspects of the Afghan Jihad by having Saudi
Arabia fund a Jihad to oust India from Kashmir—would in a twofold manner avenge
the defeats by Hindu India, garner Muslim martial pride as well as providing strategic
depth to Pakistan. 639 In this vision Zia, like those Army Officers noted in Chapter
Five, believed Pakistan’s strategic predicament and its establishment in terms
analogous to Israel. 640 It is to the specific Islamisation of the Army that the next
section of this chapter addresses.

637
Robert Kaplan, Soldiers of God – With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Vintage
Books, New York, 1990, pp. 32-33.
638
Ikram Azam, Pakistan Reflections, Nairang-E-Khayl Publications, Rawalpindi, 1987, pp. 87-90.
639
Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan – Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures of
Great Powers, Public Affairs, New York, 2011, p. 243.
640
‘An engaging dictator who wants to stay that way’, in The Economist, Issue 7215, London,
December 12, 1981, p. 48.
181
 The size of the Army grew during the Zia years’ from 5 July 1977 to 17
August 1988 from 400,000 to 450,000 while its inventory of equipment also grew in
quantity and quality, especially so after the advent of US and Saudi funding for the
insurgency against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Ethnically and territorially the
recruiting grounds for the Army remained the same in the mid-1970s, as they had
been for the British with those from the martial classes disdainful of other classes who
joined the Army. 641

Zia never relinquished command of the Army during his tenure in power and
devoted special attention to the Islamisation of the Army. Zia introduced ‘holy war’
doctrine as a subject to be taught at Pakistani training establishments and the Pakistan
Army Officers 1978 handbook made this obligation explicitly clear with its
admonition,

Do not forget, your wars will be “Jihad”, for the defence of your Country. Therefore,
your role is that of a Ghazi, with a moral code unmatched in the annals of ancient and
642
contemporary history.

Many in the Army perhaps still incensed at the loss of the 1971 War were
positive in welcoming Zia’s process of Islamisation. Officers who held such
perspectives believed that Zia had finally ‘righted a wrong’ and that three decades of
inadequate cultural indoctrination was being corrected by Zia. Even Zia’s
promulgation of the new Islamic motto for the Army in 1976 of ‘Iman’, Taqwa’ and
‘Jihad-fi-sabeel-illah’ was believed to finally be an example of an Islamic motto
attuned to the indigenous desires and cultural preferences of Pakistan.

Zia indoctrinated the Army by instituting Islamic philosophies of leadership

and ethics with the publishing and distribution by the Army in 1978 of a pamphlet
titled General Staff publication 10260, Akhlaqiaat that sought to provide Officers
with the doctrinal basis of Islamic leadership. Another pamphlet in Urdu titled Aeen-
e-Sarfaroshi, an English approximation being ‘The Constitution of Valour’, was
promoted as a motivational anthology of Quranic verses in Urdu with English

641
Lieutenant-General M. Attiqur Rahman, Our Defence Cause – An Analysis of Pakistan’s Past and
Future Military Role, White Lion Publishers, London, 1976, p. 64.
642
Hand Book of Army Officers Terms and Conditions of Service and Personal Affairs – Restricted,
Issued by Regulations and Forms Directorate, Pakistan Army Headquarters, 1978, p. iii.
182
translations relating to soldiers and soldiering. 643 While to some degree these
developments were external trappings they did represent to many Officers a sincere
effort at Islamising the Army.

Other visitors to Pakistan noted the impact of his Islamisation. Professor

Ziauddin Sardar noted in a visit to the fundamentalist Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania
seminary that its principal Maulana Samiul Haq, believed to have been an influence
on Zia, claimed that numerous graduates of the seminary had been placed in the
Army. 644 A British diplomat who served in India and Pakistan recalled Zia’s
enthusiasm for Islamisation of the Army informing him that Islam was an eminently
practical military belief, while there were positive psychological benefits for the
Army in a greater induction of Islam into the Army. 645 Zia’s Islamisation of the Army
also encompassed the introduction of ‘outward manifestations of Islamic piety such as
beard allowances’. Zia also actively targeted Officer recruitment upon the lower
middle class Shurafaa who were religiously conservative, as well as rewarding
Officers with an Islamist bent, while overlooking secular or less religiously inclined
Officers, many of whom retired due to their being sidelined. 646

Pakistani Officers continued to attend Western military courses in the United

Kingdom as well as other Western countries. Importantly for Zia, Officers also
undertook duties in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani Officers undertook training duties, as well
as being part of a US brokered arrangement for Pakistan to provide troops for Saudi
security and the Saudis in exchange facilitated Pakistani arms purchases. 647 Their
deployment would largely cease after Zia refused Saudi requests to remove Shia
members of the Army deployed to the kingdom. The Saudi’s had been concerned
about the influence of the Shia members of the Army on the Saudi’s own minority
Shia community. The Saudi relationship had served an important purpose for Zia as

643
Major General Syed Tanwir Husain Naqvi, ‘Doctrine of Leadership for the Pakistan Army’, Green
Book, 1990, pp. 18-19.
644
Ziauddin Sardar, Desperately Seeking Paradise – Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, Granta Books,
London, 2004, pp. 222-224.
645
Sir Morrice James, Pakistan Chronicle, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1993, p. 205 & p. 219.
646
Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army – Wars and Insurrections, Oxford University
Press, Karachi, 1999, p. 272 & Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan – Messianic Terrorism, Tribal
Conflicts and the Failures of Great Powers, Public Affairs, New York, 2011, p. 244.
647
Zbigniew Brzezinksi, Power and Principle – Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977-1981,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1983, p. 449 & Navdav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest
for Security, Belknap Press, USA, 1985, pp. 363-364.
183
he believed it provided some legitimacy for Pakistan’s Islamic credentials as well as
providing a psychological shift towards its Islamic roots. For the Officers themselves
the opportunity of being deployed to Saudi Arabia in the Islamic holy land and the
more literalist form of Islam was influential for some Officers. Those familiar with
the Deoband form of Islam in Pakistan may have been a little more familiar with the
more austere Saudi practices while those more familiar of the more syncretic and
somewhat folk Barelvi may have been influenced by the more austere practices. 648

Those remaining Officers of the British generation noticed the demographic

and ideological shifts in the Army and sought to add their own ideas on the place of
Islam within the Army. From the late 1960s onwards the Officer Corps was
incrementally being drawn from the religiously conservative Shurafaa middle class
who brought to the Army different attitudes than the British Indian generation. 649 For
example, Lieutenant General Attiqur Rahman a prolific author on the Pakistan Army
had already noted in 1972 the attitudinal change to Islam occurring in the Army. Such
a change was perhaps in large measure from the shock arising out of the 1971 defeat.
Attiqur for his part encouraged discussions on the contribution of Islam and
emphasised the importance of sectarian tolerance. Attiqur arguably did not view as
helpful the possibility of literalist interpretations of Islam dominating arguments for
greater Islamisation of the Army. Attiqur made a plea for unit Maulvis to guard
against dogmatism, and to prevent vilification in the cases where men may possess
Barelvi or various localised beliefs from the veneration of Pirs to wearing amulets
from favourite shrines. 650 Such pleas were prudent for those interested in a more
inclusive Islam. As noted earlier, Bhutto’s adoption of a more Islamist agenda had
contributed to igniting prejudices against the Ahmadiya community, while Zia
himself had antagonised both Sunni and Shia in his Zakat experiments.

In 1976, Attiqur had continued his consideration of the role of Islam by

recommending the codification of various Surah’s from the Holy Quran as a source of
military ethics. Significantly, in regard to the Army’s actual combat performance

648
‘The Saudi-Pakistani Military Relationship and its Implications for US Strategy in South West
Asia’, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 1 October
1981, pp. 8-9.
649
Akhtar, ‘The Political Role of the Ulama’, p. 623 & Shah, ‘Religion and Politics’, p. 254.
650
See Chapter VIII ‘Our Religion’, pp. 85-95 in Lt. General M. Attiqur Rahman, Leadership Junior
Commanders, Ferozsons, Lahore, 1973.
184
Attiqur recommended the inculcation of Islamic religious fervour to benefit the
offensive tactics of the Army. 651 The introduction of respect for the unit Maulvis and
Mullahs who had been previously treated by some as comical figures was another
element of a new consciousness seeking to re-establish the Islamic roots of those in
the Pakistan Army. 652 Zia personally added to the promotion of the Army undertaking
warfare in a more distinctly Islamic manner, and as noted earlier in the chapter had
recommended and wrote the forward to an Army Brigadier’s work on the Quranic
way of warfare. 653

Throughout Zia’s term during the 1980s the Army and services book clubs
printed materials for the Officer Corps on Islamic warfare, Islamic military heroes as
well as a large corpus of works on conflicts in which the Army had participated in. 654
Military publishers also reproduced works written by foreign military writers
including Professor Brian Bond, the British academic who had taught previously at
the Pakistan Military Academy, as well as the modern military classics by Fuller and
Liddell Hart and works from Indian Muslims. 655

Exemplars of Muslim character and Islamic military heroes who had

overcome powerful adversaries, such as Imam Shamil’s nineteenth century Jihad
against the Russians, assumed a new relevance with the Russian invasion of
Afghanistan. The publication on themes that linked the necessity and use of Islam to
consolidate the Army and the nation were not new as Chapter Five revealed, as the

651
Lieutenant-General M. Attiqur Rahman, Our Defence Cause – An Analysis of Pakistan’s Past and
Future Military Role, White Lion Publishers, London, p. 187.
652
Rahman, Our Defence Cause, p. 200.
653
Brigadier S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, Himalayan Books, New Delhi, First Indian
Reprint 1986.
654
The 1965 War with India for instance generated much commentary in Pakistan with some of these
works produced by Pakistan Army figures being published by the Services Book Club, for example,
Maj-Gen. Shaukat Riza (Retd), The Pakistan Army War 1965, Services Book Club, 1984.
655
For instance the following three works among many others featuring both Islamic and Western
military commentaries were produced during the early to mid-1980s by the Army Book Club and
Services Book Club, see, Beha Ud Din, The Life of Salah Ud Din Ayyubi, Army Book Club, 1983,
Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War 1789-1961, Services Book Club, Lahore, 1986
(under authority of Methuen) and Liddell Hart, The Ghost of Napoleon, Services Book Club, 1987
(under authority of Greenwood Press). See for instance a Muslim Indian scholars work, in Dr
Muhammad Hamidullah, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, Kitab Bhavan, New Delhi, 1983.
185
resurgence of a globalised Islam transcended the regional developments in south and
southwest Asia. 656

Not all Officers supported Zia’s Islamisation, though his rule over the
country and continued command of the Army meant that any Officer strongly
exhibiting any such disaffection would at the very least have a shorter career in the
Army. A number of the older generation of Officers from partition thought that Zia’s
long tenure in power had negatively impacted upon the Army’s professionalism due
to being diverted to undertake non-military duties such as staffing government
institutions. 657

In this regard some Officers noted that many soldiers felt uncomfortable with
Zia’s enforcement of prayers and felt that it was incongruent with a professional
army, with some eventually claiming prayers had become an excuse to end the day at
prayer time and to not return to duty. 658 Many Officers argued of more serious
implications, with many believing Zia himself to be honest and pious believed that
during his tenure that corruption had become institutionalised and the professionalism
of the Army deteriorated. Outwardly, the Army had more equipment and was better
educated but was undermined by the politicisation of the Army. Zia’s intervention in
providing extensions of service and personal foibles being used as the basis of
promotion was also argued as deleterious to the Army’s professionalism. 659 Zia’s
attention to corruption seemed limited to a White Paper produced upon the corruption,
purges and general maladministration of the Bhutto government, which possibly was
more important as a justification and defence for the subsequent execution of
Bhutto. 660

656
For a discussion of the Islamic resurgence globally from the late 1960s to early new millennium as
well as Pakistan during the 1970s to 1988 see, Gilles Keppel, Jihad – The Trail of Political Islam,
I.B.Tauris, London, 2002, pp. 98-105 and especially, Sohail Mahmood, Islamic Fundamentalism in
Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1995.
657
Lt. Gen. (Retd) Ali Kuli Khan, ‘Remembering Our Warriors’, in I. ul-Majeed Sehgal (Ed), Defence
Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5., Karachi, December 2001, p. 29.
658
Brig. (Retd) Muhammad Mehboob Qadir, ‘Of Good Order and Military Discipline’, in I. ul-Majeed
Sehgal, Defence Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3, Karachi, October 2002, p. 67.
659
Maj. Gen. (Retd) Hidyatullah Niazi, in I. ul-Majeed Sehgal, Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1,
Karachi, August 2001, pp. 26-27.
660
See the four volumes, Government of Pakistan White Paper in which Bhutto’s’ administration is
castigated in particular, White Paper on The Performance of the Bhutto Regime Vol. II Treatment of
Fundamental State Institutions, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, January 1979.
186
Conclusion

While Zia’s Islamisation of the Army did not incur any of the overtly
cataclysmic changes that the Iranian Army were enduring during the same period, the
culture and nature of the Army were indelibly altered due to his Islamisation program.

The impact of the aftermath of the 1971 War discussed earlier in this chapter
had only occurred a relatively short time before his Islamisation program. This impact
overlapped with the global resurgence of Islam, noted earlier in such events as
increased OPEC assertiveness, the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, which incrementally added to the nascent desires for a greater inclusion
of Islam into the Army. Earlier chapters noted that Islam had been previously utilised
by Ayub as a means of promoting Pakistan as a nation possessing an Army consisting
of Islamically pious martial races during the 1950s. Musa had then claimed that the
Army’s performance in the 1965 War had been attributable to their spirit of Jihad,
while Chapter Five noted the arguments by many Officers for a more authentic
induction of Islam into the Army. Zia’s contributions were more influential than that
of Ayub, Musa, Yahya or other COASs had been up until the time of his appointment.
Zia’s contributions were a much more overt injection of Islamisation into
considerations of alliance formation, expunging of foreign military customs, notions
of Islamic warfare; and importantly his selection, recruitment and training of a more
conservative population of Army Officer candidates carried implications for the future
character of the Army.

Zia’s preference for the recruitment of Officer candidates from the Shurafaa
as well as the selection and promotion of many Officers sympathetic to a greater role
for Islam in the Army was serendipitously occurring at the same time that Islam was
asserting its political and cultural influence regionally and globally. That the war in
Afghanistan was cast in the nature of Islamic resistance being fought by Mujahidin
fighters righteously conducting a Jihad to expel foreign invaders from an Islamic land
had a profound impact on the Pakistan Army. That the conflict had overlapped within
the period of Zia’s Islamisation program amplified notions of ‘Islam in danger’ that
many in the Army readily responded to in their coordination of the Afghan Jihad.

187
Chapter Two noted the importance of ‘Islam in danger’ as an important aspect of
South Asian Islamic resistance.

The Army and those Army Officers in the Inter-Services Intelligence

Directorate coordinating the logistic supplies for the Mujahidin as well as those
Officers on the ground in Afghanistan became a generation of Officers infused with
the righteousness of Jihad. As the next chapter illustrates many of these Officers
developed an inflated belief in the superiority of their own abilities and the role
Islamic motivation and the Mujahidin had in ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan.

The Zia period encompassed an internal and external validation of Islam

much more profound than the approbations offered by Dulles and Eisenhower in
Chapters Four and Five. Validation of Islam during Zia’s period was by virtue of the
aforementioned events in the Islamic world that ushered in a more robust and
assertive Islam evident in the Iranian revolution regionally and domestically by Zia’s
proactive Islamisation. While some Islamisation of aspects of the Army culture had
occurred beforehand, Zia departed from these experiments in his proactive program of
Islamisation of Army and state.

The next chapter shall examine the period 1988 to 1999 and examine what
the implications of Zia’s eleven years’ of rule and Islamisation had upon the Army.
The chapter explores the impact of what is argued as the perpetuation of Islamisation
within the Army despite the fact that during the period only one of the COASs could
have been characterised as an Islamist. In particular, the chapter considers the impact
of Islamism on the leadership and culture of the Army as well as the Army’s
involvement in Jihadist activities.

The chapter also considers the role of the Army in politics during this period
of ostensible non-involvement, including the machinations of the COAS and the ISI
to destabilise the government of Benazir Bhutto as well as significant roles of senior
retired Army Officers in secularly minded and Islamic political parties. The strategic
culture of the Army is also examined in context of the Army’s threat perception
during this period. Chapter Seven seeks to above all provide what the impact of Zia’s
Islamisation period had upon succeeding generations of Pakistani Officers, and argues
that this impact was significant. Perhaps most flagrantly the evidence of influential

188
Islamic elements in the Army willing to expedite Islamisation was most evident in the
arrest of over forty Army Officers led by a Major General who had conspired to
undertake a coup (the Khilafat conspiracy), murder Bhutto, the COAS and other high
ranking Army personnel and establish a fundamentalist Islamic system in Pakistan.

189
190
 Chapter VII The Army and Islam in the ‘Democratic
Interregnum’ 1988–1999

The renaissance of Islam and Islamization process had a positive effect on military culture.

(Brigadier Sultan Habib, Infantry Brigade Commander, 1990) 661

Introduction

General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq the Commander in Chief of the Pakistan

Army and President of Pakistan died in an air crash near Bahawalpur Pakistan,
together with the United States Ambassador and all others on board the aircraft in a
still unexplained accident on 17 August 1988. Zia’s popularity, though contested,
remained popular with many Pakistanis and immense crowds attending his funeral in
Islamabad. Unlike Ayub and Yahya Khan, his two former Army predecessors who
had ruled Pakistan, Zia was still firmly in control of the Army as well as Pakistan at
the time his tenure was unexpectedly cut short. The time period this chapter sets out to
examine commences with the death of Zia in 1988 and ends in 1999 with the ousting
of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the beginning of another period of Army rule by
General Pervez Musharraf.

The chapter examines a period of time in which the Army while not ruling
the nation was still nevertheless an arbiter of government power. The chapter sets out
to describe the place of Islam in the Army after eleven years’ of rule by Mohammed
Zia ul-Haq and his process of Islamisation of Pakistan and the Army. Chapter Six
noted that during Zia’s rule in Pakistan, and the Islamic world more generally, there
was a resurgence of the political and cultural assertiveness of Islam. The chapter also
noted that Zia’s longevity had arguably been in part due to the legitimacy he was
accorded by the West for Pakistan’s role as the primary conduit for the fight against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

661
Pakistan Army Green Book, ‘Year of the Junior Leaders 1990’, Pakistan Army General
Headquarters, Rawalpindi, 1990, p. 215.

191
 This chapter argues that Zia’s legacy of Islamising Pakistan and the Army
managed to thoroughly imbue many Officers in the Army with an Islamist disposition
that even after his death was evident during the period 1988 to 1999. Despite the
apparent secular character of a number of the succeeding COASs during this period, it
is a contention of this chapter that Islamism of differing hues had been firmly
established in the Army by the actions of Zia and coalesced with the prevailing
Islamic resurgence in this period of history. 662

The chapter is organised into four sections. The first section provides
some outline of the history of Pakistan from 1988 to 1999 in order to provide some
contextual insight into the political and cultural milieu in which the Army existed.
The second section of the chapter examines the influence of Islamist Generals upon
the Army as well as the succession of the Commanders in Chief of the Army. This
section also considers the impact of an Islamist coup, and the involvement of former
Army Officers in Islamist and mainstream political parties in Pakistan. The third
section then explores the Islamic nature of the Army in light of its perceived threats,
alliances and hostilities it was involved in. The last section considers the influence of
Islam upon Army culture and development during the period.

What is apparent from the analysis in this chapter is that Officers approached
the role of Islam from differing perspectives from the Islamist to more secular and
professional approaches. Islam nevertheless despite personal attitudes to piety among
Officers remained the essential pillar around which the Army’s strategic culture was
wedded. The Army in 1988, as it would in 1999 and as it had in 1947, remained
convinced that a Hindu India wished to extinguish Pakistan because of its Islamic
nature. In this way Pakistan’s strategic culture remained one in which ideas of ‘Islam
in danger’ continued to retain its vitality and validity within the Officer Corps.

As part of this process of examining the culture of the Army during this time
period the chapter draws links to previous chapters, especially Chapter Six, in
examining the influence of Zia’s simultaneous rule of the country and his command
of the Army. In particular, the chapter notes how the Islamisation pursued by Zia,

662
Husain Haqqani, ‘Islamism and the Pakistani State’, Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of
the Muslim World, http://www.currenttrends.org/prinVersion/print_pub.asp?pubID=171, accessed 8
December 2013. Dr Haqqani argues that efforts to counteract Zia’s Islamisation have not been
successful because of the rise in militant Islamism.
192
though not universally accepted by the Army, did raise the profile of Islamic
discourse in the Army and normalise such discourse on the role of Islam within the
Army.

In appreciating the context of the post-Zia years it is important firstly to

consider the tumultuous domestic and international political situation of Pakistan
during this time. In 1992 there had been a risk that Pakistan would be formally
labelled a state sponsor of terrorism by the US for its official support of Islamic
extremist terrorist and insurgency groups. 663 The country had experienced the
murders of politicians, foreign citizens—including American oil contractors—
Egyptian and Iranian diplomats, and visiting Iranian Air Force Cadets to Pakistan by
domestic Islamist terror groups. Ethnic sectarianism was also rampant in Karachi
between the MQM and its opponents, which the Army was drawn into. 664

Additionally, there were significant crime problems including large-scale

‘dacoity’ in the Sindh province in which travel by road, rail or boat could be
interrupted by gangs armed with sophisticated automatic weapons, many of them
obtained from Afghan war surplus. 665 The criminal economy had been expanded by
virtue of the conflict in Afghanistan. Funded by opium and the expanded access to
weapons criminal gangs engaged in lethal rivalries while the attraction of large profits
corrupted public and military officials alike. In one flagrant instance an Army Officer
had murdered nine persons in rural Sindh while small numbers of Officers were also
involved in drug trafficking. 666

During the period Pakistan had sought to engineer favourable strategic

outcomes through their militant Islamist proxies in Afghanistan and India. Sanctions
on Pakistan instigated under the US Pressler Amendment, instituted in 1985 as a

663
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Power of Militant Islam in Afghanistan and Beyond, I.B. Tauris, New
York, 2010 [2000], p. 186.
664
On sectarian violence in Karachi, Chapter ‘8’ ‘Dial a Kalashnikov’ in Christina Lamb, Waiting for
Allah – Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, Viking/Penguin, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 138-166 & her
chapter on ‘Dacoit’ (Bandit) culture in Sindh during the late 1980s early 1990’, ‘Sindh – Land of Robin
Hoods and Warrior Saints’, in pp. 118-138. Aminah Mohammad-Arif, ‘The Diversity of Islam’, in
Christophe Jaffrelot (Ed), A History of Pakistan and Its Origins, Anthem Press, London, 2008, pp. 235-
235 on sectarian violence in the 1990s in Pakistan.
665
See Lamb’s chapter on the ‘Dacoit’ (Bandit) culture in Sindh during the late 1980s early 1990s in
her chapter, ‘Sindh – Land of Robin Hoods and Warrior Saints’, in Christina Lamb, Waiting for Allah –
Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, Viking/Penguin, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 118-138.
666
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 455.
193
means of aligning military aid to guarantees that Pakistan did not have a nuclear
weapon, were finally implemented after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. This
angered many in the Pakistan military. Pakistan believed itself to have been
selectively discriminated against by the US, which had previously certified military
supplies under the Reagan and Bush administrations between 1985 and 1989. After
the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1990 had changed Pakistan’s frontline
status the US’s nuclear proliferation focus became the main US concern. Especially
galling for Pakistan was the impact the Pressler Amendment had in withholding pre-
existing and paid for defence aid, including aircraft. 667 The next section of the thesis
shall address the immediate aftermath of Zia’s death.

With Zia’s death General Aslam Mirza Beg became COAS and handed over
power to civilians for the country’s next leader to be decided by election. Benazir
Bhutto won the election despite the efforts of Islamist General Hamid Gul and the
COAS (Beg) in the setting up of an Islamist Bhutto resistance front in the formation
of the eight party Islamic Jamhori Itehad (IJI). Sharif (the former Punjab Chief
Minister selected by Zia) won the following election in November. In 1991 the
National Assembly adopted the Shariat Bill, which arguably illustrated that the
Islamist themes of the previous Zia era were being pursued by his civil protégé Sharif.
For the Army, the period witnessed the completion of the ‘Al-Khalid’ tank project in
1991 jointly undertaken with China. The tank was named after the Islamic conqueror
of the Eastern Roman and Persian Empires.

In 1992 military operations against MQM in Sindh commenced in an effort

to end the cycle of sectarian violence in the city. In December 1995 the Lahore high
court dismissed the appeal case against the arrest of Major General Zaheerul Islam
Abbasi in the Khilafat conspiracy case discussed more fully in the next section. The
Bhutto and Sharif governments periodically were sworn into power and sacked during
the period while on 28 May 1998 Pakistan successfully conducted nuclear tests in the
Chagai Hills in Baluchistan. The nuclear tests were rapturously celebrated in Pakistan
and condemned in the West. Pakistan subsequently conducted successful tests of a
nuclear capable short-range ballistic missile in 1999. In the last six months of 1999

667
Tehmina Mahmood, ‘Pressler Amendment and Pakistan’s Security Concerns’, Pakistan Horizon,
Vol. 47, No. 4, October 1994, pp. 103-104.
194
the Kargil War was concluded between Pakistan and India. On 12 October 1999
General Pervez Musharraf executed a coup against the government of Nawaz Sharif
in part because of conflict and blame over Kargil and for Sharif’s attempt to dismiss
Musharraf. The next section examines those Commanders in Chief of the Army that
succeeded Zia, as well as the influence of a number of Islamist Generals, and an
attempted coup.

Islam and the Generals

With General Aslam Beg succeeding Zia as COAS there was a generational
changing of the guard with Beg becoming the first Army Chief commissioned after
Pakistan had been established. 668 Beg though was the progeny of Zia and he did not
usher in any great ideological change within the Army during his tenure and
continued to propagate Zia’s Islamisation.

Beg’s tenure was conspicuous for his inflamed Islamist statements made in
contradiction of the declared policies of the government. Beg notably made
statements of support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. In Islamist terms Beg
described the US and Western military action against Saddam as having been a
Western-Zionist game plan to neutralise the Muslim world. Beg’s statements bore a
great deal of similarity to those of the Islamic fundamentalist party: the JI. 669 Beg’s
statements were sympathetically viewed by many in the Army and in Pakistan who
thought Saddam to be the aggrieved party in the conflict and who was to be admired
for his defiance of the US led coalition that had attacked a fellow Muslim nation. 670

Despite Beg’s statements the Pakistan Army did contribute to the Gulf War,
albeit on the understanding that they would be purely a security force to guard the
holy places. This was unlike other Muslim coalition members including Saudi Arabia
that did participate in combat against the Iraqis. 671 Beg and other senior Generals

668
Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords – Pakistan Its Army, and the Wars Within, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, pp. 416-417. Shuja Nawaz writes from the perspective of his inclusion in a Pakistani Army
family. Shuja’s late brother General Asif Nawaz was COAS during the period this chapter concerns
between 16 August 1991 to 8 January 1993.
669
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 439 & Hussain Haqqani, ‘The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi
Groups’, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Hudson Institute, USA, 2005, p. 20.
670
Brian Cloughley, War, Coups & Terror – Pakistan’s Army in Years of Turmoil, Pen & Sword
Military, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, 2008, p. 6.
671
Cloughley, War, Coups & Terror, p. 63.
195
were arguably part of an influential cabal of high-ranking officers that had been
Islamised during Zia’s tenure in power.

Bhutto’s confidante, Christina Lamb, argued in 1989 that Zia had saturated
the Army with Islamist indoctrination and successfully cultivated a large Islamist
faction in the Officer Corps. 672 Cloughley, a former defence attaché to Pakistan, noted
the doubts held about the cumulative effects of Zia’s Islamising the Army combined
with the religious party’s proselytisation efforts upon the Officer Corps of the
Army. 673

Bhutto had claimed there was a faction of Generals in the Army overawed by
what they believed had been the effectiveness of Jihad. Bhutto believed many
Officers were captivated by Jihadi successes in the expulsion of the Soviet Army
from Afghanistan and were infected with what she described as the ‘Jihad’ bug. 674
These same Officers were claimed to be in favour of utilising the Islamic martial
fervour of the Army to finally attain Pakistan’s aims against India as well as more
ambitious forays into Central Asia. Bhutto believed these generals to be myopic in
their fixation that the Soviets had been ousted from Afghanistan simply by ‘Jihad’
alone. She believed them to be politically naive and ignorant as to the influence of
international economics, diplomacy and even the sophisticated weaponry such as the
‘Stinger’ missiles supplied to the Mujahidin as significant reasons for Soviet
withdrawal.

Bhutto in her first term as Prime Minister claimed Beg’s Islamist ambitions
for the Army were grandiose and pro-actively aggressive in their intent. Beg was
alleged to have proposed a plan to undertake a pre-emptive strike on India to retake
Kashmir with the assistance of the Army’s Islamist allies from Afghanistan. 675 Beg’s
‘grandiosity’ was apparent in the Army’s war games conducted in 1989. The war
games were the largest ever held by the Army and provocatively titled Operation

672
Christina Lamb, Waiting for Allah – Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, Viking/Penguin, New
Delhi, 1991, p. 285.
673
Cloughley, Wars, Coups & Terror, p. 79.
674
Benazir Bhutto, ‘Daughter of the East – An Autobiography’, Simon & Schuster, UK, 2007 (original
edition 1988), p. 404.
675
Bhutto, ‘Daughter of the East, p. 406 & p. 423.

196
‘Zarb-e-Momin’ (Strike of the True Believer) adjacent India’s Rajasthan desert. 676 In
other ways Beg’s Islamist nature was evident with for instance his removal of
Officers’ religious proclivities from their annual confidential reports, which
essentially allowed Officers more freedom from possible sanction in their religious
associations.

Bhutto claimed others had been converted to aggressively Islamist views by

the avowedly Islamist and charismatic General Hamid Gul, an architect of the Afghan
Jihad and passionate supporter of Kashmiri and Pakistani based Islamic militants. 677
Bhutto’s criticisms and fears of Gul’s ‘messianic Islamist agenda’ and influence on
many senior Officers were also believed to be true by Tomsen, the US special envoy
to the Mujahidin between 1989 and 1992. 678 Gul’s aggressive ‘Jihadism’ was also
suspected by the CIA who thought him to be the architect of pro-active cross border
Islamist attacks in the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. 679 The Russians also believed
that the Pakistanis were exporting Islamic terrorism to Chechnya and former Soviet
central Asian republics coordinated at training grounds provided by the ISI and Army
in Pakistan. 680

Beg, though later in the decade categorised as a ‘headline grabber’ by the US

officials, still worried Bhutto. 681 Beg remained an influential voice on army and
national issues in Pakistan after his tenure as COAS ceased in August 1991, and
thereafter in his capacity as the head of his own ‘think tank promoting Islamist
themes’.

Despite an attempt to extend his time as COAS Beg was replaced by General
Asif Nawaz a secularly minded General. Nawaz, unlike Beg, worked to reduce the

676
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, pp. 420-421.
677
Bhutto, ‘Daughter of the East, p. 406 & Manoj Joshi, The Lost Rebellion – Kashmir in the Nineties,
Penguin Books, India, 1999, p. 181.
678
Peter Tomsen, ‘The Wars of Afghanistan – Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures
of Great Powers’, Public Affairs, New York, 2011, pp. 255-257.
679
Bearden was the CIA station chief for Islamabad at the time. Milt Bearden and James Risen, The
Main Enemy – the Inside story of the CIA’s final showdown with the KGB, Century, London, 2003, p.
291.
680
Pakistan Fifty Years of Independence, Volume Three, Verinder Grover & Ranjana Arora (Eds),
Deep & Deep Publications, New Delhi, 1997, p..516 & Pakistani training of Chechen Islamist militants
during this period is reported in M. Ilyas Khan, ‘The ISI-Taliban Nexus’, in Aamer Ahmed Khan (Ed),
Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11, Karachi, November 2001, p. 26.
681
US Cable reference 0 310614Z August 1998 from US Embassy (Schmidt) Islamabad to Secretary of
State Washington, paragraph 2.
197
emphasis on the role of religion in the Army though there was a propensity for senior
Islamist Commanders to act outside the writ of his command. Just prior to his sudden
death Nawaz removed an ‘Islamist Corps Commander’ who had orchestrated an
unauthorised attack causing significant casualties during Beg’s tenure in 1990. 682
Nawaz was succeeded by General Abdul Waheed.

During General Waheed’s tenure in 1995 the presence and embedded nature
of extremist Islamist factions in the Army had become apparent with the discovery of
another Islamist coup attempt. The conspiracy became known as the ‘Khilafat’
conspiracy because the alleged objective of the coup sought to violently overthrow the
government and establish Nizam-e-Mustafa, an objective also pursued albeit
peaceably by the JI. 683 Over forty Army Officers including Major General Zaheerul
Islam Abbassi, Brigadier Mustansur Billan and Colonel Azad Minhas and thirty-eight
others were alleged to have conspired to execute the political and military leadership
of the country.

The coup leaders’ objective was to declare an Islamic revolution and dissolve
the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan in a caliphate-like vision. 684 Though
these Officers denied the conspiracy and claimed the allegations were politically
motivated, Bhutto, as well as foreign military attachés present at the time, was
convinced of its authenticity. 685 The coup attempt emphatically illustrated the
objectives of a significant Islamic faction in the Army who were not interested in a
tepid indoctrination of Islam into the Army. These Officers desired the inauguration
of a fully-fledged Islamic revolution to fundamentally change the nature of the Army
and the state. These Officers represented a rift in the Army between the secularly
disposed and moderate Muslim elements and Islamist extremist elements. These

682
Brian Cloughley who knew Nawaz from his days as a Corps commander believed him to be secular
in outlook. Brian Cloughley interview at ‘Voutenay-sur-Cure’, France, 17 February 2010 & Nawaz,
Crossed Swords, p. 451.
683
The Nisam-e-Mustafa is an Islamic society that does not permit any separation between public and
religious matters, an objective pursued ostensibly peacefully by the JI, in Sohail Mahmood, Islamic
Fundamentalism in Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1995, p. 288.
684
Bhutto, ‘Daughter of the East, p. 419.
685
Cloughley the Australian Army Defence Attaché to Pakistan in discussions with senior Pakistan
Army figures noted that Abbasi had intended with his co-conspirators to kill all those attending a Corps
Commanders conference chaired by the COAS and then eradicate the cabinet, email communication
with Cloughley on 6 December 2013 & Brian Cloughley, War, Coups & Terror – Pakistan’s Army in
Years of Turmoil, Pen & Sword, 2008, p. 79.
198
extremist Army Officers were prepared to violently implement a vision far beyond
that of Zia’s Islamisation project of the 1980s.

That an Officer of Major General rank with forty other Officers as co-
conspirators could again instigate an Islamist coup fifteen years after Major General
Tajammal Hussain Malik’s attempt on Zia was arguably indicative of the persistence
and extent of the radical elements inhabiting parts of the Army’s Officer Corps. It was
apparent that during this period there were many Officers who desired a new Islamic
order for the Army and country and who were frustrated with incrementalist or token
Islamic changes. The attempted coup was perhaps an indicative outward
manifestation of the Islamist current nurtured by the Zia years and now maturing with
its influence on the succeeding generation of Officers.

Waheed was succeeded by General Jehangir Karamat who would resign his
tenure due to his tensions with Prime Minister Sharif who had taken umbrage with his
public statements on national security. Karamat was replaced by Musharraf who in
turn became involved in a conflict with Sharif over the failed Kargil operation. The
Army had infiltrated Indian positions on the Kargil heights in the guise of Islamic
Kashmiri militants. The resulting conflict had brought Pakistan and India to the verge
of war and an embarrassing diplomatic imbroglio requiring the intercession of the US.
The conflict between Musharraf and Sharif had caused Sharif to undertake an attempt
to remove Musharraf who in turn ousted Sharif in a coup in October 1999.

Concurrent with the Islamist agitation in the Army was the Islamist current
more generally in Pakistani society and reflected in popular politics where former
Army Officers were prominent. In this way but not as decisively as the
aforementioned attempted coup the Army was exhibiting both its Islamist nature as
well as its now established break with the British Indian tradition of involvement in
politics.

There were substantial numbers of former Army Officers involved in

religious parties and political parties in government throughout this period. While a
number were present in the more secular PPP there were also numbers in Zia’s
protégé Nawaz Sharif’s PML, as well as the more avowedly Islamic parties.

199
 Sharif had four ex-Army Officers as ministers, including Gohar Ayub Khan
the son of Field Marshal Ayub Khan the first Army Officer to stage a coup. Gohar
was foreign minister and speaker of the national assembly during his first government
term and was one of many other former Officers from the rank of Colonel to
Brigadier in the party. 686 Similarly, the Bhutto led PPP who protested the martial law
regimes of Ayub and Zia had a large number of retired Army Officers in its ranks,
foremost of who was General Naseerullah Babar. Babar had been architect of an early
Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan during the early 1970s, which Chapter Six noted
Bhutto had instigated as a means to cripple Afghanistan’s irredentist claims on
Pakistan. Babar had also coordinated the military and intelligence agencies against an
alleged MQM conspiracy for Karachi to secede and be renamed ‘Jinnahpur’.

The fundamentalist Islamic Jama’at-i Islami had a number of retired middle

ranking Army personnel who were active during the period this chapter addresses. 687
Major General Azhar an Army Officer originally commissioned in the British Indian
Army was secretary of the Islamic Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, which included retired
Army Officers, while the Islamic Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) included retired Majors
and Captains. 688

Other retired Army Officers who were Islamists included Major General
Tajammal Hussain formerly tried for the Islamist coup attempt to overthrow and kill
Zia in 1980. Malik formed the Qaumi Riffah Party QUP which included former high
ranking Officers such as Major General’s Ameer Hamza and Sheren Dil Khan, and
others from the rank of Major to Brigadier. 689 Arguably taken together with the
evidence of significant Islamist factions in the Army, some who were extremist, the
evidence of other retired Officers being active in avowedly fundamentalist political
parties indicates the penetration of more than nominal devotions of Islam into the
Army. The senior ranks also indicate that many were in a position to indoctrinate and

686
A. Mir, ‘Soldiers of Fortune: The list of retired army officials inducted into mainstream politics
seems endless’, in R. Hakim (Ed) Newsline Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 11, May 1998, pp. 27-28.
687
Arif, ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, pp. 27-28.
688
K.M. Azhar had fought in the 1948 Kashmir War, the 1965 War and 1972 War and was Secretary of
the Islamic religious party the, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, Dawn Newspaper, 30 October 2006 & Arif,
‘Soldiers of Fortune’, pp. 27-28.
689
Arif, ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, pp. 27-28.

200
otherwise convince their peers and more junior Officers—if susceptible—to their
more stringent Islamic ideologies. A feature of a number of these ex-Officers political
concerns was the strategic security of Pakistan and who Pakistan should ideally
engage in mutually beneficial military pacts which the next section shall now address.

Alliances, hostilities and Islam

The matter of military pacts involving Islamic alliances were argued

throughout the decade by Officers from the rank of Lieutenant Colonel upward to the
COAS. Beg, as COAS, favoured the concept of Islamic alliances as well as the
concepts of ‘strategic defiance’ and ‘strategic depth’ favoured by his predecessor
Zia. 690 Other senior Officers also believed in the merits of Islamic military
alliances. 691

Beg also argued the idea of ‘strategic depth’ included securing alliances with
Afghanistan and Iran, which would allow the Pakistan Army access to their territory
in which to stage a counter attack if Pakistan were overrun by India. 692 While
innovative the concept was completely incongruent with the government’s concept of
total defence of the border. Tomsen, the US special envoy, alleged that Beg, Gul and
Major General Durrani envisioned a grand Islamic strategic alliance would not only
be between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran but also ideally included Turkey, much as
Zia had also envisioned. 693

. The Generals believed these countries would act as a buffer to protect

Pakistan from what they described, again in Islamist terms, as the anti-Islamic tyranny
of the US, India and Israel. 694 Proof of such anti-Islamic tyranny seems largely tied to
grand conspiracy theories as well as possible disenchantment of the US in wake of its
withdrawal from South Asia. The US CIA Station Chief, who worked with Gul at the

690
General K.M. Arif, Khaki Shadows Pakistan 1947-1997’, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 353-
354, Cloughley, War, Coups & Terror, pp. 59-60 & Peter Tomsen, ‘The Wars of Afghanistan –
Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures of Great Powers’, Public Affairs, New York,
2011, pp. 255-257. (Tomsen was an envoy for President George Bush to South Asia). Hussain Haqqani
notes Beg’s call to ‘strategic defiance’ by middle powers, in Hussain Haqqani, Between Mosque and
Military, 2005, p. 280.
691
Brigadier Muhammad Ayub Uppal, “Our Response to threat posed by India”, PAGB, 1998, pp. 112-
113.
692
Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords – Pakistan Its Army, and the Wars Within, Oxford University Press,
Karachi, p. 419
693
Tomsen, ‘The Wars of Afghanistan’ pp. 255-257.
694
Tomsen, ‘The Wars of Afghanistan’, pp. 255-257.
201
time, confirmed that Gul believed the US relationship with Pakistan to be
characterised by expediency and perfidy. 695

Despite the improbability of such grand strategic visions appealing to Iran or

Turkey, the belief by Pakistani Officers in the efficacy of grand Islamic strategic
partnerships, as well as militant actions derived from Islamic motifs appealing to
Muslim populations, had displayed a remarkable history of optimism. The history of
success for such alliances, plans and ideas for the Army had been dismal, except for
their apparent contemporary success with the Afghan Mujahidin groups. These
visions of Islamic military solidarity and spontaneous risings had never come to
fruition in the past. As far back as the ill-fated Operation Gibraltar in 1965—noted in
Chapter Four—in which Ayub, other Army figures and Bhutto believed that the
Muslim masses of the vale of Kashmir would rise up to help the Pakistani infiltrators
had found only tepid support from the Kashmiris. Furthermore, while some Muslim
countries had supplied some materiel support to Pakistan during its wars with India,
none excepting some of the Princely States in the 1947–48 War had committed
substantially in terms of a united front of Islamic believers fighting the Indians.

The idea of such a confederacy between Pakistan and Afghanistan had been
mooted in 1960 and originally inspired by a former British Army Colonel and Major
General Akbar Khan. 696 The continuity in these grand Islamic alliances was in
suggesting that the solution to Pakistan’s precarious strategic situation was a forced
union with Afghanistan. Such a union would also end the irredentist ‘Pashtunistan’
calls intermittently made by Afghanistan as well and provide the ‘strategic depth’
consistent with Zia’s and Beg’s visions.

The idea of strategic depth and security was a longstanding issue for a
Pakistan perennially fearful over these irredentist claims made by Afghanistan upon
its territory. Since Pakistan’s establishment in 1947 Afghanistan had near

695
Bearden, The Main Enemy, p. 368.
696
Aslam Siddiqi, Pakistan Seeks Security, Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd, Lahore, 1960, pp. 52-66 &
W.K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia,
Oxford University Press, London, 1950, pp. 299-300.
202
continuously been involved in destabilising Pakistan and Afghanistan’s partnership
with India who had a history of advocating for Pushtunistan. 697

With the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the US having
vacated the region Pakistan saw its first real hope of extinguishing a hostile
Afghanistan on its western border. Pakistan’s sponsoring of the victorious Mujahidin
groups and then the Taliban was providing in part the strategic depth and security of a
compliant Afghanistan that generations of Pakistan Army Generals had always
desired.

Furthermore, the importance of acquiring ‘strategic depth’ near the end of the
1990s was argued as necessary against the backdrop of what Officers saw as the
revival of a Hindu fundamentalist India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in power in
India was believed to be overly influenced by the Hindu Nationalist Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), while the BJP had raised the threat to India from Islam.
It was believed the RSS was committed to an ideology of Hinduising India. 698
Pakistani’s blamed the RSS for the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in
1992. India’s successful testing of three nuclear devices in 1998 amplified these fears
of India engaged in a Kautilyan like strategy to reclaim a mythical Hindu empire
encompassing Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. 699

Officers with these perceptions believed a Pan-Islamic military alliance as a

valid response to resist what they believed to be an expansionist Hindu fundamentalist
India with designs of re-absorbing Pakistan into India. Some Officers noted such a
vision to be perhaps strategically fanciful, in that fellow Muslim nations such as
Bangladesh, Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics, Iran and Turkey were linked
to their own economic expediencies, which in turn was often linked to India.

697
India had also allowed the publication titled ‘Pashtunistan’ calling upon the Pashtun peoples in
Pakistan to be reunited with their Afghan brethren to be published in India W.K. Fraser-Tytler,
Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia, Oxford University
Press, London, 1950, p. 310.
698
Stuart Corbridge, ‘The militarisation of all Hindudom’? The Bharatiya Janata Party, The bomb, and
the political spaces of Hindu nationalism’, Economy and Society, Vol. 28, No. 2, May 1999. Corbridge
discusses the re-invention of India by the BJP and in particular the threat to India from Islam.
699
Brigadier Muhammad Ayub Uppal, ‘Our Response to threat posed by India’, in Green Book, 1998,
pp. 112-113. Kautilya wrote the Arthashastra around 150 AD. Similar to Machiavelli Kautilya’s work
is a comprehensive treatise on statecraft believed by many Pakistani Officers to be sought for guidance
by Indians when intriguing. See, ‘Kautilya – The Arthashastra’, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1987 &
Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Azeem Asif, ‘Mahabharata: Aspirations for a Grand Dominance in the
Next Century’, in Green Book, 1998, pp. 129-132.
203
 Throughout the 1990s India remained in the view of Pakistani Officers to be
the existential enemy with continued clashes along the line of control in Kashmir and
amongst the heights of the Siachen glacier fought and the rule of the BJP to confirm
this to them. The chapter now moves onto a consideration of Islamic revival on the
culture of the Army during the late 1980s and 1990s. 700

Army development, Islam and Culture

Arguments on the role of Islam traversed a variety of opinion in the Army

from 1988 to 1999. Opinions ranged from the expunging of foreign practices and
traditions, to the level of piety an Officer should aspire to, and even suggestions that
recruitment should be on the grounds of established piety and religious knowledge.
Ideas on the induction of Islam into the Army were also contested by some Officers
who saw the focus on Islam as being of less professional importance than secular and
professional education. Other Officers saw the emphasis on Islam as being
anachronistic and at its worst as promoting an Islamic fanaticism that was harmful to
the internal harmony of the Army and society more generally.

During Zia’s eleven-year period of rule he had taken a particular interest in

his primary constituency—the Army—and he had sought to imbue them with an
Islamism favourable to his own religious and political desires. Officers serving during
Zia’s period of rule were advancing in rank between 1988 and 1999. These Officers
had primarily been commissioned during the 1960s, 1970s and late 1950s. The
influences on these Officers had included the 1965 War with India and the strategic
shock suffered in its defeat by India in 1971. These Officers had also served through a
period experiencing a global resurgence of Islam, as well as the impact of Zia’s
eleven-year period in which he sought to Islamise the Army and Pakistan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the global and regional climate of Islamic resurgence

had a more profound impact on some Officers. Most explicit in their pursuit of
Islamisation of the Army were those Officers who argued that only those Pakistani’s

700
For a discussion of Islamic revivalism in politics, economics and culture in Pakistan in the late
1980s where it is concluded that Islamic revivalism is the result of both Zia’s Islamisation program as
well as a preceding broad based Islamic movement, see, Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘Pakistan’, in The Politics of
Islamic Revivalism – Diversity and Unity, Shireen T. Hunter (Ed), Indiana University Press,
Indianapolis, 1988, pp. 229-247.
204
who knew the Quran and Sunnah by heart should even be recruited into the Army. 701
Cloughley also had commented on a few senior Officers of the Army who possessed
overarchingly Islamic views and solutions to Army problems.

…whose approach to their military duties has been based entirely on their
interpretation of Islam, to the point of subordinating the relevance and practicability
of military doctrine. 702

The role of Islamic values in the Officer Corps was debated by Officers
during the 1990s. The definition of Islamic values was variously defined dependent
on the Officers’ philosophy, of the place of religion in the Army and society. The
desire for a more authentic Islamic identity during the 1990s is written of in
conjunction with expunging foreign influences from the Army, an issue many
believed to have been a problem that had cumulatively accrued in the Army since
1947. Officers with this perspective believed Islam to be the primary element of
Pakistani culture and it needed to be much more authentic than a facile theme uttered
in glib obeisance to the Army’s corporate identity.

In regard to Islamic leadership, the Adjutant General of the Army argued in

1990 that Officers should study how the Prophet and his companions bore adversity in
their military campaigns and they should be encouraged to reflect on their Islamic
roots in the ethical and operational aspects of leadership. 703 Arguments that sought a
return to the more pristine religious environments of the past were those typically
made by religious fundamentalists. Arguments that included a fundamentalist theme
were made during the period by Officers up to and including the rank of Lieutenant
General. The Director of Army Logistics for instance argued that the inherited models
of leadership from the British Indian Army were incompatible secular models of
leadership unsuited to Muslim Officers in Pakistan. Officers argued that such

701
For instance a Brigadier argued for a complete restructuring of the Army that would include
selection and promotion upon piety and morality as well as exclusion of non-Islamic and non-
indigenous practices, Brigadier Muhammad Aslam Khan Jami, ‘Careerism and Leadership’, Green
Book, 1992, pp. 113-116.
702
Cloughley relates one example in which a senior Officer claimed speculation on solutions to
military problems was redundant as events were preordained by the divine will. Cloughley, Wars,
Coups & Terror, p. 79 & Interview of Colonel (Retd) Brian Cloughley at Voutenay-sur-Cure, France
17 February 2010.
703
Lieutenant General Ghulam Muhammad Malik, ‘Islamic Concept of Leadership’, in Pakistan Army
Green Book, ‘Year of the Junior Leaders 1990’, Pakistan Army General Headquarters, Rawalpindi,
1990, p. 16.
205
inherited models of leadership were at any rate antiquated, as Officers now could not
be isolated from the values of its Islamic society.

During the 1990s the desire for Islamic models of Army leadership led
Officers to consider more contemporaneously robust models from the Muslim world
and advocated, for example, the lessons to be drawn from the Palestinian Intifada and
Hezbollah who were lauded for their bold tactics against the US and French forces in
Lebanon in the previous decade. 704

The concept of leadership in Pakistan in general and Army in particular has to be

based on Islam, truly reflecting the aspirations of the majority of our people. Pakistan
even if it tries cannot remain isolated from the worldwide Islamic revolutionary
movement especially in view of the closer links that have developed between
Islamicists at home and abroad. 705

It is clear that the Army included a number of senior Generals such as COAS
Beg and Lieutenant Generals Gul and Nasir who were known Islamists during this
period. In this regard the aforementioned statement of Brigadier Malik should perhaps
be considered in the context of the ideological views of his superior Officers.
Arguably, as part of patronage networks existing in the Army or simply through
seeking favour by imitation of their superior Officers stances on religion, some may
have uttered such statements in the erroneous belief it may assist career progression.
As noted in Chapter Four a number of Officers argued that a culture of
obsequiousness, sycophancy and narcissism had been cultivated in the Army during
Ayub’s tenure while Chapter Six also noted Zia’s practices of favouritism. Some
Officers, it will be argued shortly, simply attempted to present themselves as being
more pious than others.

The Commandant of the Pakistan Army Staff College argued for the
necessity of change in the leadership culture of the Pakistan Army and what he

704
Brigadier Askari Raza Malik, ‘Concept of Leadership’, Green Book, 1990, p. 10. & 241 US Marines
and 58 French Paratroopers were killed on 23 October 1983 by ‘Islamic Jihad’ suicide bombers
believed to have be coordinated by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. (ret’d)
Dr Shimon Shapira, ‘Iran’s New Defense Minister Behind the 1983 Attack on the US Marine Corps
Barracks in Beirut’, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,1 November 2013, http://jcpa.org/irans-new-
defense-minister-behind-the-1983-attack-on-the-u-s-marine-corps-barracks-in-beirut/, accessed 10
December 2013 & ‘Marine Massacre’, Newsweek, 31 October 1983.
705
Brigadier Askari Raza Malik, ‘Concept of Leadership’, Green Book, 1990, p. 10.
206
claimed was the persistence of an imperialistic British leadership pattern. A number
of Officers during the 1990s argued the presence of what they described as the
culturally incongruent blasphemous ‘God’ image of the perfect incorruptible Officer
that was inherited from the British. Officers argued that the British management
culture they inherited encouraged allegiance to an infallible Officer, which had sought
to blasphemously engineer sentimentality and loyalty to the regiment rather than
Islam. The British had indeed sought to engineer loyalty to the regiment and did take
particular care to nurture religious identity and cultural practices within the regiments
as noted in Chapter One. 706 Some Officers realised pragmatically that the British
could not have offered much else as they could not offer nationalism without creating
problems for themselves.

The British Indian culture of loyalty to the Officer and regiment was more
generally argued as incongruent for Pakistan during the 1990s, which they described
as an Islamic state and where Islam was essential to identity. Others referred to British
patterns of leadership as analogous to a corruption that had weakened the Army. The
British pattern had contributed to setting the Army morally adrift by holding onto
blasphemous and foreign practices antithetical to Islam and had contributed to defeat
in 1971, a factor also noted by Officers in Chapter Six.

The issue of moral decay more generally and the need to extinguish the
haughty irreligious clone of the British Officer of days gone by were frequently
revisited in works by Pakistan Army Officers during the 1990s. Officers were
particularly critical of the perceived moral failings of the old British Indian Army
regimental culture. Officers criticised the aping of habits inspired by the British and
earlier generations of Pakistani Officers such as ‘drinking’ and the feting of the
sexually ‘aggressive male’ believed offensive and demeaning of Muslim culture and
unacceptable to an Army of Muslims. 707 Zia himself had criticised such practices of
drinking, gambling, dancing, and music and revelled in the fact that he had not
succumbed to these vices of the British Indian Cavalry and Pakistan Armour Corps

706
Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Indian Army during
World War II’, in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 73, April 2009, p. 499, p. 528.
707
Major General Syed Tanwir Husain Naqvi, ‘Doctrine of Leadership for the Pakistan Army’, Green
Book, 1990, pp. 15-17.
207
despite being taunted by his Pakistani seniors and peers. 708 Such practices are
condemned in Islamic society and though not universally practiced by all Officers in
the past were evident in earlier generations as noted in Chapter Three. There had been
a vigorously open and inclusive social life involving mixed dinner parties, drinking
and dancing in which Pakistani Officers participated. This generation though still
having some Officers who did indulge in drinking did not do so as openly as had
occurred up until 1971. As noted earlier in the thesis many Pakistani Officers of
earlier generations were conspicuous for their British ways. The British appointed
historian of the Pakistan Army between 1957 and 1960 had noted his difficulties
sometimes in distinguishing between many Pakistani Officers and their British
counterparts. 709 Chapter Three records how some Pakistani Officers were aware of
this mimicry of British military and social customs and referred to their own Officers
as ‘Brown Sahibs’. 710

There was a realisation by many Officers during the 1990s that previous
attempts to Islamise the Army had been insincere. 711 Officers were concerned that the
Army’s Islamic motto of ‘Iman’, ‘Taqwa’, ‘Jehad-fi-Sabillah’ was used by many as a
glib slogan instead of it being an aspect of the pathway to martial superiority. 712
Distinctly fundamentalist themes were pursued during this period by Officers who
insisted that it is only through a return to such Islamic authenticity and the removal of
foreign accretions would the Army fulfil its potential.

Officers desired the authentic induction of the values of Islam, Islamic

leadership and the Islamic military ideal of the Ghazi fearless unto death. The belief
in the benefits of sincere faith in Islam was also not unsurprisingly repeated by
fundamentalist groups involved in the Afghan Jihad. These Jihadists fervently

708
Burki interviewed Zia and had been selected by Zia to write his biography. Shahid Javed Burki,
‘Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10, October 1988, p. 1085.
709
Ian Stephens, Unmade Journey, Stacey International, London, 1977, p. 333 & Maj. General
Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan Pataudi, ‘The Story of the Soldiering and Politics in India & Pakistan’,
Wajidalis, Karachi, 1978, p. 114.
710
Tarzie Vittachi, Brown Sahib, Andre Deutsch, London, 1962.
711
On the resurgence of Islam in Pakistan in a study undertaken at the time see, Sohail Mahmood,
Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1995.
712
There is a comprehensive literature on Jihad but for the purposes of this chapter see the Army’s own
explanation taken from this time period and contained in the PMA passing out parade brochure, ‘The
President’s Parade – 79 PMA Long Course’ Pakistan Military Academy on the occasion of the Review
and pass out of Cadets by Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto on 9 March 1989, published by
Packart Press, Lahore, 1989, p. iii.
208
believed that Islam provided them the spiritual succour to continue the fight when
their enemies could not. 713

...it is only then that we can be the claimants of the prize promised by God almighty,
more than once, in the Holy Quran, fully armed with strength of character, a Muslim
will prove superior to ten non-Muslims. 714

Despite this thesis noting that not all Officers subscribed to the idea of ‘one
Muslim being superior to ten non-Muslims’ the notion of Muslim martial
exceptionalism continued to exist at the beginning of the 1990s and is a continuation
of this belief noted in earlier chapters and having been attested to since 1947.

Evidence of the Ghazi persona in the Pakistan Army has been noted by
Indian Army personnel during the period this chapter addresses in combat against the
Pakistan Army at Kargil. Tenacity is a quality many soldiers have been reported to
display in desperate situations. Indian observers noted the Pakistani use of Islamic
war cries was matched with an apparent willingness to become Shaheeds (die in
combat for Allah) rather than enact a withdrawal or surrender that other soldiers may
have conceivably considered. 715 The combat between the Pakistan Army and Indian
Army was conducted in harsh high altitude positions. There were significant
difficulties in traversing the countryside as well as resupply. This was a particular
problem for the Pakistanis that may or may not otherwise account for their resilience
or inability to withdraw from the combat.

Such strident Islamic rhetoric of the 1990s perpetuated a tradition of Muslim

martial exceptionalism evident in the Army since 1947. The more avowedly
fundamentalist visions for the role of Islam in the Army were tempered somewhat by
the opposing arguments of others. A study of the opinions of Officers revealed views
on the role of Islam in the Army during the 1990s to be on a continuum from the
secular/notional to the extremist and everything in between.

The Chief Instructor of the National Defence College in 1992 argued for
caution in the promulgation of Islam to ensure it was not infiltrated by fanaticism and
sectarianism harmful to the unity of the Army and country. Some emphasised that it
713
Paul Overby, Holy Blood – An Inside View of the Afghan War, Praeger, USA, 1993, p. 19.
714
Brigadier Ashfaq Ahmad, ‘Cashing on Character’, Green Book, 1990, p. 105.
715
Srinjoy Chowdhury, Despatches from Kargil, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2000, p. 45.
209
was critically important that Jihad was understood in its fullest meaning, and not
simply as a fanatical means of waging war. 716 These Officers were arguably
concerned about the detrimental effects of such rhetoric on Army unity. These
arguments were not just theoretical concerns as Pakistan during the 1990s
experienced tremendous sectarian violence involving primarily Shia and Sunni
militant groups targeting each other as well as minorities. The 1995 coup attempt had
also been made by Islamic extremists and it was important that sectarian tendencies
not seep into and create fissures in the Army. Such arguments had been advanced by
the Commandant of the Pakistan Military Academy who argued that Islamic
education in the Army must be free of any notions of fanaticism. 717

Despite arguments on the deleterious impact of extremism the conflict on the

line of control in Kashmir as well as Siachen Glacier and Kargil continued to generate
a martial literature glorifying Jihad and the exceptional Muslim soldier. Similar to
earlier Islamist works such as Brigadier Malik’s Quranic Concept of Warfare, which
had extolled the virtues of the Pakistani soldier as a brave Ghazi and Shaheed, there
was a new generation of Army sanctioned Islamist literature that had received the
718
imprimatur of a COAS at the beginning of the decade.

General Beg wrote the foreword to Fangs of Ice written by a Lieutenant

Colonel who had instructed Officer Cadets at the PMA for nine years as well as being
a graduate of the Iranian Army Academy. This Officer was arguably an Islamist
revealed by the nature of his book as well as the fact he had attended the Iranian
Military Academy where it was noted in Chapter Six that up to forty per cent of time
was allocated to inculcating an appropriate appreciation of Islamic ideology. It is not
clear the subjects he lectured upon at the PMA but his Islamist perspective may have
been influential on the generations of Officer candidates he instructed. Ali’s book was
homage to the martial exceptionalism and heroic qualities of the Muslim Pakistani
soldier fighting in Siachen. 719 Ali eulogised the Pakistani soldier and argued the

716
Major General Salim Ullah, ‘Not By Rank Alone’, Green Book, 1992, p.??
717
Major General Malik Muhammad Saleem Khan, ‘Pakistan Military Academy – A Futuristic
Training Vision, Green Book, 1994, pp. 88-94.
718
Brigadier S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, Himalayan Books, New Delhi, First Indian
Reprint 1986.
719
Lieutenant Colonel Syed Ishfaq Ali, Fangs of Ice (Story of Siachen), Pak-American Commercial,
Rawalpindi, Pakistan, 1991. Ali provides a cross-section of interviews with soldiers recounting their
210
presence of intrinsic martial capabilities possessed only by pious Muslim soldiers, and
displayed in this instance in the physical and spiritual mastery of the enervating
challenges of war at high altitude against the Indian enemy. 720

Similarly, during the same period Brigadier Inamul Haq’s 1991 book Islamic
Motivation and National Defence was written in the established tradition of
maintaining the superiority of the Pakistani Muslim soldier while advocating Islamic
indoctrination and Islamic forms of warfare. 721

There were also more tangible manifestations of Islamism as well as the

persistence in belief of the superiority of the Muslim soldier, the importance of Jihad,
as well as the older concepts of the martial race soldier during the 1990s. A Pakistani
Brigadier delivered a paper at Oxford in 1998 arguing the extraordinary contributions
and qualities of Punjabi Muslim martial race soldiers in the Second World War. The
Brigadier drew on an eclectic source of references as evidence for his argument of the
linear continuity of the Islamic and martial race traditions of Punjabi Muslim soldiers
from the Second World War up to and including the Pakistan Army of 1998. 722

Officers contributed to the continuing glorification of the Islamic martial

identity during service with the ISI. The ISI had been General Zia’s means of
monitoring the country and by 1989 had become the most powerful foreign policy
force in Pakistan, particularly so on matters related to Islamist agendas in Afghanistan
and Kashmir where large numbers of Army Officers undertook their service. 723

Populated with significant numbers of Army Officers the ISI mentored the
Taliban in Afghanistan as well as in Kashmir in militant groups such as the Lashkar-
e-Taiba (hereafter the LeT). According to one Army ISI Officer his fellow Officers in

actions against the Indians in which the spirit of ‘Jehad’, contempt for death and the superiority of the
Pakistan Muslim soldier is extolled as an example to follow. Ali instructed at the PMA for nine years.
720
The conflict that commenced in 1984 and is fought at altitudes up to 20,000 feet amongst glaciers
and mountains with Pakistan Army casualties numbering about 3000 soldiers killed primarily by the
climate, conditions and the hostilities, see, the Army’s perspective on Siachen,
http://www.pakistanarmy.gov.pk/AWPReview/TextContent.aspx?pId=198&rnd=447, accessed 10
December 2013.
721
Brigadier Inamul Haq, Islamic Motivation and National Defence, Vanguard Books Pvt Ltd, Lahore,
1991.
722
NAM 1999-12-36, Brigadier Noor A. Hussain, ‘The role of Muslim Martial Races of today’s
Pakistan in the British Indian Army in World War II’, paper presented at St. Anthony’s College
Oxford, 5-8 April, 1998.
723
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban – The Power of Militant Islam in Afghanistan and Beyond, I.B. Tauris,
2000, p. 184
211
the ISI were ‘more Taliban than the Taliban’ in their extreme Islamist outlook. 724
During the 1990s the LeT held well publicised annual gatherings near Lahore with
public displays designed to glorify Islamic warfare traditions and highlight the deeds
of the Shaheeds and Ghazis alike. These gatherings coordinated by the ISI mentored
LeT provided an opportunity for proselytisation of potential members with their tales
of holy war, bravery and grisly relics brought back from fighting the Indians. 725 Army
Officers through their service with the ISI contributed to Pakistan’s strategic culture
derived on the notion of ‘Islam in danger’ and the threat to Pakistan from India. ISI
mentored insurgents engaged in Islamically justified violence in Afghanistan and
Kashmir.

Islamic indoctrination though was not seen as the panacea to motivation and
combat effectiveness by all Officers, as many remained concerned about the future of
army leadership if there was a disproportionate focus on Islam. A number of Officers
during the 1990s dismissed Islamisation as a priority and saw problems of efficiency
and effectiveness through the more secular lenses of educational standards and
professional training.

Many Officers during the period did not believe Islam and piety as the
primary qualities necessary for leadership or for improving the overall effectiveness
and quality of the Army. 726 These Officers as Muslims naturally viewed their faith as
an important moral quality necessary for the Officer Corps. They did not view it
though as the primary focus to improve the professional competence of the Officer
Corps with many seeing educational standards as a more important professional
issue. 727 Foreign military attachés had also noted problems with educational standards
in the Army and Pakistan more generally. The PMA had to lower its standard of
entrants and its quality of instructors during the period due to the increase in size of

724
On the ISI’s tactics and involvement with Islamic militants more generally including his interview
of an ISI Officer see, M. Iilyas Khan, ‘The ISI-Taliban Nexus’ and ‘Allah’s Army’, in, Aamer Ahmed
Khan (Ed), Herald Magazine, Vol. 32, No.11, November 2001, pp. 20-29 & Ahmed Rashid, Taliban,
p. 188.
725
Z. Khan, ‘Allah’s Army’, in I. Malik & F. Pastakia (Eds) Herald Magazine (Annual Edition), Vol.
29, No. 1, January 1998, Karachi Pakistan, pp. 123-133.
726
‘Major General Shahzada Alam Malik, ‘Senior Leaders vs Junior Leaders, Green Book, 1992, pp.
55-56.
727
Brigadier Siraj ul-Haq, ‘Junior Leadership – In the Back Drop of Corps of Military Intelligence’,
Green Book, 1990, pp. 311-312.
212
the Army to 450,000 during Zia’s time, as well as the adverse effects of Zia’s policy
of the introduction of ‘Urdu medium schools’. 728

Urdu medium schools emphasised Islamic education, whereas the English

and secular subjects taught in the English medium schools was the language of
instruction for Officers attending courses in the US, as well as being the language of
advanced technical publications not available in Urdu. 729

Some Officers saw the problem specifically as the inordinate stress on

Islamic education, which was viewed as being anachronistic, ritualistic and of little
practical use to their vision of the professionally capable Pakistan Army they aspired
it to be. One senior Officer, in order to prevent problems arising out of the ideological
content of the Friday sermons delivered by the Khateebs (a person who delivers the
Friday ‘Jum’ah’ prayer), had personally commenced vetting their sermons. 730

Other’s argued that religion was practised more for appearances than the
spirituality of Islam, and believed the Army should simply focus on improving the
quality and quantity of secular education to the Officer Corps. Many senior Officers
of the 1990s held the belief that if the Army did not address these flaws in
professional military education with less focus on Islamic indoctrination, the Army
would suffer cataclysmic problems such as heightened risk of internal sectarianism. 731
While these Officers do not explicitly state it, their argument in part could also have
entailed a rejection of Islam being used as a means of filling a training void unable to
be provided by professional and secular education.

While many did not see Islam as the primary professional issue for the Army
they did acknowledge its value as a motivational force to the Army. During the 1990s
Officers searching for a balanced model of religion and professional training argued,

728
Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army – Wars and Insurrections, Oxford University
Press, Karachi, 1999, pp. 282-283 & interview Voutenay-sur-Cure, France.
729
Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army, pp. 282-283 & Interview….
730
Lieutenant General Mohammad Tariq, ‘My Days as Division Commander’, in Green Book, 1992,
pp. 18-19 *translation of sermons from Arabic to Urdu.
731
Lieutenant Colonel Sardar Mahmood Ali Khan, ‘Higher Military Education – the Intellectual void’,
in Lieutenant Colonel Rashad Mahmood Baloch (Ed), The Citadel – Professional Magazine of the
Command and Staff College Quetta, Vol. XIV, No. 1/97, p. 15.
213
as had earlier generations of Officers, the model of balance that Israel and the Israel
Defence Force seemed to have achieved. 732

General Jehangir Karmat perceived the matter of Islamisation as one that

required an astute analysis of the evolving demographics, political and religious
consciousness of Pakistan and the men recruited into the Officer Corps. Karamat’s
argument in some way reflected the same arguments English parliamentarians had
made in the seventeenth century on insisting the English military also reflect the
changes underway in English society. 733 Lieutenant General Karamat in this way
argued that the Army should not adopt a doctrinaire pursuit of Islam and should
instead focus on the analysis of these evolving socio-religious contours of Pakistani
society. Officers, he argued, must adjust their leadership to authentically resonate with
their men, and in this regard it was vital for an Officer to possess an understanding of
the contemporary importance of Islam to Pakistan. It was thought, despite the
presence of militant Islamic sectarian groups Islamisation would occur without any
violent revolution being necessary. Islamisation it was believed would become an
irresistible tide that obviated the necessity for coercion or force.

General Karamat’s argument pivoted on the reasoning that religion had

become the ‘sine qua non’ of Pakistani society, and hence it was not to be viewed
necessarily as a risk if the Army aligned itself with the dominant societal mores
instead of resisting them, which would then invoke a major backlash. Importantly,
Karamat who was to become COAS in 1996 acknowledged, as earlier noted, that the
Officer Corps during the 1990s, were being drawn from the religiously conservative
Shurafaa middle class. It would be counter-productive in Karamat’s reasoning to have
the Army place these Officers or force them into positions at odds with the dominant
Islamic societal values and beliefs from which they had originated from. 734

732
Brigadier Muhammad Iqbal Tajwar, ‘Intellectual Development’, in, Green Book, 1992, pp. 89-90,
while Brigadier Sikandar Shami, ‘Targeting the Middle Leadership’, Green Book, 1992, pp. 25-27 also
compares the Pakistan Army unfavourably against the Israeli Army and their examples of education,
religious education in the Torah and Bible and indoctrination linking their religious heritage to
nationalism that the Pakistan Army could emulate.
733
Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters’, International Security, Vol.
19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), p. 16.
734
Lieutenant General Jehangir Karamat, ‘The Senior Commander’, in Pakistan Army Green Book,
‘Year of the Senior Field Commander 1992, Pakistan Army General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, 1992,
p. 12 & the increasing religious conservatism of the Officer Corps is noted by Saif Akhtar, ‘Pakistan
Since Independence: ‘The Political Role of the Ulama’, University of York (unpublished PhD), May
214
 Karamat’s observations on the religiously conservative origins of the Officer
Corps was a factor that had been incrementally occurring since the late 1960s.
Officers from the professional urban middle and lower classes had been joining the
Army in large numbers since the late 1960s because of the expanding role of
specialised services in the education, medical and engineering corps; a group similar
in origin to those young men who had also been joining the religious parties. 735

While Islamic parties polling records were still poor at this point in Pakistani
history, the argument towards aligning leadership values with dominant societal
values was pragmatic in light of the increasingly conservative religious origins of
Officers being recruited into the Army. Additionally, the Pakistan Government during
the 1990s was also Islamising the laws of Pakistan including the enforcement of the
Shariah Act receiving assent in 1991. The Sharif government in 1998 had also sought
a constitutional amendment to make the Quran and Sunnah supreme law, which all
added to the pragmatic aims of aligning Army doctrine and values with the Islamising
society it was drawn from. 736

Strategically, the Army was sensitive to the inherent risks of adhering to

inherited foreign traditions noted earlier in this chapter, as well as any perceptions of
irreligiosity, which as Chapter Six noted had been so incendiary immediately after the
Army’s loss in the 1971 War.

Writing in 1992 and having served through the ‘strategic shock’ of the 1971
War, Karamat was arguably cognisant of the lessons learned in 1971. Karamat was
aware of the backlash against Yahya Khan and his coterie of Officers believed to have
been isolated from the religious tenor of Pakistani society and the perception of their
un-Islamic habits. Officers like Karamat believed there had to be a socially and
culturally relevant form of Islamisation of the Officer Corps that was sensitive to
sectarian affiliation to act against the germ of extremism.

1989, p. 623. & Syed Mujawar Hussain Shah, ‘Religion and Politics in Pakistan: 1972 – 1988’, Quaid-
i-Azam University, PhD Thesis (unpublished), Islamabad, 1994, p. 254. Shahid Javed Burki a senior
World Bank figure and would be biographer to Zia ul-Haq also argued that the Officer Corps had been
drawn from a different social groups than the Ayub Khan generation from 1976 onwards, Shahid Javed
Burki, ‘Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988’, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10, October 1988, p. 1086.
735
Akhtar, ‘The Political Role of the Ulama’, p. 623 & Shah, ‘Religion and Politics’, p. 254.
736
Sohail Mahmood, Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, Vanguard Books, Lahore,
1995, p. 23. ‘Enforcement of Shariah Act’, Act X of 1991, assented to by President of Pakistan on 5
June 1991.
215
 The risks of virulent uncontrolled extremist forms of Islam being allowed to
infiltrate the Army was taken seriously by Officers like Karamat, aware of previous
Islamist coup attempts. Karamat realised that there was a tension between not
allowing the Army’s professionalism to be compromised by overly theocratic
demand, as well as a nuanced appreciation of the increased pietism of those personnel
who constituted the Officer Corps. Officers such as Karamat knew the unity of the
Officer Corps would be fractured by sectarianism and that a rational accommodation
with religious adherence and themes had to be maintained for the Army to capably
deal with any external threats, which leads to the final section of this chapter.

The Army and political elite at the beginning of the 1990s felt themselves
abandoned and isolated and that Pakistan had been manipulated expediently by the
US simply as a base in which to bleed the Russians dry in Afghanistan. Having won
the Cold War the US retreated from South Asia leaving Pakistan with a destabilised
Afghan neighbour, millions of Afghan refugees resident in Pakistan and a wartime
legacy of weapons, drug crime and corruption.

The Army and ISI were indignant at what they believed was the punitive
targeting of Pakistan with the previously moribund Pressler Amendment being
enacted near immediately after the Soviet withdrawal. The American actions were
proof to the upper echelons of the Army of US expediency. Pakistan’s utility having
ceased with the Soviet defeat, the US decision to activate the previously inactive
Pressler Amendment against them was viewed as malicious. Some US Intelligence
figures concurred in believing Pakistan had some reason to feel abandoned and
betrayed because of these actions. 737 Some Officers saw American actions as the
seeds of a conspiracy against Pakistan and they furthermore feared an Indian, US and
Israeli alliance designed to destroy Pakistan’s atomic program.

A solution to this was believed by some in the Army for Pakistan to organise
its own anti-Zionist Judeo-Christian pact with regional Muslim countries. 738 Whether
these fears could be based on any solid proof or not some Officers validly viewed the
West’s fear of Islam through the prism of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis.

737
Milt Bearden, The Main Enemy’, p. 368.
738
Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Farooq Maan, ‘Modernisation and Re-organisation of Pakistan
Army, Green Book, 1992, pp. 223-225.
216
Huntington had theorised that post-Cold War fault lines would occur between the
major civilisational groups of the world including the Western and Islamic.
Huntington in his argument had included commentary on the Islamic Revival during
the twentieth century and he maintained there would be a tendency for Muslim
countries to more authentically align their societies with Islam. 739 The leader of the
ISI proxy Islamist LeT later agreed wholeheartedly with Huntington and saw these
premises in a positive light as a means to finally usher in Islamic societies as well as
resolving issues such as Kashmir. 740 Officers saw the threat from the alleged US and
Israeli alliance in more than military terms with suspicions of the US attempting to
control Pakistan through its influence in the IMF and World Bank. 741

Quite outside the domain of previous alliance possibilities were the views of
certain Officers who believed the Army should investigate forging closer extra-
regional alliances with both Muslim and non-Muslim countries threatened by India.
Indonesia and Australia were believed to be good potential alliance partners as both
were claimed to be apprehensive of Indian naval expansion. 742

Pakistan’s vulnerability to internal issues of strategic resilience were also

analysed by Officers including the Director of Intelligence for Joint Services
Headquarters who provocatively argued the historically high defence expenditure,
unattended population growth and internal sectarianism were critical threats to
national security and resilience. 743

During the late 1990s Officers increasingly anticipated threats to Pakistan

originating from within Pakistan itself, with sectarian groups willing to engage in
violence in Pakistan’s cities even with the Army and ISI’s putative control and

739
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon &
Schuster, UK, 1997, pp. 109-121.
740
Mohammed Saeed chief of Lashkar-i-Taiba, in Zahid Hussain, ‘Inside Jihad’, Rehana Hakim (Ed),
Newsline, Vol. 12, No. 08, February 2001, p. 22.
741
Major General Tariq Bashir, ‘Growing Geopolitical Trends of the 21st Century’, in Green Book,
1998, pp. 34-37.
742
Lieutenant Colonel Maan, Green Book, 1992, pp. 223-224.
743
Brigadier Agha Ahmad Gul, ‘Training For War – Concepts For Future, Pakistan Army Green Book,
‘Training in the Army 1994, Pakistan Army General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, 1994, pp. 39-40.
‘Resilience’ may be defined as a property of a system when hit by a shock to recover its original form,
or adapt and transform into something different, or collapse and cease to function. Michael R. Raupach,
et al, Negotiating Our Future: Living Scenarios for Australia 2050, Australian Academy of Science,
Canberra, 2012, p. 8.

217
influence over many of these groups. 744 A few saw this growth of sectarian violence
as a means to broker peace with India while Pakistan cleansed itself of this
fanaticism. 745

Nevertheless the Army had continued its involvement in low intensity

conflicts that were distinctly Islamic in their justification, execution and objectives
epitomised by the Army operation that seized the Kargil Heights. The Army, which
first denied its involvement and claimed the fighters at Kargil were indigenous
Kashmiri Muslim fighters, then conceded that the ‘indigenous’ Muslim freedom
fighters that stormed the heights of Kargil were predominantly members of the
Pakistan Army. Senior Officers had conceived a plan that involved members of the
Army’s Northern Light Infantry gaining a strategic and tactical advantage by seizing
control of the normally Indian held heights. 746 The Kargil adventure caused the
unravelling of diplomacy between Nawaz Sharif and India’s Vajpayee and nearly
provoked a war. The Kargil adventure also caused the fall of the Sharif government in
the wake of recriminations as to who was responsible for the decision to undertake the
operation.

External observers of the Army including an Indian Army General who was
himself a Muslim and had been involved in the Indian response analysed the endemic
nature of the problems within the Pakistan Army culture. This General, together with
a number of other analysts including Pakistani academics, attributed the problems
stemming from the dangerous Islamism in the Army. This Islamism was inherent in
what was described as the Army’s continuing adherence to the ‘Muslim Cult of the
Warrior’. 747 In view of what has preceded this chapter, including the analysis of
‘martial race’ in Chapter One, the ‘Muslim Cult of the Warrior’ had long antecedents.

744
Major General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, ‘The Next Millenium: A Geopolitical Crystal Ball, in,
Pakistan Army Green Book, ‘Pakistan Army in 21st Century, Pakistan Army General Headquarters,
Rawalpindi, 1998, pp. 1-5.
745
Major General Tariq Bashir, ‘Growing Geopolitical Trends of the 21st Century’, in Green Book,
1998, pp. 34-37.
746
General V.P. Malik, Kargil – From Surprise to Victory, HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 92-93.
General Malik as chairman of the Indian Chiefs of Staff Committee coordinated the Indian response to
Kargil. Malik describes the ‘jihadi militants façade’ by the use of radio transmissions in Pashto and
Balti and the wearing the garb of militants which was implemented successfully early in the Kargil
campaign by the Pakistan Army.
747
General V.P. Malik, Kargil, p. 47 & former Pakistan Ambassador to Washington and Academic
Husain Haqqani, in ‘Why Muslims Always Blame the West’, http://www.husainhaqqani.com/2004/10/,
accessed 12 December 2013, p. 2.
218
The ‘Muslim Cult of the Warrior’ could be attributed to a continuous belief in the
‘martial race’ beliefs propagated by the British into those original Punjabi and
Pakhtuns who would constitute the Army, as well as the conflation of this over the
course of the Army’s history with a belief in their ‘Islamic martial exceptionalism’.

Conclusion

This chapter noted how the outlook of many Army Officers had been
influenced by the impact of the eleven-year period of Zia’s control of the Army and
rule over Pakistan. The chapter also noted how Officers were being drawn from the
religiously conservative lower middle class (Shurafaa) of Pakistan. This was a trend
that had been incrementally occurring since the late 1960s when this technically more
educated class sought opportunities in many technical arms of the Army. Amongst
other decisions, in his Islamising process Zia engaged in the preferential selection of
Officers based on Islamic sympathies and allowed the fundamentalist Jama’at-i
Islami to proselytise in the Army, which served to amplify this trend. 748

The chapter noted that this conservative outlook of many Officers together
with the cumulative influence of Zia’s rule and his sponsoring of the religious right
was influential on their outlook and evident in many responses from Officers for more
authentic Islamisation. Furthermore, the involvement of many of these religiously
conservative Officers or indirectly in the ISI in the conduct of a ‘holy war’ in
Afghanistan caused many Officers in the Army to normalise, embrace and argue for a
more thorough and deeply Islamised Army. The chapter also noted how this
Islamisation was sometimes expressed via a questioning of the relevance of the
inherited traditions from the British Indian Army. Notwithstanding these arguably
significant trends, the chapter did note that Islam was expressed along a continuum
from the notional to the extreme, and that Officers had questioned the relevance to the
Army of an emphasis on Islam rather than professional education.

The next chapter is the last substantive chapter of the thesis and examines the
time period from the assumption of General Pervez Musharraf’s control of the country

748
Zia permitted the distribution of Jama’at-i Islami literature to the Officer Corps and soldiers from
1976 onwards including copies of Maududis books being awarded as prizes at the Army Education
School, in Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution – The Jama’at-i Islami of
Pakistan, University of California Press, 1994, p. 172.
219
in 1998 to his resignation as the Commander in Chief of the Army in 2007. The
chapter will examine the impact of Islam on the Army within the context of the
alliance with the US in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York as
well as analyse the role of Islam in the training, education and motivation of the Army
during the same time period. The chapter also examines the role of religion more
generally as an element of leverage in warfare.

220
221
 Chapter VIII The Anvil 1999–2007

The countless tales and traditions of victories in battle against heavy odds by their sub-continental

Muslim ancestors and by the Arabs, during the rise and spread of Islam, inspire and motivate the

armed forces of our country.

(Brigadier Jamshed Ali – Infantry Brigade Commander & Editor of Pakistan Army Journal 2002) 749

Introduction

The failed attempt by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to dismiss General

Pervez Musharraf from his post of Army Chief—by having him replaced while he
was engaged in an army meeting in Sri Lanka—ultimately ushered in Pakistan’s third
military regime since 1947. The tension between the Army and the Prime Minister
had been simmering ever since Pakistan had to undertake a less than gracious exit
from their Kargil adventure. Nawaz Sharif was seen to have been admonished,
castigated and finally rescued by US President Bill Clinton; while Sharif blamed the
Army for the rapid escalation in tensions between Pakistan and India.

This chapter addresses the period from Musharraf’s coup in 1999 to

November 2007 when Musharraf resigned as Army Chief. The time period was
selected because the Army returned to national dominance in 1999 with General
Musharraf’s coup and closes in 2007 with Musharraf’s cessation as Chief of Army.

This chapter consists of five sections. Firstly, a brief overview of the political
and social context of Pakistan during this period shall be provided in order to situate
the later discussion. The second section shall consider the impact of Islam on the
Army which featured the adoption of Jihad in 2006 as the Army’s motivational
philosophy, including understanding this correctly in light of the rewards of
martyrdom and the role of the Ghazi, faith and steadfastness on the battlefield. The
third section shall provide an examination of the impact of the US alliance on the
Army from 2001 onwards. The fourth section is a consideration on the role of Islam in
the Army during the period, focusing on the links between education and Islam in the

749
Brigadier Jamshed Ali, Defence Horizons, Mas Printers, Karachi, 2003, p. 243 & p. ii.
222
pre-admission phase, Cadet College, PMA and Staff College phases together with the
place of Islamic ethics and the sociological background of the Army Officers will be
analysed. Lastly, a consideration of how the Army utilises religion more generally as
a potential means of tactical and strategic leverage shall be addressed.

The examination of these factors for the period 1999 to 2007 adds to those
analyses of the role of Islam and the Army built upon in previous chapters. The
chapter concludes that Islam’s place in the Pakistan Army in the first decade of the
twenty-first century is one of significant importance in which the Army is
fundamentally aware of the demographic contours of its Officer Corps drawn from a
religiously conservative society. The Army is also aware of the importance of
ensuring religious education and sensibilities are not displaced by more extremist
expressions of Islam. The Army is finally cognisant of the hostility to the nature of the
Army’s alliance with the US and the ambivalence manifested in combating Pakistan’s
own terrorist problems by many of its Officers.

In providing some historical context to the following examination it is

important to understand that Pakistan had been reeling from the negative reactions
and sanctions to its 1998 nuclear tests. This negative impact was then magnified by
General Musharraf’s coup that left the country ever more isolated and castigated in
world opinion. Musharraf who had led the Army during the Kargil debacle with India
initially denied any Army involvement. Issues arising out of the domestic imbroglio
involving Kargil had subsequently toppled the corrupt, albeit democratically elected
government of Nawaz Sharif, with Sharif’s attempt to replace Musharraf. 750

Significantly, Pakistan was also identified as a source of international

terrorism with an international community wary of Pakistan’s newly minted military
dictatorship as well as its nuclear weapons and terrorist sympathies. Part of this
criticism involved Pakistan’s support for the fundamentalist Taliban regime in

750
At the beginning of this incident Pakistan strongly denied any formal army involvement in the
Kargil episode, but after the Indian Army released compelling evidence this position changed. See for
instance, General V.P. Malik (Indian Army), Kargil – From Surprise to Victory, HarperCollins, New
Delhi, 2006, p. 92 & p. 211, which includes photographs of Pakistani pay books from the Northern
Light Infantry, Pakistan Field Force and Sindh Regiments as well as captured Officers diaries, pp. 212-
215, & A succinct account of the corruption of the Sharif and Bhutto governments was provided by a
CIA Officer stationed in Islamabad during the period in Gary C.Schroen, First In – An Insiders
Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, Ballantine Books, New York,
2005, pp. 53-54.
223
Afghanistan, as well as what were perceived as Pakistan’s own ‘Jihad factories’
claimed to be producing thousands of intolerant anti-Western and anti-Hindu zealots.
Many of these Jihadis were involved in fighting for the Taliban as well as fighting in
Kashmir against India for Pakistan.

The rationality of such support as well as the objectives and impact on

Pakistan of these Jihadis was also being questioned in Pakistan. 751 Influential retired
Pakistan Army figures continued though to promote these Jihadi’s holy tasks and
dismissed the entire notion of them constituting a problem for Pakistan. Islamists like
retired COAS General Beg, noted in the previous chapter, argued the complaints
against the Jihadis were driven by Jewish supported Indian propagandists to isolate
Pakistan and the Islamic causes it supported. 752 As also noted towards the end of the
previous chapter there was a belief in an American, Indian and Jewish conspiracy
against Pakistan held by many Officers as well.

Those in the Pakistani defence community had reverted to the rhetoric of

religion in defending Pakistan. India was denigrated in terms of its alleged Hindu
fundamentalist agenda, which was thought to be an inherent part of its continuing
Kautilyan philosophy that harboured hostile designs against an Islamic Pakistan. 753
Added bile to the defence community was the impact of the defeat at Kargil, which
was bitterly resented by serving and retired Army Officers alike. Apart from gloating
over their Kargil victory the Indians were perceived to have embarrassed Pakistan in
publishing the salacious details contained in the ‘Hamoodur Rahman Commission
Report’ on the 1971 War a day before Pakistan’s Independence Day. The publication
of the report and its details on the drunkenness and licentiousness of the Army

751
See for instance, Zahid Hussain, ‘In the Shadow of Terrorism’, and Ismail Khan, ‘Terrorists or
Crusaders?, in Rehana Hakim (Ed), Newsline, Vol. 11, No. 8, Karachi, February 2000, pp. 16-30,
Taimur Siddiqui, ‘The Soldiers of Allah’, and Zahid Hussain, ‘Inside Jihad’, & ‘Jihad Begins at
Home’, in Rehana Hakim (Ed), Newsline, Vol. 12, No. 8, Karachi, February 2001, pp. 20-32.
752
Maj. General (r) Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Indian Delusion for Power’, p. 114, & General (COAS) (r)
Mirza Aslam Beg, ‘Dialogue for Peace and Myth of Terrorism’, in Dr S.M. Rahman (Ed),‘National
Development and Security’, Quarterly Journal, Vol. IX, No. 3, Serial No. 35, Spring 2000, Foundation
for Research on International Environment National Development and Security, Rawalpindi. *This
Journal and the Organisation it represents were founded by General Beg after his term as COAS.
753
Maj. General (r) Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Indian Delusion for Power’, p. 106 & Lt. Colonel (r)
Muhammad Zaman Malik, ‘Hijacking Stunt of Air India Aircraft’, in Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal (Ed),
Defence Journal, Vol. 3, No. 7, February 2000, pp. 48-49, in which a terrorist hijacking of an Air India
aircraft that resulted in the death of an Indian civilian and freeing of Kashmiri Islamic fighters was
attributed to the Indians and Mossad (no evidence provided to substantiate the claim) claiming this was
another example of the West, Zionists and Hindus targeting Muslims.
224
Officers was humiliating, insulting and even included a tortuous argument that it
constituted blasphemy. 754 Pakistan’s military were outraged at India’s baiting of
Pakistan and what were seen as insults to Islam. Additionally, the Pakistani security
elite was also rankled at what was believed to be a discriminative US policy favouring
India.

Pakistani defence community outrage was evident, for example in one

publication which featured an image of President Clinton depicted as a grotesquely
proportioned cowboy sheriff shielding Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee who was
shown pointing two pistols at a uniformed and helpless Musharraf. 755 Perceptions of
an American preference for a Hindu fundamentalist India infuriated Pakistani
strategic and religious sensibilities.

The terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 in New York had,
excepting the US itself, perhaps no greater impact than it did upon Pakistan and
Afghanistan. In acceding to the US ultimatum to join the Global War on Terror,
Pakistan and the Pakistan Army reversed an established objective only achieved in the
last decade of securing a reasonably pliant Taliban regime that would provide
strategic depth to Pakistan. The about face in policy also negated one of Pakistan’s
few security successes in mentoring the Taliban as one of their clients. With the
Taliban’s displacement an American friendly, and more disastrously an India friendly,
Afghan regime was ostensibly in control of Afghanistan again. 756

The ISI and Army’s mentoring of the Afghan Taliban and allied groups had
been a point of concern and interest by the US and the West prior to the September 11
754
Humayun Gauhar, ‘Line in the Sand’, in, Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal (Ed) Defence Journal, Vol. 4, No.
2, Karachi, September 2000, pp. 26-27. The ‘salacious’ details of General Yahya had been hinted at in
many memoirs and other publications but it was galling for Pakistan to have the full and ‘supposed’
secret document published in an Indian daily which added to the embarrassing details of Yahya’s
alleged profligacy already provided in such books of the time as, Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan – Eye
of the Storm, Vanguard Books, 2002, pp. 258-259. In regard to the publishing of the report being
‘blasphemous’ it is possible the Pakistani author may have viewed Pakistan’s national day also as a
celebration of ‘Islam’ by virtue of Pakistan being a Muslim homeland.
755
Dr S.M. Rahman, ‘Clintonite Indian Tilt’, in Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal (Ed) Defence Journal, Vol. 4,
No. 1, Karachi, August 2000, pp. 16-19 & M.B. Naqvi, ‘Significance of Clinton’s diplomacy’, in Ikram
ul-Majeed Sehgal (Ed), Defence Journal, Vol. 3, No. 9, Karachi, April 2000, pp. 12-15.
756
‘Global War on Terror’, hereafter referred to as GWOT & Sherard Cowper-Coles a British
Ambassador to Afghanistan and later Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative to Afghanistan, noted
President Hamid Karzai’s extreme distrust of Pakistan, his particular distaste for Pakistani Army
Officers and his ‘binary’ position on Pakistan as one where one was either with Pakistan or
Afghanistan. Sherard Cowper-Coles, Cables From Kabul – The inside story of the West’s Afghanistan
campaign, HarperPress, United Kingdom, 2011, pp. 68-69.
225
attacks. After the September 11 attacks, Pakistan’s influence with these groups, their
trans-border attacks, and the risks of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of these
militants and/or sympathetic Islamists in the Pakistan Army became a subject of
greater official, general media and academic scrutiny. 757 Apart from the concerning
instances of military personnel being involved in at least one of the assassination
attempts against Musharraf, Pakistan seemed to be almost imploding under the weight
of Islamist violence which raised questions of a Talibanisation of Pakistan. 758

Significantly to those concerned about the march of the Taliban on

Islamabad, the writ of the Taliban had extended to supplying ‘Shuhada’ (martyrdom)
certificates to the families of their Pakistani Jihadi’s killed fighting the US, ISAF and
Afghan Army forces in Afghanistan and the establishment of their own parallel
governance structures in some areas. 759

The Pakistani’s were aware of the menace presented. The threat was
highlighted in 2007 by the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistani and foreign analysts sought to seek the cause of the violence engulfing
Pakistan in the wake of Pakistan’s alliance with the US and their war against terror.
Pakistan found itself torn between the necessity of being an active member in the
GWOT as well as keeping lines of communication open with Islamic militants in
order to negotiate in an increasingly lethal confrontation with those militants. 760 The
nature of Islam and who legitimately represented its authentic tenets were being hotly
contested in Pakistan, and all too often via bombings, assassinations and sustained
gun battles between government forces and Jihadis. The Army had always believed
itself to be the authoritative voice representing and defending an ‘Islam in danger’
from the Hindu enemy. There were now groups who believed the Army had put Islam
in danger.

757
Apart from numerous media reports on the dangers of an Islamist Army or Terrorists acquiring
Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal. Scenarios were put forward hypothesising that powerful individuals
sympathetic to al Qaeda in Pakistan could gain control of these weapons; David Jordan, James D. Kiras
et al., Understanding Modern Warfare, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008, p. 318.
758
‘Talibanisation’ is a term that highlights the prospects and chances of Pakistan being taken over by
‘Jihadi’s’, this definition acquired from Lt. Colonel Naveed Safdar, ‘Internal Security Threats to
Pakistan, p. 18.
759
Shafiq Ahmad, ‘Unstoppable Taliban’, in Arifa Noor (Ed), Herald, Vol. 38, No. 3, Karachi, March
2007, pp. 76-78.
760
Oakley, ‘Radicalisation by Choice. p. 5.
226
 During this period there arose militants who actively fought the Army
because the Army was perceived as being anti-Islamic, while the Army also
maintained alliances with other Islamic militant groups, and then others yet who the
Army engaged in combat. The next section shall explore the role of Islam in the Army
during the period.

Indian military analysts argued that a fundamental shift had occurred in the
Pakistan Army in the generation of Officers commissioned after 1971. Pakistani
Officers of this generation were attaining senior positions near the end of the 1990s
and early into the first decade of the new century that this chapter considers. Some
Indian analysts argued that there existed within this cohort a dangerously
underestimated extremist element that were gaining rather than losing strength,
despite the alleged purge of Islamist Officers by Musharraf in 2001. 761 Indian
perceptions it must be stated are influenced by a long history of acrimony with
Pakistan commencing in 1947. The Indian history with Pakistan is also littered with
countless examples of what India has claimed have been Pakistani inspired Islamist
insurgencies. Furthermore, as noted in Chapter Two, in examining the 1947–48 War
India has from its inception believed in Pakistan Army complicity in these incidents.
Islamist themed attacks against India during the period this chapter considers include
the Pakistan Army masquerading as Jihadists in Kargil in 1999 just prior to
Musharraf’s coup. Additionally, India held grave suspicions of ISI support of the
terrorist attacks against the Indian Parliament in 2002 and the ongoing insurgency in
Kashmir.

Jihad and the Army

Whatsoever the accuracy of Indian perceptions of a radicalised Islamist

Pakistan Army, Islamisation was of significant motivation to serving and retired
Pakistan Army Officers during this period. Serving and retired army personnel were
involved in the training of members of the Tanzeemul Ikhwan Islamic organisation in
preparation for a future Islamic state. 762 More specifically, the Army during this
period prepared Officers and soldiers for warfare through the official adoption of
Quranic injunctions in motivation, ethical guidelines and the waging of war,

761
R.S.N. Singh, The Military Factor in Pakistan, Lancer, New Delhi, 2008, p. 325.
762
Zahid Hussain, ‘Jihad Begins at Home’, p. 23.
227
 Motivation is the most important factor, which takes a soldier to the battlefield for the
ultimate, i.e. to lay his life for his motherland … Presently Jihad forms the basis of
Pakistan Army’s motivation philosophy. 763

The Army produced a significant report in 2006 on the motivational

philosophy of the Pakistan Army which explored the efficacy of Islamic motivation in
comparison with other philosophies of motivation utilised by the US, Chinese, Indian
and Israeli Armies. Jihad was concluded in this study as the most effective and
readily adaptable basis for Pakistani Officers and units in providing an all-
encompassing motivational philosophy for the Army. The notion of Jihad was
carefully explicated in the study and reflected on the necessity of ensuring a
comprehensive understanding of what Islamic warfare entailed. This importuning was
similar to that noted as being made by Officers in Chapter Seven who urged the
informed introduction of Islamic warfare traditions was absolutely necessary for
Officers to understand.

The study provided some contextual exegesis on the forms of Jihad and
emphasised the importance of differentiation between the lesser and greater forms of
Jihad. For example, the study differentiated between those forms of Jihad such as,
Jihad bil Saif and Qital (combative Jihad, that is, Jihad by the Sword and War) and
its comparison with Jihad bil Nafs (Jihad by Heart), Jihad bil Lissan (Jihad by
Tongue), and Jihad bil Qalam (Jihad by Pen) to mitigate fanatical or misguided
interpretations of the holy sources. It was recommended that Officers were effectively
educated in the nuances of Jihad as well as injunctions found in the Quran and
Sunnah on how to conduct warfare in an Islamic manner. Such clarity was required as
the US actions in Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks had
ushered in numerous publications in Pakistan celebrating Jihad and arguing for
instance that Muslim disadvantage could be attributed to the fact that military power
was not, “vested in the hands of the righteous”. 764

The study, also in considering other motivational and organisational factors

such as group cohesion, comradeship and esprit-de-corps, concluded that Islam was
superior. The Officers who authored the document argued that Islam provided an
763
Brigadier B.M, et al, Pakistan Army General Headquarters, ‘Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan
Army’, 2006, (unpublished internal 24 page report), Rawalpindi, Pakistan, p. 1.
764
Husain Haqqani, ‘The Gospel of Jihad’, Foreign Policy, No. 132 (Sep-Oct. 2002), p. 72.
228
over-arching system that inherently inculcated all these values when a genuine faith in
Islam existed, an argument that was also made in the previous decade and noted in
Chapter Eight. The essence again of this belief of Islamic exceptionalism was
encapsulated in the new millennium in much the same terms as had been in the last
century.

The concept of Islam does emphasize on the ideological and spiritual dimensions thus
giving a cutting edge over the non-believers. 765

Other benefits of Islam to the soldier, apart from the inherent superiority over
‘non-believers’, were noted in the Islamic concepts of reward and punishment in the
hereafter should a soldier be killed on the battlefield in the way of Allah.
Steadfastness is seen as especially important for soldiers under fire overcoming
natural inclinations of self-preservation, and is one that correlates to the ideal
attributes of a Muslim warrior. Al-Fughom was noted in the introduction of this thesis
as also introducing the notion of ‘steadfastness’ as a primary factor in the spiritual
motivation of the Muslim warriors in the time of the first four caliphs. 766 In this way
Officers arguing for Islamic exceptionalism by virtue of their faith as noted in the
previous quote, are fundamentalists in the truest sense. Not only is there a direct line
between their beliefs in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there is a direct line to
those essential beliefs and qualities that Al-Fughom described as qualities of Islamic
soldiers in the age of the first four caliphs. This is fundamentalism in its truest sense
by drawing inspiration from the Islamically pristine past.

This 2006 study devotes considerable attention in its analysis to what it

describes as the ‘conceptual contours of the Islamic concept of Jihad’, including the
obligations of Jihad. The study corroborates the arguments of Officers drawn from
the Pakistan Army Green Book series and Pakistan Army Journal referred to in
previous chapters in their analysis of the early battles of Islam. In this regard this
study, completed early in 2006, adds to the continuity of a theme actively pursued by
Army Officers from the late 1960s onwards on the place and relevance of Islam to the
Army.

765
Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan Army, p. 5.
766
Nawaf Bedah Al-Fughom, ‘Factors in the Spiritual Preparation of Muslim Armies’, Unpublished
PhD Dissertation, The University of Leeds, April 2003.

229
 Officers knew these battles of antiquity not to be relevant in so far as the
impact of modern technology involved in warfare, but did argue the timeliness of faith
and resilience imparted by their religion was enhanced by the study and devotion to
the ideals of these religious figures of antiquity. Especially important was the idea of
creating spiritual resoluteness as a qualitative edge in potential conflicts involving
fighting technologically and numerically superior opponents. As noted in Chapter
Seven the US had been considered as a potential foe, one with an obvious
technological advantage.

These Officers considered the importance of these battles of antiquity lay in

their being a point of timeless reference for what is possible if piety is authentic and a
Muslim soldier acts in the traditions of the fearless unto death Ghazi. Belief in the
tradition of the Ghazi is evident in South Asian Islam as well as Islam more generally.
The tradition of the Muslim Ghazi challenging the enemies of Islam with affirmations
of their love of martyrdom, over earthly pleasures has a long history in Islamic martial
history.

Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi had challenged the Sikhs of the present day Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan in the early nineteenth century by emphasising the
fearlessness of his Muslim warriors and the rewards they would obtain by dying in
battle. 767 The antiquity of this tradition to die in Jihad had been uttered by the revered
Islamic military figure of Khalid bin Al-Waleed, reputed to have admonished a
Persian Governor prior to his invasion of Persia,

Submit to Islam and be safe: Or agree to the payment of the Jizya, and you and your
people will be under our protection; else you will have only yourself to blame for the
consequences, for I bring a people who desire death as ardently as you desire life. 768

The legend of Khalid’s resolute qualities as an Islamic warrior had

furthermore been part of the Pakistan Army’s celebration of its Islamic military
culture since its inception. Khalid’s qualities of tenacity and fearlessness unto death
were qualities aspired to by the Pakistan Army, and as noted in Chapter Two were

767
Marc Gaborieau, ‘A Peaceful Jihad? South Asian Muslim proselytism as seen by Ahmadiyya,
Tablighi Jama’at and Jama’at-i Islami’, in David Taylor (Ed), Islam in South Asia: Critical Concepts in
Islamic Studies Volume III, Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 153-154.
768
Lt. General A.I. Akram, The Sword of Allah – Khaid bin Al-Waleed, Adam Publishers, New Delhi,
2006 [1970 Pakistan), p. 226.
230
drawn upon at the PMA where a founding Cadet company was named in honour of
Khalid. In 2002, Khalid’s name was again appropriated in recognition of his faith and
his Islamic martial qualities in the naming of Pakistan’s first indigenous battle tank as
the Al-Khalid.

Khalid’s name and reputation are much more than a simple honour being
bestowed by virtue of the reputation of a successful soldier or politician upon a battle
tank. While in the West military vehicles such as tanks have been named after famous
Generals such as Patton or Sherman, the importance of Khalid as a famous General is
also equated with his innate Islamic qualities of martyrdom and Islamic purity.
Khalid’s reputation had been eulogised in 1970 with the publication of a book upon
him by a Pakistani General. 769 It is the Islamic nature of Khalid and other Islamic
figures of antiquity that the Army in seeking to draw inspiration from these pious
martial figures of antiquity hope to inspire a Pakistan Army. The Army are aware that
it may have to combat an enemy who is both numerically and technically superior to
them, whether that be India or some other enemy.

No matter what we do to achieve numerical superiority over our adversaries, it will be

impossible for Muslims to prepare a matching response with compatible arsenal [sic].
This was true of the past battles; it is valid for the present and may continue to remain
as such for future, provided we are true Muslims. 770

The discussion of numerical superiority is a theme discussed in Army

publications, memoirs and literature since 1947 concerning the Pakistan Army and its
wars with India. While India has usually remained the focus of such studies, some
attention, as noted in Chapter Seven, has considered the US, Western countries and
Israel.

Over-archingly the adoption of Jihad bil-Saif as the established war fighting

philosophy of the Army was recognised as the necessary qualitative distinction
between Pakistan and their non-Islamic adversaries in the 2006 study. Earlier
generations of Officers, as noted in previous chapters, had also asserted their belief of
a qualitative difference between a spiritually motivated Muslim soldier and a non-

769
Lt. General A.I. Akram, The Sword of Allah.
770
Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan Army, p. 10.
231
Muslim adversary to be valid. This belief has been evident since the Army’s
inception.

These beliefs though noted throughout this thesis are perhaps most explicitly
and perhaps most pragmatically stated by a Lieutenant Colonel in an issue of the
Quetta Staff College Journal,

While one cannot negate the importance of training, the point we miss out here is that
our enemy is also training hard as we are, or probably even better. So, if both the
belligerents are training equally hard, then how we can [sic] expect to win once the
enemy enjoys the preponderance of men and materiel. There has to be something
else than mere training. This something else has to be a gradual indoctrination of our
rank and file in spirit of Jihad and reliance on Allah’s help… 771

Despite the Lieutenant Colonel’s article being titled A radical view, it was anything
but radical for an Army which had routinely published such arguments in its own
journals and other military publications on the belief in Islamic exceptionalism in
martial affairs since the late 1960s and beforehand with Ayub’s early statements.

Early in the new century a retired Lieutenant General and former ISI chief
had asserted the importance of the ‘Jihadi’ zeal for the Army,

…while we enjoy the terror that our Islamist warriors strike in the unbelieving hearts,
let us not forget the way the army functions: mission oriented, in unity and behind its
commander. 772

Similar to other Officers noted in Chapter Seven and in the adoption of the
findings of this report this General had emphasised the importance of such ‘Jihad’
being conducted and coordinated within the ambit of appropriate command and
control standards in the Army. Some Officers also emphasised that Islamic zeal must
be delicately separated from a tendency in some to attribute floridly celestial
examples of the Almighty’s intervention in warfare.

There were some instances for example where Officers had claimed the hand
of Allah had deflected rounds. Such tendencies were warned against as contributing to

771
Lt. Colonel Ali Khan, ‘Fighting Outnumbered – A Radical View’, The Citadel, 1/98, quoted in
Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan Army, p. 18.
772
Lt. General (r) M. Asad Durrani, An Un-historic Verdict, Jang Publishers, Lahore, 2001, p. 238.
232
a form of fatalism in which events occurred due to divine will outside the agency of
army training, planning or intention. 773

There was an authentic belief in Officers who argue with great vehemence
the importance of a true faith to Islam as an essential quality that would in the
confusion, danger and fog of war allow the Army to prevail. The belief was believed
equally valid in regard to a numerically superior foe such as India or a more
technologically advanced foe such as the US. The memory of the Afghan
Mujahideen’s success against the technologically advanced Soviets remained a model
of the efficacy of Jihad as noted in Chapter Seven.

A Brigadier underscored the absolute necessity of this in a 2003 argument

that the Army must cultivate a state of religious purity to enable the force
multiplication benefits that only true piety would provide the Army. 774 This argument
made by other Pakistani Officers over time, and noted in previous chapters,
maintained that Islam must be more than a ‘gloss’ or a ‘corporate shine’ on the Army
as this would not make the Army qualitatively different from other armies. The
essence of these arguments is that it is only when the Pakistan Army can cultivate an
army of pious soldiers committed to Jihad willing to embrace martyrdom (Shahada)
for Islam would the Army experience a force multiplying qualitative difference over
their adversaries.

Necessary for such piety is a love and devotion to Allah and his messenger
Muhammad beyond that of any other earthly familial connection. The great rewards
for martyrdom are found in the models of the great martyrs from the time of the
Prophet and, “according to Islam, martyrs who sacrifice their lives for the cause of
Allah are not dead. They remain alive in heaven”. 775

773
Hamid Hussain, ‘Martial Mind Pakistan Officer Corps thought process about Defence’, in Ikram ul-
Majeed Sehgal (Ed), Defence Journal, July 2002. Divine intercession has been claimed as a factor in
army success by a number of Officers over the course of the history of the Army from the statements of
the ISI Chief Lt. General Ahmad to earlier generations such as Maj. General Tajammal Hussain Malik,
‘The Story of My Struggle, Jang Publishers, Lahore, 1991, p. 48, p. 50 & p. 69. Cloughley also
mentions instances of Officers believing in fatalism where solutions to tactical problems for instance
are redundant as the outcome is preordained, in Brian Cloughley interview, Voutenay-sur-Cure,
France, 17 February 2010.
774
Brigadier Jamshed Ali, Defence Horizons, Mas Printers, Karachi, 2003, p. 248.
775
Adil Salahi, Muhammad: Man and Prophet, Element Books, Shaftesbury Dorset, 1995, p. 337.
233
 Such devotion arguably treads a fine line for those uninitiated to
understanding the personal psychology of such devotion. Arguably, some conceive
this level of faith to be lying somewhere along a continuum of a blind faith and a
suicidal recklessness. This degree of faith and piety is stringent but not unknown in
contemporary or historical records of Muslims involved in combat.

Martyrdom has occurred in the context of Muslim warfare in the outwardly

reckless human wave attacks conducted by the Shia Iranian Basij paramilitaries in the
Iran-Iraq War, to the suicide attacks by Islamic militants. This is not the only species
of martyrdom though, as martyrdom may be incurred in hard fought combat where
lives on each side are taken dearly. The frontier warfare against the Pakhtun tribesmen
in campaigns spanning the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries involved a
patience and cunning on the part of combatants to inflict casualties, and hence are
qualitatively different from the aforementioned example of the Basij. What is being
argued is that Islamic warfare does not come in one model and it may be subject to
cultural and sectarian influences such as the aforementioned Shia human wave
attacks.

The Pakistan Army concept of Islamic warfare recognises the Islamic

concept of martyrdom but it also recognises that this will occur in the context of
professional soldiers motivated by Islam employing their skills to engage in combat in
the most skilful manner possible. If that means embracing martyrdom because they
are isolated on a precipice in Kargil unable to be resupplied many soldiers are willing
to do this as noted in Chapter Seven.

What the previous paragraph wished to establish is that these notions of

martyrdom are far from foreign concepts, and they have a long history in Islamic
warfare which has been displayed in different forms from the aforementioned human
wave attacks to the more personalised casualties resulting in suicide attacks and
combat skirmishing. In this regard the Pakistan Army, wishing to inculcate in its
Officers and personnel a quality that would literally make them sell their lives
skilfully and dearly in a Jihad, would set them apart from other armies personnel.
This is rational in terms of their indoctrination into the steadfast aspects of Islamic
warfare and the ultimate rewards obtained from such sacrifice.

234
 Implicit in the adoption of Jihad as a motivational philosophy of the Army in
2006 was a criticism of previous levels of the use of Islam as shallow and lacking a
thorough conviction to Islam. Competing ideologies had diverted good Muslim
Officers from becoming more authentically pious. The 2006 Philosophy of
Motivation described the history of motivation in the Army until 1977 as a period in
which the Islamic concept of motivation had neither been clearly articulated, accepted
nor instituted as a practicable motivational philosophy for the Army. General Zia’s
version of Islamisation as noted in Chapter Six was not acclaimed by all in the Army.
The 2006 report nevertheless recorded Zia as having ushered in a ‘golden era of Islam
that had encompassed a revival and adoption of Islamic culture and tradition in the
Army’. Islamisation’s acceptance was initially lukewarm though it was accepted by
the majority after the Afghan War the report argues. 776

The Army still harboured concerns over competing secular and un-Islamic
divergences such as materialism, careerism, class consciousness, sectarianism and
caste consciousness, which were criticised and argued as factors which had dissipated
an authentic Islamic motivation of the Army between 1988 and 1999. 777

There were Officers who maintained there had to be a careful analysis of

piety in the Army to prevent naive generalisations of the Army’s relationship to
religion. Some noted what they perceived as the hypocritical and sycophantically
manufactured nature of Islamic devotion in the Army. Though acknowledging Islam
to be more evident in the new millennium than previous decades they ruminated on
what sort of Islam this was. Some argued that, “the spirit and enthusiasm which is
expected of a true Muslim is missing … people don’t practice what they preach”. 778
These Officers argued there was a general trend in the Army to feign a more religious
appearance. Officers went to great trouble to present an impression of their Islamic
piety that was patently false.

Some Officers opined that in such an environment where Islamic correctness

was deemed a desirable quality in Officers, it remained in reality difficult to truly
assess as piety and morality were difficult to gauge through the public exhibition of

776
Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan Army, p. 6.
777
Motivational Philosophy of Pakistan Army, pp. 18-19.
778
Lt. Colonel Ashraf Faiz, From First Post to Last Post – A Journey through Army Culture,
Vanguard, Lahore, 2003, p. 41.
235
piety and participation in Islamic rituals. 779 Such perspectives had also been made by
some foreign observers of the Army who had noted the difficulty in accurately
identifying or even categorising an Islamist from the practicing or notional Muslim in
a society where overt religious practices were an inherent aspect of the culture. 780 It is
quite possible then that Army Officers in the new millennium may have adopted more
pious attitudes because of the influence of factional and patronage networks where
these qualities may be more favoured, or more simply out of a sense that it had
become an organisational norm. Such possibilities were also noted in Chapter Seven.

That Islam had become more evident in the Army was acknowledged by a
former COAS who maintained that this was simply reflective of increasing Islamic
trends in Pakistani society from which the Officer Corps were drawn. 781 These
comments made in 2001 reflected a similar analysis he made on rising religious
conservatism in 1992 and noted in the previous chapter. Some were concerned though
with how the Army was perceived with its Officers’ overt displays of piety.

Some concerned with foreign perceptions of Islam in the Army argued there
was a need for Pakistan’s allies to be provided real explanations as to what greater
Islamic adherence in the Army and Pakistani society meant. These Officers were
concerned to correct what many of them perceived as the ill-conceived Western media
rhetoric in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York, and sought to explain
to their allies what ‘Jihad’ and Islamic warfare actually meant; for example, Officers
from Pakistan and other Muslim countries undertaking military studies in the US
argued that the concept of Jihad had to be understood within its fully mandated
ethical guidelines within the Quran and not as an open warrant to engage in wanton
killing and terror. 782

779
Lt. Colonel Ashraf Faiz, From First Post to Last Post. p. 45.
780
Brian Cloughley interview, Voutenay-sur-Cure, France, 17 February 2010.
781
See the interview with former Pakistan Army COAS Jehangir Karamat who notes that conservative
elements in the Army were becoming more pronounced and that this was a natural correlation to what
was occurring in society and that the Army was not immune to these trends, especially so in the high
representation rate where he notes that nearly every family has had someone in the Army. Karamat
maintains this was not a point to be concerned about as the Army retained a strong tradition of
obedience and discipline, in A.A. Khan, ‘Interview with General (r) Jehangir Karamat’, Herald, Aamer
Ahmed Khan (Ed), Vol. 32, No. 3, Karachi, March, 2001, pp. 79-80.
782
For instance Pakistan Army Officers attending higher education in the US during this period wrote
theses upon this very issue, including closely argued explanations of the role of Jihad and Islam and
locating terrorism outside the ambit of religions, for instance; Major Irfan Ahmed Malik, ‘Islam,
236
 The Army itself worked to present images of a moderate Islam and its
meaning to the Officer Corps. One of the Army’s more innovative methods of
displaying the ‘human’ side of the Officer Corps was a Pakistan television drama
which traced the careers of three officers, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, made in 1998 and
shown during the subsequent period this chapter addresses. 783 Such presentations of
the Army were positive. The Officers were represented as patriotic Muslim Pakistanis
engaged in international efforts to serve Islam in their protection of Muslims in
Bosnia as well as domestic security in the high altitude conflict against the Indians in
Siachen. The message of the program reaffirmed the essential Islamic interests of the
Army in a manner less extremist than those enunciated by more vocal Islamist groups
in Pakistan. The next section considers how the Army may have achieved their aims
of inculcating a moderate Islam in the education of its Officer candidates as well as in
service training institutions.

Education, training and Islam in the Officer Corps

This section seeks to examine the role of Islam in the education of the Army
during this period by exploring what Islamic knowledge potential Officer candidates
are tested upon prior to their selection to the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA). The
section then explores the role of Islam within in-service training at the Army Staff
College Quetta, as well as some indications of the study interests when attending
overseas military institutions.

In Pakistan potential Officer candidates may prepare for the Inter Services
Selection Board Tests by accessing study guides prepared to assist potential
candidates for the written, individual interview and group discussion questions of
their entrance examinations. 784 Such guides provide insight into subjects and baseline

Terrorism and the Strategy of Enlightened Moderation’, Master of Military Art and Science Thesis
(unpublished), US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2005.
Pakistani Army Officers were not the only Military Officers to prepare work along these lines with
Muslim Army Officers from such countries as Malaysia also submitting theses seeking to correct
Western views of the role of Jihad, e.g. Lt. Colonel Ab Razak bin Mohd Karim, ‘The Influence of
Islam in the Military; comparative study of Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan’, Master of Arts in
Security Studies thesis (unpublished), Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, March, 2004.
783
http://www.pakistanitvdrama.com/tag/drama-alpha-bravo-charlie/, accessed March 2012.
784
The Inter Services Selection Board (ISSB) holds tests and interviews and recommends candidates
for official posts in the three services and as such is more a recommendation than a selection board.
The ISSB test process is conducted in Kohat Cantt, Gujranwala Cantt, and Malik Cantt. A candidate
not recommended by the ISSB can never be called for training.
237
knowledge the Army considered necessary prerequisites for their successful
candidates. The 2007 guide for potential Officer candidates began with a statement
emphasising the unity of religious and nationalist objectives to the potential Officer
candidates,

…the most sacred profession is being a soldier in the Pakistan Army … the soldier of
the Pakistan Army is the only physical symbol of national sovereignty[sic]. 785

The statement emphasises the sacred nature of the role of the Army Officer in
protecting the sovereignty of the Islamic homeland. Additionally, the sacred aspect of
the role then read in conjunction with the decisive pronouncement that the Army is
also the only physical manifestation of national sovereignty, with no mention of any
other political or cultural image also underscores this pillar of Army strategic culture.
The Army has since the 1947–48 War emphatically believed this statement to be true.
They are Muslim martial race soldiers who are the sole guarantor of the state’s
ideological and physical frontiers.

The guides provide practice questions and suggested answers on a range of

secular subjects that included computer science, English and mathematics. Questions
pertaining to nationalism are included within the Pakistan studies questions
component. Potential candidates are advised to ponder questions on Islamic studies
that sometimes overlap with Pakistani studies. Candidates’ attention is drawn to the
Khilafat movement, the 1857 War of Independence and a variety of questions that
address Sunni, Shia and Sufi traditions on the subcontinent. Expected areas of Islamic
knowledge included questions on elements of Islamic law (Fiqh), Hadith and Sunnah
(traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). Candidates are also expected to
have knowledge of the lives of other major prophets including Old Testament and
New Testament prophets (including Isa ‘Jesus Christ’) to the history of Muslim
Empires and their early dominance in South Asia. 786 Socio-religious aspects of Islam
in Pakistan are also explored with the military examination guides suggesting
potential candidates consider such issues in group discussion and debate. Examples of

785
Major (r) M. Waris, Up-To-Date PMA Pakistan Military Academy, Dogar Publishers, Lahore, 2007,
p. 4.
786
Major (r) M. Waris, Up-To-Date PMA, pp. 252-253 & pp. 274-310.
238
these types of subjects included the role of Islam in society, sexual consciousness and
immorality, and whether democracy is inimical to Islam. 787

In this regard both the ISSB primers for those considering a military career
as well as the literature produced on the Staff College and PMA suggest during this
period that Islam formed an important part of a required body of knowledge to pass
the entry selection tests. The guides also suggest that the Army requires cognitively
thoughtful and considered responses to contestable issues regarding Islam’s role in
society as well as pure religious knowledge. Successful completion of the ISSB tests,
together with an interview, could then provide an opportunity for those who sit the
test to be selected as an Officer Cadet.

Instruction in Islam and Islamic education continues their candidature as

Officer ‘gentleman’ Cadets at the PMA and later on as Captains and Majors at the
Staff College Quetta. This illustrates the pervasiveness and required components of
Islamic knowledge Officers require, alongside that of secular and military subjects.

The PMA noted their training objectives during this period included to
“foster and inculcate those attributes necessary for a gentlemen Cadet, as well
creating an environment conducive to intellectual and creative pursuits”. The term
‘gentlemen’ is problematic for many who see it as un-Islamic. The term was objected
to by many Muslim Officers during the 1990s and the new millennium who
associated the term with the British ideas of the ‘God Image’ of the Officer noted in
Chapter Seven. 788 Specific objectives for students included being provided education
in Islamic studies and ethics, as well as social and cultural values. 789

These social and cultural values are perhaps the ones noted by former COAS
Jehangir Karamat in Chapter Seven as being important for the Army in aligning itself
to the socio-religious mores of Pakistan.

787
Tufail Mohammad Dogar, ISSB Tests – Master Guide, Lahore, 2002, pp. 284-295.

789
Brigadier Safdar Ali (Director of Studies, Pakistan Military Academy Kakul, Abbotabad), ‘Quality
Culture in Pakistan Military Academy – A Case Study’, National Conference on Quality Assurance in
Education, PCSIR Auditorium, Ferozepore Road, Lahore, May 10-11, 2003, p. 4.
239
 The Army Staff College in Quetta endeavoured to promote an image that it
was a progressive institution for talented Pakistani and foreign Officers. The College
curriculum was presented as being provided within a cosmopolitan environment that
espoused a moderate Islam. The college noted that in its year long course conducted
in English, with participants from over twenty-six countries, the reference to religion
was noted as an Officer’s capacity in, “being able to thoughtfully apply modern
leadership and management within a socio-religious setting”. 790 Given the primacy of
religion in Pakistan and sectarian differences in the society such an objective is a
practical necessity for an Officer to be effective. Additionally, such understandings
would also equip a Pakistani or Western Officer equally well who was to be deployed
to the culturally and religiously diverse locations as part of UN missions or
international military coalition assistance programs.

Interest in pursuing Islamic subjects is also indicated by those Officers

attending higher education programs at foreign military academies. Some of these
Officers pursued post-graduate research qualifications in subjects directly or
indirectly concerning Islam in Pakistan or its role in the Army. Pakistan Army
Officers in foreign military institutions wrote on a diverse array of subjects during the
period that had in some way Islamic themes. It is possible that such subjects may also
have represented their own familiarity with subject matter on which they were to be
examined, as well as the interests of their supervisors. For instance, the noted scholar
of Islam Syed Vali Nasr was a supervisor on theses at the Naval Post Graduate School
at Monterey, as was the former Pakistan Army Brigadier and scholar Feroz Hassan
Khan. 791

The next section of this chapter addresses the impact of the alliance between
Pakistan and the US in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

The Army and the U.S. Alliance after 11 September 2001

The terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 were quickly
sourced back to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s guest Osama Bin Laden who
790
Command and Staff College’, Pakdef.info, Pakistan Military Consortium,
http://www.pakdef.info/pakmilitary/army/regiments/csc.html, accessed 24 April 2008.
791
Feroz was an advisor for instance on Lieutenant Colonel Safdar’s MA thesis during the period. Lt.
Colonel Naveed Safdar, ‘Internal Security Threats to Pakistan’, Unpublished MA thesis, Naval
Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, December 2004.
240
had previously engineered attacks against the Americans in Kenya, Tanzania and
Yemen. The American request for Pakistan’s assistance was treated as an
uncompromising ultimatum by Musharraf directed at Pakistan. 792

Almost from the beginning of the new ‘alliance’ there was resentment from
pronounced Islamists as well as other Muslims in the Army. Very quickly, within
Pakistani society and in the Army, there was resentment against Musharraf and his
siding of Pakistan with the US in a conflict viewed by many Muslims as a war against
Islam. ISI and many Army Officers specifically resented the demand by the US for
Pakistan to discontinue its support of the Taliban regime that they felt to be abject
bullying by the US. 793 The resentment in the Army concerning the American
ultimatum was acute during these years with Officers seething at their emasculation
by the Americans in support of their GWOT with benefits they believed only accruing
for the US and their arch-enemy India. 794

The impact of the US ultimatum further amplified a nascent anti-

Americanism held by many Officers commissioned during the Zia period, who were
now being promoted into senior positions early in this new decade. Some explicitly
expressed this anti-Americanism within military publications, where they argued the
US of the new millennium was being driven by a desire to create a new ‘Islamic’ foe
to replace its Cold War nemesis. 795 Though many of these arguments lacked
compelling evidence, the fact that they were published by the National Defence

792
Musharraf notes in his memoirs that he was frustrated by the US and their threat to ‘bomb Pakistan
back to the stone age’ was taken as a blatant ultimatum, and knowing the Army could never hope to
confront the US had to accede to the US demands for the survival of the country, in Pervez Musharraf,
In the Line of Fire – A Memoir, Simon & Schuster, UK, 2006, pp. 201-205.
793
M. Ilyas Khan, ‘The ISI-Taliban Nexus’, & M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Allah’s Army?’, in Aamer Ahmed
Khan (Ed), Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11, Karachi, November 2001, pp. 24-29
794
From interview with Brian Cloughley, Voutenay-sur-Cure, France, 17 February 2010 & see
Cloughley at Bradford University Pakistan Security Research Unit in the United Kingdom;
http://spaces.brad.ac.uk:8080/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=750
795
Brigadier Waqar Hasan Khan, ‘Anti-Americanism – Rise of a Global Phenomenon’, in Professor
Hayatullah Khan Khattak (ed), Margalla Papers 2007, National Defence University, Islamabad, 2007,
p. 132; Air Commodore (Retd) Jamal Hussain, ‘Beware of the American Armageddon’, Defence
Journal, Karachi, June, 2003. Anti-Americanism in Pakistan had been commented on by media
correspondents. David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill, A Rope and a Prayer, Viking, USA, 2010, p. 156
& p. 332.
241
University is arguably indicative either of the sentiments of these institutions or their
remarkable liberalism in allowing Officers to engage in open debate. 796

At the end of 2007 Pakistan and the Army was equally applauded and
castigated in a confusing melee of politically driven rhetoric. Some US Military
figures noted the difficulty for Pakistan in subduing Islamic militants by a Muslim
Army, and argued the nature of these difficulties was exacerbated in a country so
thoroughly infused with Islamic extremism. 797 The American General Wesley Clark
shared the positive though qualified views of other senior American military figures
on Pakistan’s cooperation in hosting US counter-terrorist activities. Clark concluded
the Pakistani security apparatus to have been thoroughly compromised by Islamists
who had “penetrated its security and intelligence networks”. 798

Possibly such positions influenced views that Pakistan was not doing enough
and that members of the Army and ISI were aiding the resurgence of the Taliban in
Afghanistan. Such suspicions of fundamentalist penetration of Pakistani security
services and intelligence networks had been noted during the previous decade. The
death of five Pakistani Intelligence Officers and twenty of their trainees killed in the
Tomahawk missile strikes against bin Laden’s Afghanistan compound in 1998 had
been greeted with incredulity by the Americans. The Americans were perplexed as to
why Pakistani Intelligence Officers were with bin Laden after the clear US
dissemination of evidence that bin Laden had coordinated the attacks against the US
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the USS Cole in Yemen.

As the war on terror was prosecuted in Afghanistan subsequent US and

European suspicions of Pakistani complicity with Islamist insurgents were publically

796
That the Army Green Book series noted in this and previous chapters has also included apparently
anti-establishment critique by Officers arguably suggests that such open debate is allowed.
797
Senior military figures such as General Tommy Franks wrote of the problems Musharraf had in
dealing with, ‘a heavy duty Islamic extremist population’ as well the little known role of the Pakistan
11th Army Corps in killing hundreds of al Qaeda members in the aftermath of Op. Anaconda in 2001,
in General Tommy Franks (with Malcolm McConnell), American Soldier, Regan Books, 2004, p. 256
& p. 539. Franks’s views were supported by Lt. General DeLong, in Lt. Michael DeLong (with Noah
Lukeman), A General Speaks Out – The truth about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq’, Zenith Press,
St. Paul Minnesota, 2004, pp. 56-58 & Gary C. Schroen, First In, p. 361.
798
General Wesley K. Clark, Winning Modern Wars – Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire,
Public Affairs, 2003, USA, p. 153.
242
noted by senior officials who had served in Afghanistan. 799 US and British Military
Officers had encountered Pakistani volunteers fighting against them in Afghanistan,
which was admittedly difficult for Pakistan to prevent. More contentiously though the
capture of Pakistan military ISI agents advising the Taliban on the conduct of
offensive operations against US forces was more indicative of the Islamist agenda of
the Pakistani security apparatus in Afghanistan. 800 Interviews with allied soldiers in
Afghanistan had revealed a significant presence of Pakistani Jihadis actively engaged
in the fighting against US and ISAF. Many of the allied soldiers had grave suspicions
as to the identity of these better-trained and tactically aware Pakistanis.

The presence of the Pakistani Jihadi volunteers entailed suspicions as to

whether they were simply volunteers or were they military volunteers. Such
suspicions were reminiscent of Indian concerns as to the identity of the Pakistan
Jihadis of the 1948 War noted in Chapter Two, the Pakistani special force soldiers
masquerading as Jihadis during Operation Gibraltar during the 1965 War noted in
Chapter Four, as well as the recent evidence of the Pakistan Army’s failed
masquerade as Jihadis in the Kargil conflict of 1999. 801

During this period the Americans were extremely concerned with Pakistan’s
future. Similar to General Wesley Clark’s concerns of a compromised Pakistani
security apparatus, Richard Clarke, the Clinton era US National Coordinator for
Counterterrorism, had noted that,

799
Former British Ambassador to Afghanistan and Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative, Sherard
Cowper-Coles noted the suspicions concerning Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence directorate
collusion with the Haqqani terrorist network in attacks on targets in Kabul. Sherard Cowper-Coles,
Cables from Kabul – The inside story of the West’s Afghanistan campaign, HarperPress, United
Kingdom, 2011, p. 134.
800
A US officer claims that the 10th US Mountain Strike Brigade captured a female ISI officer with
Taliban forces during a Taliban force attack on US forces near Khowst and other examples; in Lt.
Colonel Anthony Shaffer, Operation Dark Heart, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2010, p. 67. A US
development consultant working in Helmand, Afghanistan in 2005 claimed Pakistani intelligence
assistance to the Taliban as well as Pakistani Officers involved in arms and drug smuggling, in Joel
Hafvenstein, Opium Season – A Year on the Afghan Frontier, The Lyons Press, Connecticut, USA,
2007, pp. 307-308.
801
A British author interviewed British Paratroopers who claimed there was Pakistani based logistic
services available to the Taliban as well as a proportion of Punjabi speakers in the Taliban and higher
quality standards of combat tradecraft apparent in their combat against British troops, in Patrick
Bishop, Afghanistan 2006 – This is War 3 Para, Harper Perennial, UK, 2008, p. 147, p. 212 & p. 217
& Ed Macy, Apache – the man, the machine, the mission, Harper Press, London, 2008. Macy a British
serviceman notes the presence of Pakistanis from the Punjab and Tribal areas, p. 83.
243
 Pakistan could become what bin Laden dreamt of; an Islamic nation controlled by
radicals with popular support for fundamentalism and terrorism armed with nuclear
weapons. 802

More emphatically, a former US Ambassador to Pakistan had argued that Islamic

radicalism was an integral part of the Army inherited from the conflict against the
Soviets,

The Afghanistan War was the pivotal event in radicalizing the Pakistani Army and
the ISI. In sum it illustrated the power of combining Jihad, Nationalism and Guerrilla
Warfare … Radicalism … is a rational means to achieve a particular end: the survival
of the Pakistan state. 803

Diplomatic positions such as the Ambassador’s provide great scope to understand the
political, social and cultural environment in which they work. A US Ambassador is a
credible source who has access to both open source and closed source intelligence
supplied to them by Political Officers and Central Intelligence Agency Officers who
are both declared and non-declared, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Legal Attachés. 804 The previous chapter noted the published observations of former
CIA Officers to Pakistan upon the Army and government. A US Ambassador’s
arguments in this regard are equally if not more compelling in the aforementioned
quotation.

The views of these senior security figures were not without some validity.
The Taliban and extremist elements had gained control of large swathes of Pakistan in
Waziristan as well as the Swat Valley; and the militant takeover of the ‘Lal Masjid’
Mosque in the national capital Islamabad had only been resolved with an Army
assault.

The alliance with the US was resented by many Pakistanis with US and
Western criticism of Pakistan’s performance in the war against terror only adding to
802
Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies – Inside America’s War on Terror, Free Press, New York,
2004, p. 280.
803
Oakley, ‘Radicalization by Choice: ISI and the Pakistan Army’, pp. 4-6.
804
Open source refers to that able to be obtained in the marketplace, i.e. newspapers, magazines, other
media and political contacts. Closed source refers to clandestine collection, which may include
electronic surveillance, satellite imagery, and covert human sources sometimes referred to as
informants. Declared refers to an Officer openly declared to the host government as a member of the
intelligence services while undeclared means the person is ostensibly performing another role while
collecting information.
244
the Pakistani resentment of their forced compliance with US strategic objectives. One
American analyst had described the alliance in much the same terms by describing
Pakistan as having been trapped into collaboration. 805

Condemnation of Pakistan’s alliance with the US had been evident from the
beginning with vigorous protests in the Urdu mass print media criticising the US
attack against Afghanistan and Musharraf’s acquiescence in providing air bases to the
US. Army Officers attached to the ISI and involved with the Taliban labelled the US
attacks on Afghanistan as acts of terrorism and accused the US of using bin Laden as
an excuse for the US’s own foreign affairs failures. 806 While not altogether an
impartial witness, an Afghan diplomat of the Taliban Embassy in Islamabad claimed
that members of the Army dominated ISI had cried with rage over what they stated as
Musharraf’s surrender to the Americans. 807

Some ISI members believed Musharraf’s actions had been abject treachery to
Pakistan’s Taliban allies who were as noted earlier part of the proposed newly
compliant Afghan ally as well as providing the ‘strategic depth’ to Pakistan. Members
of the ISI and Taliban more generally believed the US alliance as an attack on Islam
and labelled Pakistan pejoratively as ‘Majbooristan’ (meaning the land obliged to
fulfil America’s demands). 808 These views were part of a narrative in which
Musharraf had become the decided enemy of Islam, while in contrast a number of
Western sources continued to cast Musharraf as the arch Islamist. The byzantine
network of alliances that traversed the tribal, political and religious groups in Pakistan
made the characterisation or labelling of persons or entities as exhibiting any one
major characteristic problematic.

While many of these aforementioned Western sources had argued Musharraf

was sympathetic to or in league with the Islamists, Islamists argued that Musharraf
was un-Islamic and that the Army had become un-Islamic. One such Islamist
response, similar to that of the Taliban, was that Musharraf and the Army had become

805
Dr George Friedman, America’s secret war – Inside the Worldwide struggle between the United
States and its Enemies, Abacus, United States, 2006, p. 336.
806
Interview of ISI Officer in Mubashir Zaidi, ‘Encounter with an Ideologue’, in Aamer Ahmed Khan
(Ed), Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11, Karachi, November 2001, pp. 24-25.
807
Abdul Salam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban, Scribe, Australia, 2010, pp. 171-173.
808
Abdul Salam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban, Scribe, Australia, 2010, pp. 171-173.
245
a stooge for the US and that they would suffer for this impiety both in the temporal
here and now as well as with retribution in the hellfire of afterlife. 809

The impact of the US alliance had a profound impact on the Pakistan Army
and the contested nature of what that alliance meant to Islam and the Muslims of
Pakistan.

Over the course of the next six years between 2001 and 2007 the problems
arising from the alliance with the US, the presence of US and ISAF forces in
Afghanistan created apprehension inside and outside Pakistan as the Army, Musharraf
and other state institutions became victims of numerous attacks as well as an open
conflict in the Swat Valley. 810 By the end of 2007 the Army had become the first
target of choice of a sophisticated network of master bomb makers and a pool of
811
would be bombers.

The Army, while losing men to this violence and itself attempting to
understand the nature of the hostility, was still subject to an enduring criticism of its
motivation as an ally. The Army had become mired in a conundrum involving the
need to maintain connections to future Islamist allies in a post-US war Afghanistan,
while also engaging in hostilities with other Islamist groups, who contested the
Islamic credentials of the Army and the sovereignty of the state. 812

Internationally and domestically it was alleged that Musharraf remained part

of the problem in his support and appeasement of the religious right to offset

809
Typical of Islamist criticisms at the time on websites not taken down or disabled are; Musharraf:
Tarnishing the reputation of the Army, in, http://www.khilifah.com/kcom/analysis/central/s-
asia/musharraf-tarnishing-the-reput, accessed 11 December 2007.
810
‘30 killed as Pak Troops pound militants’, in New Age, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 26 November 2007 &
Zaffar Abbas, ‘What Happened – The inside story of the assassination attempts on General Musharraf’,
in Saquib Hanif (Ed), Herald, Vol. 36, No. 6, Karachi, June 2005, p. 31.
811
The first suicide bombing of an Army (Punjab Regiment) recruiting centre killed forty-two recruits
was thought to be retaliation for a military attack against a Mosque; Shafiq Ahmad ‘Dangerous Heights
of Dargai’, in Arifa Noor (Ed), Herald, Vol. 37, No. 12, Karachi, December 2006, pp. 50-55 &
Maqbool Ahmed, ‘Suicide Bombers Inc.’, in Arifa Noor (Ed), Herald, Vol. 38, No. 9, Karachi,
September 2007, pp. 36-37.
812
200 soldiers were kidnapped in South Waziristan by the Taliban and over 300 security and military
personnel were killed in the thirty days preceding Pakistan’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations, in
Muhammad Badar Alam, ‘Extremism – How Real is the Threat?’, in Arifa Noor (Ed), Herald, Vol. 38,
No. 9, Karachi, September 2007, p. 88. A Pakistani Lt. Colonel undertaking a higher education
deployment to the US considered the nature of the internal security threats to Pakistan, in Lt. Colonel
Naveed Safdar, ‘Internal Security Threats to Pakistan’, Master of Arts in Security Studies Thesis,
(unpublished), Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, December 2004, p. 53.
246
democratic elements. 813 Such observations were correct as the Army and ISI had
sponsored, mentored and even led insurgent and militant groups since their inception
when Army Officers participated in and coordinated tribal Lashkars in the 1947–48
War to the LeT and Taliban in the latter period. Lastly, an examination of how the
Army utilised religion as an offensive and de-stabilising tool is considered. Musharraf
in particular had sought to neutralise the Baloch insurgency by the infusion of Islamic
militancy into their tribal hierarchy. 814

Religion as leverage

Pakistani Officers furthermore maintained sophisticated views on the use of

religion in regard to the strategic exploitation of religious aspiration as a method to
destabilise an enemy. The Army saw value in considering such approaches as a means
of debilitating India as they had previously undertaken in supporting Sikh separatists
in India. Officers during the period recommended maintaining a ‘watching brief’ on
the possible resurgence of the Khalistan movement in the Punjab which the Army
could exploit to Pakistan’s advantage. 815

Volatile mixes of ethnicity and religion were considered by some Officers as

legitimate potentialities for initiating and maintaining low intensity conflict to the
Pakistan Army’s advantage. Apart from Kashmir Officers—who also ruminated on
the possibilities of developing fissiparous tendencies in a number of other Indian
states including Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura 816 —some of the most senior
Pakistani Officers during this period saw these options as realistic responses to what
they argued the Indians had previously visited on them in East Pakistan and in
Baluchistan. Officers believed India had a historic predilection for practising these
tactics.
813
See, Musharraf forges alliance of convenience with religious groups, in, International Crisis Group,
Pakistan: The Mullahs and the Military, International Crisis Group, Asia Report No. 49,
Islamabad/Brussels, 20 March 2003, pp. i-ii & pp. 1-3. As well as allegations of the appeasement of the
Pakistani Taliban by Musharraf resulting in a barbaric ‘Taliban’ reign in North Waziristan, see, Zahid
Hussain, ‘Terror in Miramshah’, in, Rehana Hakim (Ed), Newsline, Vol. 18, No. 10, Karachi, April
2006, pp. 18-24.
814
Saadia Toor, The State of Islam – Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan, Pluto Press, London,
2011, pp. 189-190 & International Crisis Group 9ICG, ‘Pakistan: The Worsening Conflict in
Baluchistan’, Asia Report No. 119, Islamabad/Brussels, 14 September 2006, pp. i-ii.
815
Major Ijaz Ahmed, ‘How to Deal with the Challenge of LIC at National Level’, in Pakistan Army
Green Book 2002 p. 214.
816
Major Ijaz Ahmed, ‘How to Deal with the Challenge of LIC at National Level’, in Pakistan Army
Green Book 2002 p. 214.
247
 This was again attributed, as noted in previous chapters, to a devious Hindu
Kautilyan strategy by agencies such as RAW, which had a perpetual objective of
sowing sectarianism and discord in Pakistan such as their alleged role in the Baloch
independence movement. 817 Musharraf though was himself also accused of
attempting to destabilise Baluchistan in his efforts to extinguish Baloch militants
seeking autonomy by his attempts to degrade tribal and social aspects of the
autonomy movement through an introduction of Islamism.

Conclusion

This chapter has provided a political overview of Pakistan between 1999 and
2007 and noted the international isolation of Pakistan after the Musharraf coup. A
belief in an American preference for India was also voiced by many Pakistanis with a
stake in defence matters. The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York were noted as
ultimately placing Pakistan into an invidious position of supporting the US Global
War on Terror (GWOT) while the Army also attempted to retain Islamist militant
contacts as allies in a post-GWOT environment. As a result, the Army was in combat
against some Islamist groups who had labelled the Army un-Islamic, while the Army
also retained other groups as potential allies. The Army whose strategic culture was
founded on its role as the protector of an ‘Islam in danger’ was the subject of
sustained terrorism campaigns directed against it by those Islamists who judged the
Army as ‘stooges’ of the US and as being un-Islamic. The US alliance was rejected as
being in no one’s favour except the US and India, with many Officers outraged at
what they thought to be excessive US coercion.

The US and others were equally outraged at what they believed was
Pakistani complicity in supporting Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan despite the
alliance. It was noted how many senior US military and diplomatic figures believed
the Pakistan Army to be thoroughly compromised by Islamists. Some of the proof
offered for this was the capture of an ISI Officer coordinating attacks against US
forces and both US and British forces suspicious of the level and source of training
and tactical skills of Pakistani Jihadist volunteers fighting with the Taliban.

817
Major General Muhammad Saleem, ‘Pakistan Army Green Book 2002, p. 6. This view is echoed
also by Major General Muhammad Tahir, Pakistan Army Green Book 2002, p. 10.
248
 The attitudes of Pakistani Officers to the US alliance and their attitudes to the
Taliban are arguably not surprising given the level of Islamic indoctrination Officers
are provided and assessed for in their initial selection, as well as Officer training at the
PMA and in-service courses at the Staff College. Islamic indoctrination is also
manifestly evident in the adoption of the Army of Islamic tenets and practices in
waging war outlined in the Army’s 2006 Motivation Strategy examined in this
chapter.

When General Pervez Musharraf’s resigned as Commander in Chief of the

Army in 2007 the Pakistan Army Officer Corps implicitly believed in their role as the
defenders of an Islamic Pakistan and that the Army originated from a martial race
pedigree. The Army retained a constant vigil against the belief that ‘Islam was in
danger’ which was an element of their strategic culture. The Army still viewed India
as their existential enemy who was seen in the guise of a Hindu fundamentalist threat,
which was another element of their strategic culture. When viewed collectively the
Army’s adoption of Jihad as their official philosophy of motivation, Officer
recruitment being primarily from the religiously conservative Shurafaa middle class,
and the rejection of foreign accretions to the Army, together served to emphasise the
Islamic nature of the Army.

That there were those in the Army who did not subscribe to the Islamist
agenda has been shown to be evident through a number of chapters, but is less
compelling than the weight of evidence indicating the Islamisation of the Army.

249
250
 Chapter IX Conclusion

In a time period when Western or other Asian powers may consider it

anachronistic to call upon a religion and an uncompromising belief in a deity to
provide an advantage in combat, many Officers in the Pakistan Army in the last
decade of the twentieth century and in the first decade of the new century held these
beliefs as innate truths and an essential element of their Army culture.

The most important original contribution made by this study was to provide a
new interpretation of the history of the Army and contribute to a greater
understanding of the Pakistan Army by examining the influence of Islam in the Army
from its inception in 1947 to 2007. Central to this contribution was the contention that
the influence of Islam upon the Pakistan Army Officer Corps had not been fully
explored in a longitudinal study of the length and manner proposed by this thesis.
While there have been a number of studies on the Pakistan Army that have included
some discussion of the religious dimensions of the Army—especially after September
11, 2001—they have not addressed the time frame or sustained focus of the impact of
Islam on the Army that this thesis has.

Another important element of this thesis was to argue the significance of

martial race in the identity of the Army and how martial race was not an extinct
concept for the Pakistan Army. In particular, the thesis argues on a number of
occasions how this concept of martial race held by the Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers
was conflated with the notion of Islamic exceptionalism. Simply put, is that by virtue
of their Islamic faith and its martial traditions Muslim Army Officers believed they
possessed a natural superiority over the Hindu. Chapter One noted how martial race
had a questionable validity and how others had even argued its manufactured status to
support imperial interests. In this regard martial race at times was intimately linked to
ethnicity, which the opinions of Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers revealed to be
contemptuous towards their fellow Muslims who happened to be Bengali.

The thesis argued that the Army was influenced indelibly by inherited culture,
concepts and beliefs from the British Indian Army that were outlined in Chapter One.
Concepts of martial race were influential on the first generation of Pakistan Army
251
Officers who then conflated this concept with their beliefs in their Islamic
exceptionalism in martial matters. This was reinforced primarily by British Officers
who remained in Pakistan and soon after in the accolades of the Americans. In this
way the thesis examined the early and evolving use and manipulation of Islam as a
form of identity and basis of a strategic culture for the Army to adhere to. Despite the
ethnic and cultural disparities within the population that made up the new nation of
Pakistan the Army continued to rely on a rump of Punjabi and Pakhtun Officers who
relied on their Army interpretations of Islam for identity. Furthermore, Islam would
become equated as the basis of the Army’s superiority in comparison to other armies
such as India.

The focus of this thesis while on the impact of Islam on the Army drew links
between Islam and a number of other significant influences on the Army. This
included the impact of Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic exceptionalism, martial race
beliefs, ethno-nationalism and military professionalism; and praetorianism in the
Army’s persistent seizure of political power was noted throughout the preceding
chapters. An important method of understanding the role of Islam in the Army was
argued through the prism of ‘strategic culture’ theory. Strategic culture it was noted
argues the relevance of an organisation’s history.

The theory in particular emphasises the particular importance of major shocks

and disasters that may overcome an organisation and/or a state involved in the
defence of a country, and how those entities then overcome such shocks through
explanation, adaptation or collapse. This thesis noted the tribulations of partition and
the first Kashmir War of 1947–48, the 1965 War and above all the ‘strategic shock’
suffered in the Army’s humiliating defeat to India in 1971 that were influential in
shaping an Army culture in which Islam was prominent. The 1971 War influenced
this in particular as Officers interpreted the defeat as having arisen out of an in-
authentic adherence to Islam and the prevalence of Western vices and culture.

The procedures used to conduct the research in this thesis included a literature
review of written and oral history archival material located in the United Kingdom.
Additionally, primary and secondary source materials and some interviews were
undertaken in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia and France. Personal interviews and
correspondence was also undertaken with former British Indian Army Officers and
252
other individuals with expertise, service in or otherwise connected to the former
British Indian Army and Pakistan Army.

The thesis revealed a number of paradoxes in the Army over the course of its
history between 1947 and 2007. The Army described in Chapters Two and Three
where British Indian culture was most evident was decidedly different from the Army
described in Chapter Eight in a time period when Jihad had been selected as the
Army’s motivational philosophy. While this is outwardly correct the Army contains to
harbour paradoxes that were evident in these early periods as much as they were in
2007.

Chapter Two established the foundations of the strategic culture of the Army
having been derived from the searing impact of partition felt by many of the first
generation of Army Officers. The chapter established that many Officers who had
served with Sikhs and Hindus had experienced an epiphany-like experience arising
out of the horrors of partition which invigorated their sense of Islamic identity. The
chapter also established that the British Officers serving in the Pakistan Army,
including their Commanders, were thoroughly imbued with beliefs in martial race and
that they perpetuated this belief during their tenure. General Douglas Gracey and
Major General Loftus-Tottenham were argued as indicative of these beliefs. The
chapter importantly established that the impact of partition, together with the nature of
the indoctrination of martial race, coalesced with the impact of the 1947–48 Kashmir
War in forming an Army identity and its strategic culture out of these tribulations.
‘Islam in danger’ was noted in the chapter as a cry to the faithful to join battle against
the Indians in Kashmir, which was conjoined to the fear of Hindu India as constituting
that threat to Islam. The convergence of these three elements established a Pakistan
Army strategic culture derived from shared tribulations, disaster and a unitary call to
Islam.

It is evident in Chapter Three that the Scotch drinking, ‘clubby’ replica of the
British Officer was one of the indicative examples of the Pakistani Officer of the early
to late 1950s. Conversely though, this is the same period in which some of these same
‘clubby’ Officers had clearly departed to some degree from their British Indian
heritage in their Islamist sympathies including in one notable instance an attempted
coup (the Rawalpindi conspiracy of 1951). Such Islamist sympathies were shown to
253
have arisen out of the trauma of partition and the first 1947–48 Kashmir War which
Chapter Two noted to have induced an epiphany and new recognition of the
importance of Islam by many Officers. This trauma had also prompted an early and
enduring visceral mistrust and hatred of India, which was viewed as not having
reconciled ‘Muslim’ Pakistan’s independence.

Chapter Three explained how the Army became the pre-eminent institution to
drive domestic political discussion on defence which had become thoroughly infused
with religious themes due to the recent war with India. Additionally, the Army’s
Islamic and martial race nature became a mechanism by which the Army gained
valuable materiel and support from the Americans who had become enamoured with
the Army as a Cold War ally. Importantly in regard to Islam’s role with the Army,
many new Islamic appellations replaced older British Regimental and royal
appellations, especially so after Pakistan declared itself a republic in 1956. The
chapter importantly noted how Jinnah’s vision of an inclusionary Pakistan was
deteriorating with the onset of Islamic fundamentalist agitation against the Ahmadi
sect and the problems of articulating how a Muslim was defined and the nature of
Pakistan in the subsequent Munir Commission enquiry.

Chapter Four continued the examination of Islam’s increasing role in the

political life of Pakistan from Chapter Three. This was most evident in Ayub’s
attempt to apply his modernist Islamic visions on Pakistan, which were ultimately
defeated after concerted fundamentalist agitation. Importantly, the Army under the
leadership of General Musa inducted Islamic concepts into the 1965 War with the
modest introduction of Islamic literature on the conduct of war and his attribution of
success in the war to the Islamic nature of the Army. This theme was also repeated by
Ayub in national broadcasts that celebrated the Islamic purification of the country
through the blood of the Army’s martyred soldiers. The Army had also innovatively
attempted to ignite an Islamic revolution in Kashmir through the induction of Special
Force Soldiers.

Chapter Five explicated on how Islam became the centre piece of the
contested struggle to maintain control of East Pakistan through its mobilisation by the
Pakistani military government and motivation of the Army in East Pakistan. In
particular, the chapter noted the evidence of a rising Islamic consciousness in the
254
Officer Corps through the contribution by Officers to Army journals in the late 1960s
through to the cusp of the war in 1971. The chapter argued the degree of
contemplation of Islam’s role in the Army was also possibly evident through a
number of Officers’ comparison of the Army with the Israel Defence Forces and the
manner and method of Israeli ideological indoctrination and motivation of their Army.
These Officers desired a similarly major role for Islam in the Army. A negative aspect
of Army indoctrination was explored in analysis of brutalities committed by the
Army. The chapter attributed several reasons for this including skewed responses to
the Army’s Islamic motivation and the impact of Yahya’s call to Jihad. Bengali and
Indian media highlighted these atrocities which were deplored by much of the
international community as well as some West Pakistanis.

Chapter Six established that the Army loss in East Pakistan generated a
strategic shock that initiated great introspection into the Army’s abysmal performance
in both East and West Pakistan. In particular, it was established how a belief emerged
that attributed blame for the loss on the moral turpitude of the senior Officer Corps
who had been in-authentically and expediently referencing the conflict to Islam.
These Officers came to be thought of as irreligious and slavish followers of the
inherited culture from the British Indian Army and for a time a mutiny was feared in
the Army. The chapter also established that domestically, regionally and globally
Islam was experiencing a resurgence that Zulfiqar Bhutto attempted to link his
fortunes to. The chapter significantly explored and established the influence and
impact upon the Army arising from General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq’s eleven years’
of rule in which his Islamisation program was arguably buttressed by US support for
Zia over the course of the Afghan Jihad against the Soviets. At the end of this period
Islamisation had thoroughly imbued an Army drawn from the religiously conservative
middle class Shurafaa and which had been subject to Zia’s support of Jama’at-i
Islami proselytisation and the sidelining of the less religiously disposed. This became
a more identifiable aspect of the identity of the Army after this period even though
there were still many which this and subsequent chapters revealed to be inclined to
more professional military identities.

Chapter Seven established the enduring impact of Zia’s period of Islamisation

on the Army including the impact of a number of significant Islamist Officers

255
including COAS Beg and General Gul. Most explicitly, the penetration of the Army
by Islamists is perhaps indicated by the discovery of a cabal of forty Islamist Officers
who had conspired to overthrow the government, merge Pakistan with Afghanistan
and establish an Islamist government based on the rule of the first four caliphs of
Islam. More generally, the chapter established the presence of an Islamist theme by
many Officers who desired the expunging of all foreign and un-Islamic practices from
the Army.

Significantly, Chapter Eight noted an apogee for many Officers inclined to

Islamisation with the adoption of Jihad as the Army’s philosophy of motivation in
2006. The chapter established that the induction of this philosophy was accompanied
by a degree of exegetical consideration of the meaning of Jihad with a view to
ensuring Officers received an accurate understanding and rendering of the term. The
chapter established that the Army desired the philosophy to be understood in the
context of the role of the Ghazi as well as the degree of piety necessary for the Army
to exploit these benefits.

Officers were placed in an invidious situation because of Musharraf’s decision

to ally with the US in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The chapter
established that many in the Army believed the alliance to be an act of treachery to
their Taliban Islamist allies, while the Army later became mired in conflict with
domestic Islamist militants who viewed the Army as un-Islamic. The chapter
established that Islam was a notable theme in required knowledge for individuals
considering a career in the Army and was present in the content of army selection
tests, as well as at the Pakistan Military Academy, and even in research subjects
selected by Officers undertaking foreign military training.

The results obtained through the exploration and analysis of the research
material over the course of the eight chapters of this thesis support the contention that
Islam has constituted a significant and enduring influence on the identity, culture and
strategic culture of the Pakistan Army Officer Corps. In addition, the thesis presented
substantial amounts of other commentary upon Islam’s impact on these matters as
well as the strategic policy of the Army in consideration of the Army’s alliances,
enemies and threats. Islam was also revealed to have an enduring connection to and

256
remain conflated with ideas of martial race and Muslim exceptionalism as well as
combat motivation, unit and equipment appellations.

Several other conclusions or implications may be drawn that lie outside the
research question. For example ethno-nationalistic and religio-nationalistic tensions
are core aspects of Army identity and their impact was most clearly witnessed in the
brutalities visited upon the Bengalis by the Punjabi and Pakhtun members of the
Army in 1970–71. The continued dominance by Punjabi and Pakhtuns also attest to
this. The Army has reported increases in recruits after 2007 from Sindh and
Baluchistan but whether these are ethnic Sindhis or Baluchis, or Punjabi and Pakhtun
internal migrants cannot with certainty be clarified. Further research into the impact
of Pakhtun members of the Army being deployed to undertake duties against their
own people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would usefully explore tensions if any exist
between the two dominant ethnic groups that inhabit the Army.

Lastly the thesis noted the degree of interest shown by Pakistani officers in
their comparisons of the Pakistan Army with the IDF. A dedicated comparative study
upon the role of religion in these respective forces may usefully illustrate elements of
the Pakistan Army not drawn out in this study as well as that of the IDF.

257
258
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______Document 185, Admiral Arthur Radford, Memorandum on the Substance of
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Khan, Lieutenant Colonel Ali, ‘Fighting Outnumbered – A Radical View’, The

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in, Professor Khattak, Hayatullah Khan (ed.), Margalla Papers 2007, National
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______Ahmad, Brigadier Ashfaq, Cashing on Character, 1990.

______Ahmed, Major Ijaz, How to Deal with the Challenge of LIC at National Level,
2002.

______Asif, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Azeem, Mahabharata: Aspirations for a

Grand Dominance in the Next Century, 1998.

______Bashir, Major General Tariq, Growing Geopolitical Trends of the 21st

Century, 1998.
______Gul, Brigadier Agha Ahmad, Training For War – Concepts For Future, 1994.

______Jami, Brigadier Muhammad Aslam Khan, Careerism and Leadership, 1992.

______Karamat, Lieutenant General Jehangir Karamat, The Senior Commander,1992.

______Kidwai, Major General Khalid Ahmed, The Next Millenium: A Geopolitical
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______Khan, Major General Malik Muhammad Saleem, Pakistan Military Academy

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265
______Maan, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Farooq, Modernization and Re-
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1992.
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______Tajwar, Brigadier Muhammad Iqbal, Intellectual Development, 1992.

______Tariq, Lieutenant General Mohammad, My Days as Division Commander,

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______Ullah, Major General Salim, Not By Rank Alone, 1992.

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Cowper-Coles, Sherard, Cables From Kabul – The inside story of the West’s
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Olsen, Viggo, Daktar – Diplomat in Bangladesh, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids,

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Overby, Paul, Holy Blood – An Inside View of the Afghan War, Praeger, USA, 1993.

Pataudi, Major General Sher Ali, The Story of Soldiering and Politics in India and
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Pennington, Captain J.W., Pick up your Parrots and Monkeys and fall in facing the
Boat, Cassell, London, 2003.
Qasim, Brigadier Syed Shah Abul, Life Story of an Ex-Soldier, Publicity Panel
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Qureshi, Major General Hakeen Arshad, The 1971 Indo-Pak War – A Soldiers
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Rahman, M. Attiqur, Back to the Pavilion, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2005.
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Riza, Shaukat, The Pakistan Army 1947–1949, Wajidalis Printers for the Services
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Zaeef, Abdul Salam, My Life with the Taliban, Scribe, Australia, 2010.

Published primary sources – interviews

Babar, Major General Naseerullah Khan, Interview, ‘Remembering Our Warriors –
Babar the great’, in Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal (ed.), Defence Journal, April 2001, Vol.
4, No. 9, Karachi, 2001

Husain, Major General S. Wajahat, Interview, ‘Remembering Our Warriors –

Interview of Major General (Retd) S. Wajahat Husain’, Defence Journal, August
2002.

Ikhram Seghal (ed.), Pakistan Defence Journal, August, 2002.

Ismat, Saeed, Interview, ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Interview of Brig. (Retd)

Saeed Ismat’, in I. ul-Majeed Seghal (ed.), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 4, November
2001.

Khan, Ali Kuli, Interview, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Lt-Gen (Retd)
Ali Kuli Khan, in I. ul-Majeed Seghal (ed.), Defence Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5, Karachi,
December 2001.

Khan, Muhammad Akhtar, ‘7th PMA Long Course & 4th Pre-Cadet Training School’,
in I. Ikhram Seghal (ed.), ‘Defence Journal’, Karachi, February, 2002.

Khan, Zahir Alam, Interview, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Brig. (Retd)
Zahir Alam Khan’, in I .ul-Majeed Seghal (ed.), Defence Journal, April, 2002.

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Niazi, Hidayatullah Khan, Interview, ‘Remembering Our Warriors – Interview of

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Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, August 2001.

Pervaiz, Raja Nadir, Interview, ‘Remembering our Warriors – Interview of Maj.

(Retd) Raja Nadir Pervaiz, in I. ul-Majeed Seghal (ed.), Defence Journal, Vol. 6, No.
3, Karachi, October, 2002.

Waraich, Lieutenant General Imtiaz, Interview, ‘Remembering Our Warriors’, in I.

ul-Majeed Sehgal (ed.) Defence Journal, October 2001, Vol. 5, No. 3, Karachi, 2001.

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Khan Ayub, ‘Islam – A Dynamic and Progressive Movement’, convocation address at

the Darul Uloom Islamia, Tando Allahyar, on May 3, 1959. Field Marshal
Mohammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements – Volume 1: October 1958–June
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Khan, Ayub, ‘Speeches and Statements, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan
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Ahmad, Mumtaz, ‘Pakistan’, in The Politics of Islamic Revivalism – Diversity and
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Ahmed, Major General Rafiuddin, History of the Baloch Regiment, The Naval &
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Ahmed, Akbar S., Religion and Politics in Muslim Society: Order and conflict in
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Ahmed, Brigadier Gulzar, Pakistan Meets Indian Challenge, Al Mukhtar Publishers,

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Ahmed, Ayed Riaz, Maulana Maududi and the Islamic State, Peoples Publishing
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Ali, Brigadier Jamshed, Defence Horizons, Mas Printers, Karachi, 2003.

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Bahadur, Kalim, The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan, Progressive Books, Lahore, 1978.

Barua, Pradeep P., Gentlemen of the Raj – The Indian Army Officer Corps, 1817–
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Cheema, Pervaiz Iqbal, The Armed Forces of Pakistan, Allen & Unwin, Australia,
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Cohen, Stephen Philip, The Pakistan Army 1998 Edition, Oxford University Press,
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the defence problems of the British Commonwealth, Sifton Praed & Co., LTD,
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Fair, C.Christine, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, Oxford
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274
French, David, Military Identities: The Regimental System, The British Army, and the
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Friedman, Dr George, America’s secret war – Inside the worldwide struggle between
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Hamidullah, Dr Muhammad, The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad, Kitab
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Hamid, Major General Shahid, Disastrous Twilight – A personal record of the

partition of India, Leo Cooper, 1986.

Hamid, Major General S. Shahid, Early Years of Pakistan: Including the Period from
August 1947 to 1949, Ferozsons Pvt. LTD, Lahore, 1993.

Haroon, Sana, ‘The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and
its implications in Colonial India and Pakistan 1914–1996’, in, David Taylor (ed.),
Islam in South Asia, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2011.

Hassner, Ron E., (Editor), Religion in the Military Worldwide, Cambridge University
Press, New York, 2014.

Hastings, Max, Catastrophe – Europe goes to War 1914, William Collins, 2013.

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Haq, Brigadier Inamul, Islamic Motivation and National Defence, Vanguard Books
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Holmes, Richard, Sahib – The British Soldier in India, HarperCollins, London, 2005.

Hoover, James W., Men without Hats: Dialogue, Discipline and Discontent in the
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Hutton, J.H., Caste in India: Its Nature, Function and Origins, Cambridge University
Press, United Kingdom, 1946.
Hunter, Edward, An account of life in Afghanistan today; The Past Present, Hodder
and Stoughton, London, 1959.

Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,
Simon & Schuster, UK, 1997.

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Jordan, David Jordan, Kiras, James D. et al. Understanding Modern Warfare,

Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008.

Jones, Owen Bennett, Pakistan – Eye of the Storm, Vanguard Books, 2002.

Jones, Gregg, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the
Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream, New American Library, New York,
2012.
Kamel Publications, ‘Chronology of Pakistan 1947–1957’, Kamel Publications,
Karachi, 1957.

Kaplan, Robert, Soldiers of God – With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and

Pakistan, Vintage Books, New York, 1990.

Keppel, Gilles, Jihad – The Trail of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London, 2002.

Khan, Amjad Ali, September ’65: Before and After, Ferozsons Ltd, Lahore, 1977.

Khan, Major General Fazal Muqeem, The Story of the Pakistan Army, Oxford
University Press, Karachi, 1963.

______Pakistan’s Crisis in Leadership, National Book Foundation, Islamabad, 1973.

Khan, Ijaz, Pakistan’s Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Making, Nova Science
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276
Khan, Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition – The Making of India and Pakistan, Yale
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Kincaid, Dennis, British Social Life in India, 1608–1937, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1974.

Kolff, Dirk H.A., Naukar, Rajput & Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the military labour
market in Hindustan, 1450-1850, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.

Kundu, Apurba, Militarism in India: The Army and Civl Society in Consensus, Tauris,
London, 1998, pp.169-171.

Lal, Kishori, The Mind of Pakistan, Manas Publications, New Delhi, 2010.

Lamb, Alastair, Kashmir – A Disputed Legacy 1846–1990, Oxford University Press,

Karachi, 1992.

Lamb, Christina, Waiting for Allah – Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, Viking
Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1991.

Liddell Hart, Basil, The Ghost of Napoleon, Services Book Club, Pakistan, 1987
(under authority of Greenwood Press).
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related material

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Malik, Iffat (Dr), Noshab, Farzana & Sadaf, Abdullah, “Jihad in the Modern Era”
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Studies, Islamabad.

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Soherwordi, Syed Hussain Shaheed, “Punjabisation in the British Indian Army 1857–
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Ahmad, Shafiq. ‘Dangerous Heights of Dargai’, Herald, Vol. 37, No. 12, Karachi,
December 2006.

Ahmed, Maqbool, ‘Suicide Bombers Inc.’, Herald, Vol. 38, No. 9, Karachi,
September 2007.

Alam, Muhammad Badar, ‘Extremism – How Real is the Threat?’, Herald, Vol. 38,
No. 9, Karachi, September 2007.
Azhar, K.M., Obituary, Dawn Newspaper, 30 October 2006.

Hussain, Zahid, ‘Terror in Miramshah’, Newsline, Vol. 18, No. 10, Karachi, April
2006.

Hussain, Zahid, ‘Inside Jihad’, Newsline, Vol. 12, No. 8, February 2001.

Hussain, Zahid, ‘In the Shadow of Terrorism’, Newsline, Vol. 11, No. 8, Karachi,
February 2000.

Hussain, Zahid, ‘Jihad Begins at Home’, Newsline, Vol. 12, No. 8, Karachi, February
2001.

Khan, A.A., ‘Interview with General (r) Jehangir Karamat’, Herald, Vol. 32, No. 3,
Karachi, March 2001.
Khan, M. Ilyas, ‘The ISI-Taliban Nexus’, Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11, Karachi,
November 2001.
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2000.
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Malik, A., ‘On the brink of an abyss’, Dawn, Newspaper, Karachi, 27 April 2009.

Mir. A., ‘Soldiers of Fortune: The list of retired army officials inducted into
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‘A Desperate Man Hesitates in the face of War’, The Economist, Vol. 241, No. 6673,
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‘India V. Pakistan’, The Economist, Vol. 241, No. 6694, December 11, 1971.
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April 23, 1977.

‘Off with their hands’, The Economist, Issue 6985, London, England, July 16, 1977.
‘Stressing the soft side of Islam’, The Economist, Issue 7058, London, England,
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Zaidi, Mubashir. ‘Encounter with an Ideologue’, Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11, Karachi,
November 2001.

Unpublished secondary sources – theses

Akhtar, Safir, ‘Pakistan Since Independence: The Political Role of the Ulama’,
Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of York, Department of Politics, May
1989.

Al-Fughom, Nawaf Bedah, ‘Factors in the Spiritual Preparation of Muslim Armies’,

Unpublished PhD Dissertation, The University of Leeds, April 2003.

Al-Shehri, Muhammad Awdah, ‘Pakistan-Saudi Relations: A Study in Bi-lateral

Cooperation in Political, Economic and Military Fields: 1967–1991’, Unpublished
PhD Thesis, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 2007.
Fenton, Damien Marc, ‘SEATO and the Defence of Southeast Asia 1955–1965,
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286
Hendrickson, Kenneth Elton, ‘Making Saints: The Role of Religious Pluralism and
Tolerance in the Reshaping of the British Army, 1809–1885’, Unpublished PhD
Dissertation, The University of Iowa, December 1993.

Iqtidar, Humeira, ‘The Changing Role of ‘Muslim Fundamentalists’ in Pakistan’,

Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, February 2008.

Khairan, Ab Razak bin Mohd (Lieutenant Colonel), ‘The Influence of Islam in the
Military: Comparative Study of Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan’, Unpublished MA
Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, March 2004.

Malik, (Major) Irfan Ahmed, ‘Islam, Terrorism, and the Strategy of Enlightened
Moderation’, Unpublished MA thesis, US Army Command and General Staff
College, Fort Leavenworth, Texas, June 2005.

Rindner, Michael, T., ‘The Evolution of Religious Nationalism in Pakistan: Islamic

Identity, Ideology, and State Power’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Harvard
University, September 2007.
Safdar, Naveed (Lieutenant Colonel), ‘Internal Security Threats to Pakistan’,
Unpublished MA Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California,
December 2004.

Shah, Syed Mujawar Hussain, ‘Religion and Politics in Pakistan: 1972–1988’, Quaid-
i-Azam University, PhD Thesis (unpublished), Islamabad.

Conference papers

Ali, Brigadier Safdar (Director of Studies, Pakistan Military Academy Kakul,

Abbotabad), ‘Quality Culture in Pakistan Military Academy – A Case Study’,
National Conference on Quality Assurance in Education, PCSIR Auditorium,
Ferozepore Road, Lahore, May 10–11, 2003.

World wide web material

Ali, Colonel Nadir, ‘A khaki dissident on 1971’, in, Viewpoint, Online Issue No. 129,
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Haqqani, Husain, ‘Islamism and the Pakistani State’, Center on Islam, Democracy
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Haqqani, Husain, Why Muslims Always Blame the West’,

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Khan, Ayub, Interviewed on Roving Report: (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

iPtL0jgC0o&feature=related, (accessed on 30 August 2012).
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Mirza, Iskander, interview & ‘Scots tradition that is still flourishing ten years after
independence’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O9ISUa1gIw&feature=fvwrel,
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Musharraf: ‘Tarnishing the reputation of the Army’,

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Shapira, Dr Shimon, ‘Iran’s New Defense Minister Behind the 1983 Attack on the US
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Wolf, Aaron T. & Newton Joshua T., ‘Case Study of Trans-boundary Dispute
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289