Military Of Pakistan

"A. Q. Khan, the chief of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program—who remains a nationalist hero even though his smuggling network evidently sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, and Iran—recently invoked the Bangladesh war as an apology for his dangerous brand of nuclear proliferation: “Had Iraq and Libya been nuclear powers, they wouldn’t have been destroyed in the way we have seen recently. If we had had nuclear capability before 1971, we would not have lost half of our country—present-day Bangladesh—after disgraceful defeat.”"

"In Pakistan, in particular, the military are seen as the bulwark and protector of the nation and are largely free from civilian control and scrutiny. The infamous Inter- Services Intelligence Directorate has backed and funded terrorist groups in India, the disputed territory of Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia, not for the good of those countries or of Pakistan itself. It is widely accepted that some of Pakistan’s generals have sold nuclear technology to North Korea. Civilian leaders who have tried to rein in the military have rapidly found themselves out of office and, if they are lucky, in exile. In both India and Pakistan civilian politics have taken on a military tinge, with some political parties sponsoring paramilitary organisations whose members wear uniforms, march in formation with flags and carry sticks to menace their opponents."

"Today the absurd spectacle of the high-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan who nightly strut their robotic lowering and folding of flags, with their high kicks, stamps and twirls, at a border crossing on the Old Trunk Road between their two countries, draws increasingly large cheering crowds from each side and is a YouTube favourite. It is surely a bit of harmless fun. Or is it? Both countries have nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict and mutual suspicion. And militarism, whether that means elevating the military to a position as the noblest and best of their societies or the leaching of military values, such as discipline and obedience into the civilian world, can lead to trouble for democratic societies."

"Today the absurd spectacle of the high-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan who nightly strut their robotic lowering and folding of flags, with their high kicks, stamps and twirls, at a border crossing on the Old Trunk Road between their two countries, draws increasingly large cheering crowds from each side and is a YouTube favourite. It is surely a bit of harmless fun. Or is it? Both countries have nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict and mutual suspicion. And militarism, whether that means elevating the military to a position as the noblest and best of their societies or the leaching of military values, such as discipline and obedience into the civilian world, can lead to trouble for democratic societies."

"In Pakistan, in particular, the military are seen as the bulwark and protector of the nation and are largely free from civilian control and scrutiny. The infamous Inter- Services Intelligence Directorate has backed and funded terrorist groups in India, the disputed territory of Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia, not for the good of those countries or of Pakistan itself. It is widely accepted that some of Pakistan’s generals have sold nuclear technology to North Korea. Civilian leaders who have tried to rein in the military have rapidly found themselves out of office and, if they are lucky, in exile. In both India and Pakistan civilian politics have taken on a military tinge, with some political parties sponsoring paramilitary organisations whose members wear uniforms, march in formation with flags and carry sticks to menace their opponents."

"“We had one other constraint: Whatever option we chose could not involve the Pakistanis. Although Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counterterrorism operations and provided a vital supply path for our forces in Afghanistan, it was an open secret that certain elements inside the country’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets to ensure that the Afghan government remained weak and unable to align itself with Pakistan’s number one rival, India.”"

"“The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up tipping off our target.”"

"Pakistan air force has issued official warning to the Afghan Army and Air Force that any move to dislodge the Taliban from Spin Boldak area will be faced and repelled by the Pakistan Air Force. Pak air force is now providing close air support to Taliban in certain areas"

"So they couldn’t do anything about India, but what they could do was transform Pakistan into a US base in October 1958, by organizing a coup d’état and making the Pakistani military heavily dependant on them. Links between the Pakistani military and the Pentagon date back to the 1950s, to the Cold War period, when the ruling elites used the military to prevent a general election from taking place that they were fearful might produce a government that would take Pakistan out of all the US security pacts. The United States knew they couldn’t do much about India, so they concentrated on Pakistan... the Pakistani military henceforth becomes a very valued asset of the United States, with direct links to the Pentagon. Large numbers of Pakistani officers are sent for training to Fort Bragg and other American military academies. And links are established between the Pakistani military in the United States to create a special commando unit inside the Pakistani army for emergency actions. And the Indians know all this."

"It is the duty of the Pakistan armed forces to insure the integrity, solidarity, and security of Pakistan, and in this they have never failed."

"Lastly, all I can say is that after talking to Niazi and reading his book, I have had the impression that he symbolises the majority of the Pakistan Army. They are thick, almost robot-like. Their pride is enormous, and they see Pakistan as the world as a whole. The intelligent minority in the army have always used them. ... To understand the mind of the Pakistani Generals, reading Niazi's book is a must."

"In the new state only the armed forces flourished. They were seen at first as the defenders, and possible extenders, of the Islamic state. Then it became apparent that they were the state’s only organized group. They became masters, a country within a country. The armed forces were mainly of the northwest, with the cultural prejudices of the northwest; in time they forced the eastern wing of Pakistan into secession as Bangladesh."

"I am concerned about Pakistan. It is just a junta with nuclear weapons. It is no democracy, yet the West does not criticise it. We should talk about it."

"Pakistan has a history of military support for different factions within Afghanistan, extending at least as far back as the early 1970s. During the 1980s, Pakistan, which was host to more than two million Afghan refugees, was the most significant front-line state serving as a secure base for the mujahidin fighting against the Soviet intervention. Pakistan also served, in the 1980s, as a U.S. stalking horse: the U.S., through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), granted Pakistan wide discretion in channeling some U.S.$2-3 billion worth of covert assistance to the mujahidin, training over 80,000 of them. Even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, serving and former Pakistani military officers continued to provide training and advisory services in training camps within Afghanistan and eventually to Taliban forces in combat."

"The Pakistani government does not seem willing to shift its spending priorities despite the burgeoning COVID-19 challenges...Despite all this, Islamabad allocated $7.85bn for defence and merely $151m for health in the budget for the financial year 2020-2021. This represents a 12 percent rise in Pakistan's defence spending compared with the last financial year. The single-line figure presented in the budget does not give a full picture of the amount actually being spent on defence either."

"But - and alas, there is a but- I don't believe it is in Pakistan's best interest to be the country whose armed forces consume the largest percentage of national income of any military in the world. I don't believe it is in Pakistan's interest to adopt a policy of seeking 'strategic depth' by destabilizing it's neighbors. I don't believe it is in Pakistan's best interest to try to wrest Kashmir from India by fair means or foul. I don't believe it is in Pakistan's best interest to be the cradle and crucible of militant Islamist terrorism. I don't believe it's in Pakistan's best interest to be a country where no elected civilian government has ever served a full term. And I do believe that any Pakistani liberal worth the name (take a bow, Marvi Sirmed) should have no difficulty in agreeing with any of these propositions."

"The struggle between India and Pakistan was another postcolonial rivalry that tested détente. The core source of antagonism was the region of Kashmir, whose division in 1948 was (and still is) contested by Pakistan. Initially, India had sought a neutral Cold War stance, but after the Sino-Indian War in 1962 it had gravitated toward the Soviet Union. Pakistan, a formerly staunch member of the Western bloc, after its 1965 war with India moved closer to China. In both instances, the United States, immersed in Vietnam, had stayed aloof, but the Soviet Union in 1966 had gained the gratitude of both parties for its positive role as a mediator."

"The most important departure from determinism during the Cold War had to do, obviously, with hot wars. Prior to 1945, great powers fought great wars so frequently that they seemed to be permanent features of the international landscape: Lenin even relied on them to provide the mechanism by which capitalism would self-destruct. After 1945, however, wars were limited to those between superpowers and smaller powers, as in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, or to wars among smaller powers like the four Israel and its Arab neighbors fought between 1948 and 1973, or the three India-Pakistan wars of 1947-48, 1965, and 1971, or the long, bloody, and indecisive struggle that consumed Iran and Iraq throughout the 1980s."

"“The most superficial scanning of the statements produced in connection with the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 provides abundant evidence of the continuing power of the jihad concept in its original drastic and military intent. Fighting the unbeliever is a religious duty of the collectivity and secures religious merit; however ‘secular’ the issues, the simple fact of their involving a confrontation between Muslim and non-Muslim suffices for popular sentiment, and hence for governmental direction, to identify the armed dispute as religious warfare. Denials of this fact by the authorities when they address themselves to a Western audience have no meaning beyond constituting an attempt, inevitable in the present international situation, at making their point in a manner likely to be acceptable to a forum averse to the spirit of the religious crusade and altogether disposed to take for granted the separation between religious sentiment and political action.…"

"Pakistani textbooks are particularly prone to historical narratives manipulated by omission, according to Avril Powell, professor of history at the University of London. History by erasure can have its long-term negative repercussions. An example of this is the manner in which the Indo-Pak War of 1965 is discussed in Pakistani textbooks. In standard narrations of the 65 War manufactured for students and the general public, there is no mention of Operation Gibraltar, even after four decades. In fact, several university level history professors whom I interviewed claimed never to have heard of Operation Gibraltar and the repercussions of that ill-planned military adventurism which resulted in India's attack on Lahore.... Because they were not fully informed about the adventurism of their military leaders, they can only feel betrayed that somehow Pakistani politicians once again "grabbed diplomatic defeat from the jaws of military victory”."

"In 1965, when he was thirteen, Salman became aware of another kind of Islam. This was at the time of the short, inconclusive war with India. “There were songs exhorting mujahids to go to war and promising them paradise, heaven. Mobs of people from the city of Lahore, armed only with clubs, set out to fight the holy war against the infidel Hindu. They had to be turned back. They had been charged up by the mullah. The interesting thing was that the mullah was not leading those people. He was sitting safe in his mosque.”"

"Hostilities with Pakistan were to flare up again in 1965 after the Indian government unilaterally announced that Kashmir and Jammu were henceforth to be regarded as similar in status to the other Indian states. This resulted in some fierce, entirely orthodox fighting for local objectives. Apart from skirmishing in the Rann of Kutch (April-May), Pakistan began infiltration backed by artillery across the Kashmir cease-fire line which showed the effectiveness of guerrilla tactic in such terrain, some 10,000 irregulars keeping 50,000 Indian regulars backed by over 200 guns and mortars fully occupied. Hoping that the Indians were sufficiently distracted in this way, on 1 September 1965 the Pakistanis attacked in the lightly-held Chamb sector north of Jammu where there was good tank country, in great armoured strength and with massive artillery support, and were checked by the Indians only after hard fighting. The Indians in turn mounted a limited offensive astride the axis Amritsar-Lahore on 6 September with the aim of drawing the Pakistani tanks away from Chamb and, as it got under way, the larger mission of inflicting decisive casualties on the Pakistani army. Offensive and counter offensive followed for another fortnight and the fighting died down with little territorial advantage, but the score in terms of tanks clearly favouring the Indians who, the Pakistanis began to perceive, were no push-over."

"Both sides claimed victory in the conflict, with the Indians demonstrating greater tactifcal skill in the use of armour due to superior crew training. It must be realized that the Indian Armoured Corps had been seduced by Pakistani propaganda and entered the conflict in considerable trepidation, believing the Patton (i.e. M-47s and M-48s) to be vastly superior in terms of firepower, protection and mobility to any tank possessed by the Indians. This concern was reflected in many of the official citations for heroism following the war, one of which commended an NCO for an action against "several of the supposedly invulnerable Pattons...". Indeed, it appears the Pakistanis were victims of their own propaganda and believed the Patton to be virtually indestructible. This led to their rash tactics in assaulting Indian positions frontally and suffering proportionately higher losses among the Pattons, which invariably led their attacks. In the swirling dust of the Sialkot battles, Centurion fought Patton at ranges seldom exceeding 1,000 yards. The robust Centruion with its simple fire control system proved superior to the M-47 and M-48 Pattons equipped with stereoscopic range-finders and sophisticated ballistic computers, which proved too complex for the ordinary Pakistani "sowar"."

"India fought a second war with Pakistan over Kashmir in 1965, little more than a year after Nehru's death. Pakistan's ruler at the time, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, personally planned Operation Grand Slam, which he hoped would totally cut Kashmir off at its narrow southern neck from India's Punjab. Ayub was a giant of a man, as tall and sturdy as India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was small and physically frail. But India's army was four times larger than Pakistan's, and quickly dispelled the popular Pakistani myth that one Muslim soldier was “worth ten Hindus.” Operation Grand Slam ground to a halt as soon as India's tanks rolled west across the Punjab border to the environs of Lahore. In three weeks the second IndoPak War ended in what appeared to be a draw when the embargo placed by Washington on U.S. ammunition and replacements for both armies forced cessation of conflict before either side won a clear victory. India, however, was in a position to inflict grave damage to, if not capture, Pakistan's capital of the Punjab when the cease-fire was called, and controlled Kashmir's strategic Uri-Poonch bulge, much to Ayub's chagrin."

"The fact that Pakistan's army managed to fight the Indians to a standstill is amazing, and much credit should be given to the Pakistan air force for its part in countering its much larger Indian opponent and supporting the ground forces. The PAF was 'well-handled and controlled by the C-in-C, Nur Khan. A tremendous sense of purpose was displayed and attacks were carried out with considerable determination... It is also clear there was excellent cooperation between the army and the air force at all levels, in contrast to poor Indian inter-service liaison."