Pakistani
soldiers with a downed Indian aircraft in Kargil
Despite
Musharraf's Kargil Blunder, the Generals Are Always Right
By
Husain Haqqani
WASHINGTON: The problem with pretending to be a nation’s
savior is that one has to create an image much larger than life.
And to create such an image, one must either be economical with
the truth or very selective with it.
Brigadier
AR Siddiqui, who served as head of the Pakistani military’s
public relations arm ISPR, has written an entire book about the
absolute devotion of politically ambitious generals to image making.
According
to Brigadier Siddiqui, Pakistan’s general-presidents tend
to focus on “sustained image building” preceding and
following coups d’etat.
“After
the seizure of absolute power in particular, military image building
becomes more blatant and intensive. A sort of image craze grips
the top military echelons which they seek to gratify by any means;
by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary”, he writes
in his book “The Military in Pakistan -Image and Reality.”
According to Brigadier Siddiqui, focus on image has produced “self
love,” “self-righteousness” and “self
complacency” among Pakistani generals, which is “suicidal
for the military profession.”
This
may be the reason that Pakistan has done less on the battlefield
according to independent analysts than the nation has ever been
allowed to believe.
During
the 1965 war, the nation was led to believe that it had won the
war against India though in fact the war had ended in stalemate.
Pakistan occupied 1600 square miles of Indian territory, 1300
of it in the desert, while India secured 350 square miles of Pakistani
real estate. But the Pakistani land occupied by the Indians was
of greater strategic value, located near Lahore, Sialkot and in
Kashmir, a fact that was not revealed to the Pakistani people
at the time.
When Field Marshal Ayub Khan met Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur
Shastri at Tashkent in January 1966, he agreed to swap the territory
seized by either side. Brought to believe that the war had ended
in a Pakistani victory, the public found it difficult to understand
why “objective reality on the ground” had forced an
“unfavorable” settlement on Pakistan.
The
Tashkent agreement made no mention of Pakistan’s demand
for a plebiscite in Kashmir either, which made people wonder why
Pakistan’s “military victory” did not bring
it any gain in territory or at least the promise of a future favorable
settlement.
Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s critics claimed his “ political
surrender” at Tashkent converted a military victory into
defeat. Later when detailed accounts of the war came out, other
explanations were given for the failure of the country’s
war objectives.
Among
the explanations: “The army had been ‘misled’
by civilians in the foreign office to believe that the international
community would not let India widen the war.” “The
infiltration of guerrillas into Kashmir, known as ‘Operation
Gibraltar,’ which caused the war in the first place, was
masterminded by civilians led by foreign minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto.” “The US led Pakistan down in the war and
the Soviet Union misled it in the peace settlement.”
The
one thing that was not done was to acknowledge that, having taken
over the reins of power, Ayub Khan and other generals were responsible,
both for the war and the peace settlement that followed.
After
all, the Field Marshal wielded absolute power and should have
accepted responsibility for his decisions and their consequences.
The role of any advice or encouragement given by civilians, or
foreign allies, in those decisions was a secondary matter.
Since
the 1965 adventure, Pakistan’s generals have maintained
a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in public relations about
military matters. According to this virtual SOP, “The Pakistani
military wins every war it fights and Pakistan’s generals
make no mistakes. Any blame for failure lies either with civilians
or the Americans”.
In
case of the 1971 debacle, when Pakistan was bifurcated, the same
SOP was followed in detail. General Yahya Khan, who ran the country,
was absolved of most the blame even though he was the president
and in normal countries the buck stops with whomever holds the
highest office.
The
generals accused of strategic delusions, debauchery and many other
things by the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, which conducted an enquiry
into the debacle, all went home on full pensions and even got
the last salute at their burials. The generals’ image was
protected under the guise of national security. The truth, and
any lessons that it might have brought, was ignored at least in
popular mythology.
Nowadays the protection of General Pervez Musharraf’s image
is as important for national security as was the building of Ayub
Khan’s image in 1965 or covering up for Yahya Khan and his
kit and caboodle after 1971.
General
Musharraf was the mastermind of the military embarrassment called
the Kargil war of 1999. A brilliant tactical plan, this military
incursion had no strategic component and as in the past did not
take into account the resolve of the adversary to roll it back.
More importantly, it undermined the India-Pakistan peace process
started only a few months earlier.
Instead of anyone taking responsibility for Kargil, the image
machine of the Pakistani military was put into service and the
SOP devised after 1965 and Tashkent was implemented once again.
“The military incursion was initiated by the civilian government.”
“It was a military victory but was transformed into withdrawal
because the civilian prime minister lost his nerve.” That
the two explanations are contradictory was not important to the
image-makers. If the civilians initiated the operation, which
was a military success, then any glory from the operation should
go to the civilian government and the men who did the fighting.
The
general who did not initiate the operation or the subsequent withdrawal
would then gets neither credits nor blame.
But
in the Pakistani system the generals are always right. And when
they want to, they can have it both ways. The civilians have since
been blamed for starting the war that undermined a peace process
they had invested so much into, as well as for transforming “a
brilliant military victory” into defeat by agreeing hastily
to a withdrawal.
The
general commanding the army at the time (who has since also commandeered
the nation) remains a hero for the “brilliant military victory”
but has no responsibility for anything else.
There is an Urdu saying that ‘falsehoods have no feet.’
The 1965 and 1971 half-truths and full lies took a long time to
be exposed because the Pakistani media was then fully controlled
and the country had limited access to international media.
In
the 21st century, Pakistan is part of the global village, making
it difficult for the generals’ image-makers to maintain
their pretence. But that does not stop them from trying. Hence
the press release three days ago that began with these words:
“General Anthony Zinni, former Commander in Chief of the
US Central Command, has disclosed that former prime minister Nawaz
Sharif ordered the withdrawal of troops from Kargil following
a US offer of a meeting with President Clinton as a face saving
to the Pakistani leader.”
But what General Zinni says in his book “Battle Ready”
is that General Musharraf was the one who got the prime minister
to agree to the withdrawal. Following are General Zinni’s
words: “I met with the Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on
June 24 and 25 and put forth a simple rationale for withdrawing:
‘If you don’t pull back, you’re going to bring
war and nuclear annihilation down on your country. That’s
going to be very bad news for everybody.’ Nobody actually
quarreled with this rationale. The problem for the Pakistani leadership
was the apparent national loss of face. Backing down and pulling
back to the Line of Control looked like political suicide. We
needed to come up with a face-saving way out of this mess. What
we were able to offer was a meeting with President Clinton, which
would end the isolation that had long been the state of affairs
between our two countries, but we would announce the meeting only
after a withdrawal of forces. That got Musharraf’s attention;
and he encouraged Prime Minister Sharif to hear me out”
[my italics].
Considering that Kargil was a blunder to start with, and that
the Pakistani side did not have a consistent story while the crisis
unfolded, there was nothing wrong with the decision to withdraw.
The problem is, can
General Musharraf afford to admit that he was party to something
he has painted, at least among military and militarist circles,
as the real mistake of Kargil?
In
the “generals are always right” mode that has persisted
in Pakistan since 1965, truth is less important than the image.
But as Pakistan has repeatedly learnt at great cost, nations have
to live with the truth long after the generals whose honor is
protected by image-makers have had their ceremonial burials.
In
the words of Brigadier Siddiqui: “Once chained to its self
image of invincibility, a professional armed force may have already
lost the war without even fighting a battle.”
