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Pakistan struggles to put Army on moderate course

Daily Times Monitor

KAKUL: At the Pakistan Military Academy, the atmosphere fairly reeks of the British Raj: the cricket field, the polo ponies, the high-ceilinged mess hall with its turbaned waiters and white linen tablecloths, Washington Post reported on Sunday.

“We observe all the British traditions except the toast,” the paper quoted Lt Col Saadat Saeed Bhutta as saying proudly. “And we say, ‘Bismillah’” — In the name of God — at the start of every meal. .

The paper said the alcohol ban and the traditional Islamic blessing were not the only departure from British ways. The emphasis on religion is hard to miss. At the main entrance to the academy, an Arabic-lettered sign proclaims: “Victory Awaits Those Who Have Faith in God.” Fallen war heroes are honored in a “Martyrs’ Gallery.” The curriculum includes a six-month course in Islamic studies.

“Our basic route is Islam,” says Manan Abdul, 20, an army officer’s son from Punjab province who will soon graduate from the academy as a second lieutenant. “When we have to command, when we have to make decisions, for that we have a role model: the prophet, peace be upon him.”

At least in part, such expressions of faith are a legacy of a conscious strategy of “Islamisation” of the military that began in the late 1970s and has included active support for Muslim extremist groups, including the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Now, as President Gen Pervez Musharraf seeks to steer his country on a more moderate course, rolling back that legacy has emerged as one of his most challenging — and most urgent — priorities.

In some respects, the Army would seem to be the least of Musharraf’s worries. Most of its senior commanders owe their jobs to the president, who has taken pains to ensure that the military’s upper ranks are filled with officers who share his moderate, pro-Western outlook. Even before Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup, the Army had instituted procedures to sideline officers seen as overly sympathetic to radical groups.

The Army, so steeped in British tradition that its officers take their regimental silver on peacekeeping deployments abroad, remains a disciplined organization with a strong institutional interest in preserving its perks and privileges, according to active-duty and retired officers, Western and Pakistani military experts, and Western diplomats. Far more than an instrument of national defense, the army is Pakistan’s dominant political and economic power, with vast influence over important civilian institutions, such as universities, and extensive holdings in real estate and commercial industry.

Senior officers caution against reading too much into the Army’s embrace of religious symbols and slogans — including its 28-year-old motto, “Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Way of Allah” — which they describe as a “motivational tool” rather than a battle cry against the West. Two recent exhortations by Al Qaeda lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri for the Pakistani army to rise up against the “traitor” Musharraf had no apparent impact.

“It is not a secular army, but it is not a rabid jihadi Army,” said retired army Col Abdul Qayyum, a onetime friend and adviser to Gen Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military ruler from 1977 to 1988, who instituted the Islamisation program. “The basic ethos of the army is Muslim. In Zia ul-Haq’s time it got more explicit, open. This external display of it has receded, and I personally don’t see any possibility of a coup.”

But for all the emphasis on moderation, Musharraf and the army maintain strong ties with Muslim hard-liners, having helped to engineer a strong showing by an alliance of six hard-line Islamic parties in 2002 elections for parliament and provincial legislatures. Ever the tactician, Musharraf has permitted the hard-line parties to flourish, analysts say, to blunt any potential challenge to his rule from the secular opposition parties that still command the largest following in Pakistan.

There are indications, moreover, that Musharraf still faces a potential threat from extremists in the military angered by his close cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism and his pursuit of a peaceful settlement of the conflict with India over Kashmir.

An inspector from the paramilitary Rangers, for example, has been charged in connection with a plot to assassinate Musharraf by bombing his convoy in Karachi in June 2002. Two air force technicians have been arrested in connection with the nearly successful suicide bombing against Musharraf’s limousine in Rawalpindi on Dec 25. And an army major faces court martial for allegedly providing shelter to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a top Al Qaeda figure captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003; a colonel and two other officers were arrested for failing to report the major even though they allegedly knew of his activities. “Though this major was acting independently, it is not unfair to say that Al Qaeda had some penetration in the army,” said a senior Pakistani official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Such warnings have fueled concerns abroad about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — a worry that was underscored by the recent proliferation scandal involving scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

“Something will snap at some point,” said Lt Gen. (r) Hamid Gul, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) from 1987 to 1989. “It’s like bending a green stick. The cracking point comes, but when is anyone’s guess.” Lt Gen (r) Talat Masood, a former secretary of defense production, does not go quite that far. Still, he said: “The question mark is essentially the middle ranks and lower ranks. It would take some time before you are able to convince the rank and file because they had a certain indoctrination and mind-set over the years, and it’s not easy to switch gears.”

Much of that indoctrination dates to the time of Zia, a religious conservative who sought to put an Islamic stamp on the military by enhancing the status of Muslim clerics assigned to combat units and introducing Islamic teachings at the military academy and at the army’s Command and Staff College. The sense of identification with a larger Islamic cause was further strengthened by the army’s role in funneling arms and ammunition — much of it supplied by the CIA — to Islamic guerrillas battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, moreover, relations between the United States and Pakistan deteriorated. Washington imposed sanctions in a response to Pakistan’s nuclear program, cutting off military training programs in a move that fueled a sense of isolation and betrayal in the Army, according to retired Pakistani officers and Western diplomats. Most sanctions were lifted in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and the training programs have since resumed.

But the Army began to come to terms with Zia’s legacy in 1995, when a handful of uniformed zealots, led by a major general, were arrested for plotting a coup with the aim of imposing Islamic rule in Pakistan. As a direct result, officers from the rank of lieutenant colonel on up were “thoroughly screened” for signs of excessive Islamic zeal by field detachments from the army’s director general for military intelligence, according to retired US Army Col David Smith, who served two tours as a military attache in Pakistan, most recently from 2000 to 2003. Officers thought to have militant leanings “were not purged, but if they were in a sensitive position they were very quietly reassigned,” Smith said in an interview. “That system has remained in effect to this day.”

Smith recalled one particular illustration of the army’s alertness to signs of Islamic militancy. In December 2001, he said, he was invited to graduation ceremonies at the army staff college. He made a point of counting the number of graduates with beards — a common practice among foreign military attaches eager for any indicators of religious trends in the army.

After he had finished, Smith recalled, an ISI protocol officer approached him and asked, “How many beards did you count?”

Smith replied that he had counted 30 beards out of 225 graduates, down from 45 the year before. But the Pakistani took issue with his tally, insisting that only long beards — of which there were five — should be counted. “Those are the ones we worry about,” the ISI officer said.

The cross-currents of Islam and British influence converge visibly at the military academy, whose stone buildings, freshly painted curbs and manicured grounds are nestled in a spur of the Himalayas about 70 miles northwest of Islamabad. About 1,500 cadets are enrolled and spend two years studying for the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree before entering the officer corps.

At a gathering of upperclassmen called together for the benefit of a foreign guest, Bhutta, the lieutenant colonel and campus administrator, listened with a look of growing exasperation as several cadets stressed the centrality of Islam to the shaping of a Pakistani officer. “Yes, but what is the percentage of Islamic teachings?” Bhutta finally interrupted, eager to make the point that cadets devote much more of their classroom time to secular studies in areas such as political science, computers, and military history and tactics. “There was a visible leaning toward religion, but over time it has faded out,” said the academy commandant, Maj Gen Hamid Rab Nawaz, 52, a special forces veteran.

Campus life does not appear to be overly saturated with religion. Cadets spend free time surfing the Internet or — since the installation of cable television in lounge areas last year — watching movies such as “Bruce Almighty” on HBO. “A fantastic movie,” said Farhan Laghari, 21, a landowner’s son from Sindh province, of the comedy starring Jim Carrey as God.

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