Book Review
Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, The Armed Forces of Pakistan Crows Nest, Australia; Allen of Unwin, 2001), pp. 220 price. Not indicated.
Dr. P.I. Cheema is an eminent figure among scholars working on defence issues in Pakistan. His book Pakistan’s Defence Policy (1990) is now established as a seminal work on the development of the Pakistani establishment’s strategic thinking. The book under review is part of a series on the armed forces of Asia edited by Professor Desmond Ball of Australian National University. It fell to Dr Cheema’s lot to provide a brief introduction to the armed forces of Pakistan.
The book is very brief --- only ten chapters in 184 pages --- but it ambitiously attempts to give a brief introduction to the army, navy and air force of Pakistan. The first two chapters sum up the historical background of Pakistan, its geostrategic situation and the military problems it has inherited. Among these problems, as we know, the Kashmir issue is the most significant and it is because of it that the armed forces got huge allocations of the national budget. Following this is a chapter on defence administration which sketches out the decision-making machinery and touches upon the extra-constitutional power of the armed forces and its major intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Then there are three separate chapters on the army, the navy and the air force. These trace out the history of the development of each of these services. Chapter 7 deals with the armed forces and internal security. This chapter actually looks at ethnicity and how the armed forces have been used to counter it. The treatment is synoptic with major events summed up in a few lines. Chapter 8 deals with the role of the armed forces in politics, a subject on which there are scholarly books as well as polemical writings, but again in a highly synoptic manner. Chapter 9 is on defence production and procurement. In this the author argues that there are two phases of the defence industry: from 1947 to 1971 and from 1972 till date. In the first not much was achieved but in the second, with the help of foreign countries, impressive gains have been made including the creation of the Heavy Industries Taxila which produces tanks, the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (Kamra) which makes aircrafts etc. The production of nuclear weapons is covered in a complete chapter of its own (chapter 10) which gives a brief history justifying the building of nuclear weapons. The conclusion is that Pakistan felt so threatened from the outset that its leaders accorded top priority to the defence sector. Among other things the author suggests that the defence doctrine was not well thought out as it was based on the idea that the defence of East Pakistan lay in offence from West Pakistan, a strategy which failed in 1971 when East Pakistan was conquered by attacking Indian forces while the offensive form West Pakistan was blunted by India. The rest of the conclusion is given to praising the army and its services to the country.
The book is problematic but not because of brevity. While it is extremely difficult to summarize the history of the armed forces in less than two hundred pages, Cheema does have the ability to do so as his other books clearly demonstrate. The problem is that the author is not objective in his analysis of the military. He has been pro-establishment military in all of his writings but in this book he has carried this tendency to the extent limit that it reflects adversely on his scholarship.
For instance, he tells us that in March 1971 General Yahya Khan ordered ‘a military clampdown on the agitation’ (p. 126). With the evidence of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, incomplete as it is, and other sources including several eyewitness accounts, this is totally inadequate. Similarly, he tells us very little about the army’s action in Baluchistan and how the Baluch saw it. Indeed, his account of ethnicity neglects the considerable theory and empirical evidence which tells us how domination and rule from the centre creates ethnicity.
Similarly, his statement that ‘apart from the rise to power of General Yahya Khan, all of Pakistan’s military regimes are the direct result of politicians failing their own systems’ (p. 182), will not convince many people. Indeed, there were only two times when there was any political agitation in the country and the military took advantage of it. The first time was in 1969 and the second in 1977. The first time Ayub violated his own constitution and gave the power to the army chief. The second time Bhutto and the opposition parties had reached an understanding and no military intervention was needed. At all other times there has not been a political agitation. As for misrule, that is the order of the day in all regimes including military ones. The number of times political parties have been created by the army and systems rigged is too well known to be in any doubt.
The author also omits to mention some important works which must be known to him. For instance, he does not mention Ayesha Siddiqa Agha’s book Pakistan’s Arms Procurement and Military Buildup (2001) though it covers the subject of defence procurement in great detail. As mentioned before, he ignores scholarly works on Pakistan’s ethnic problems as well as analysts, such as Hamza Alavi, whose insights do not support the strongly pro-establishment picture which Dr Cheema constructs. Part of this picture is to ignore the way the military has been benefitted through its increased share in industry, banking, elitist education, higher education, re-employment by the state, re-employment by the corporate sector because military connections are useful for business and so on. There are some studies touching upon the business interests of the armed forces, including Hasan Askari Rizvi’s whom Cheema refers to in another context and Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, which should have been referred to.
Because of all these omissions, I find this work misleading as an introduction. Indeed, it is one of those books which detract from the academic worth of their authors. However, Dr. Cheema has produced so much work of a high standard that he should not be judged by this book alone. The readers of this book are advised to read other works by the author to assess his scholarly worth.