How Pakistan Army’s Domination Is Linked To Events Across Centuries

The domination of the Pakistan Army is rooted in events dating back centuries, the change in the British Indian Army’s composition post-1857 revolt, which led to the recruitment of a bulk of soldiers from ‘martial races’ of north-western India much of which became part of Pakistan

Army chiefs’ appointments are routine processes that often go unnoticed in most countries. But they are a matter of life and death in Pakistan and have often backfired. In the 1970s, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, two decades later, thought they had covered all the bases by superseding officers to have army chiefs of their choice but ended up paying dearly.

Bhutto chose Zia-ul-Haq, a refugee from India, superseding seven officers in 1977, assuming the army chief from a ‘non-martial’ farming community would be harmless. Zia deposed Bhutto within a year of taking over as the chief. Bhutto was executed two years later in 1979 after a questionable trial on trumped-up charges.

Miscalculation

Sharif repeated Bhutto’s mistake by picking Pervez Musharraf, a refugee from India, as the army chief in 1998. Musharraf superseded two officers to become the chief and deposed and jailed Sharif in 1999. Sharif went into exile after managing to cut a deal despite being sentenced to life in prison for endangering the lives of Musharraf and his co-passengers by refusing to allow their plane to land in Pakistan.

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Tenures of Benazir Bhutto and most recently Iman Khan’s in April 2022 were cut short for displeasing Pakistan’s powerful military. Khan marched on the capital Islamabad demanding snap polls after recuperating following a failed assassination attempt before he was incarcerated on questionable charges. He attempted to prevent the government from picking army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa’s successor.  

The Pakistan Army claimed Khan offered Bajwa a lifetime extension when the ex-prime minister faced a non-confidence motion in March 2022. Khan was reportedly wary of General Asim Munir, who succeeded Bajwa, and sought to ensure he was not picked as the army chief. He is also believed to have pushed for Faiz Hameed’s continuation as the spy agency Inter-services Intelligence head amid speculation that he wanted him to become the army chief.  

Khan poses a stiff challenge to the military’s domination as perhaps Pakistan’s most popular leader since Bhutto. But any real challenge to the Pakistan Army is easier said than done. The ascendancy of the army is linked to events triggered after a new Tory party’s rise to power in London in the late 18th century. The rise changed how the British Empire looked at India, the jewel in its imperial crown. India was critical to making Britain the world’s sole superpower and keeping rival imperial powers such as the French under check.

For Tories, the Empire’s expansion was key to the dream of a new British century. Beyond expansionism, the Tories sought to pull out British subjects in Asia from the ‘darkness’ they thought they had long sunk in. Missionaries used this as an opportunity in India to propagate ‘the rationality embodied in Christianity’ and to challenge what they thought was the ignorance and ‘superstition’ of Asian religions. 

The British policy of redeeming and diffusing among Indians ‘the light of Truth’ through the imposition of British laws, religion, and values’ helped the missionaries. They sought to annul ‘local laws which offended Christian sensibilities’ as part of the redemption project. The reformist zeal stoked anxieties among Indians about a threat to their religious and social norms. By the 1850s, fears created an explosive situation amid growing political and economic grievances. India was sitting on a powder keg when the British introduced Enfield rifles with cartridges greased with pig and cow fat in the army, sparking the 1857 rebellion.

The Indian soldiers saw the cartridges, which had to be bitten off before use, as confirmation of the British disregard for their religious beliefs. To make matters worse, the cartridges offended both Hindu and Muslim soldiers. Pigs are mainly scavengers and abominable for Muslims. Islam forbids pig meat. Hindus consider the slaughter of cows as sacrilegious as they are considered sacred. 

Insult To Injury

The British ignored objections to the cartridges. They added insult to injury by imprisoning soldiers who refused to use them. In May 1857, the anger boiled over in Meerut, where Indian soldiers attacked British officers to free their imprisoned colleagues before marching 60 km to Delhi. The soldiers hoped to end British rule under 82-year-old Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s guidance. 

As many as 7796 of 1,39,000 Indian troops revolted with civilians joining them at many places making it ‘the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt against any European empire in the nineteenth century.’ The British responded with brute force and 1400 unarmed people were cut down in Delhi’s Kucha Chelan alone. Delhi, a city of half a million, was left ‘an empty ruin.’

The revolt fleetingly threatened to end British rule before it was quelled. It prompted a shift in how India was governed with the power transfer from the East India Company to the Crown. The change in the British Indian Army’s composition was among the lasting changes the revolt led to. Until 1857, a bulk of soldiers were drawn from the so-called upper-caste Hindu communities of what are now Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states in eastern and northern India. They were the mainstay of the rebellion.

Punjabi and Gurkha soldiers remained loyal to the British and helped them recapture Delhi. This led to a major shift in how soldiers were recruited thereafter. The British would prefer soldiers from what they designated as ‘martial races’ of Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the modern-day Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Punjab, much of which is part of Pakistan now, accounted for fewer than 10% of British India’s population but provided more than half of the army recruits from 1857 to 1947.  With the NWFP and much of Punjab becoming part of Pakistan in 1947, the newly carved nation out of the Indian subcontinent ended up receiving one-third of the British Indian armed forces. It was by far the biggest share of resources Pakistan got from British India.

Pakistan in 1947 accounted for 21% of British India’s population and 17% of its revenue base. India’s armed forces were twice as big as Pakistan’s in 1947, making security the key concern of the newly-created country’s founding fathers. Pakistan’s founders feared an existential threat from India and allocated 75% of their first budget in 1948 for defence.

The size and resources allocated to it helped the Pakistan Army emerge as the strongest institution as the political leadership was weakened by the back-to-back losses of its founding fathers. In September 1948, Mohammad Ali Jinnah died over a year after Pakistan’s creation. His successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated three years after Jinnah’s death in October 1951. 

Pakistan’s civilian leadership floundered in the face of the leadership vacuum after Khan’s murder. The constitution of the nascent country could only be finalized almost a decade after its creation in 1956 as a weak political leadership ended up entrenching the Pakistan Army in politics.

Yawning Gap

The military jobs remain the most attractive as they take care of soldiers and their families while they are in service. It offers retirees jobs, land grants, and pensions five times higher than civilians. Cantonments have services for ordinary soldiers and their families of a quality unknown to average citizens.

British author Anatol Lieven writes that no wonder the cantonment is the image of paradise for the Pakistan Army ‘with its clean, swept, neatly signposted streets dotted with gleaming antique artillery pieces, and shaded by trees.’ He notes the contrast between cantonments and civilian areas can be starker in poorer parts of Pakistan. Lieven writes the contrast is like between ‘the developed and the barely developed worlds.’