Inside The Pakistani Mind

In recent years, political scientists have tried to explain how countries make defenceand security policy by recourse to notions of “strategic culture”—theshared myths, symbols, ideas and ideals that circulate amongst those who are mandated toprotect us from organised violence. Strategic culture is a hard-to-define notion: itseemingly must exist, but it is also very hard to pin down.

Here is a study of Pakistan that avoids the elusive strategic culture idea and tells usa much more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts, institutional story, but one filled with interestingrevelations and analyses. Siddiqa-Agha, a former Pakistani civil servant, who once workedin the Pakistan navy, has written an intriguing study of Pakistan’s defence andsecurity which focuses on how the country buys and produces its arms and why. In doing so,she also tells us a lot about Pakistani threat perceptions (mostly India), its response toIndia (mostly militaristic), its relations with key allies and weapons suppliers (mostlythe US and China), and the determinant of all of these things (mostly the Pakistan army).

A large part of the book is fodder for dour military and defence professionals. Itdescribes the various players in the arms procurement process, the institutional settingsand sites within which decisions are made, the kinds of security as well as bureaucraticinterests that influence the shape and outcome of the process, and, yes, the role ofagents (Pakistani insiders call them “indentors”) as well as corruption. A verysimilar story could probably be written for arms procurement in many countries, includingIndia—except that these stories have not in large part been written. Certainly, thework of two Indian expatriates honourably excepted (Raju G.C. Thomas and Amit Gupta),there is very little on the Indian experience. (Given our greater claim to transparency,liberalism, and democracy, this is rather annoying and baffling—but that is anotherstory altogether.)

For those who are not military/defence professionals, which is most of us,Siddiqa-Agha’s book offers a number of revelations and analyses. First, therevelations, in no particular order. Contemplate this: Musharraf was the Director Generalof Military Operations (dgmo) at the time of the Brasstacks crisis (so there is a historyhere!); in 1965, the Pakistan army launched Operation Gibraltar without consulting theother services (this makes India look good!); in 1971, the Pakistan navy found out thatwar had broken out via Indian radio broadcasts (!); in 1991, the Pakistani forces arguedthat the nuclear programme should be rolled back so that US conventional weapons couldcontinue to flow; only Pakistani scientists have the “expertise” to“operate” nuclear weapons; the wastage of defence expenditures amounts to 30 percent of total funds (what is the Indian figure?); there has been no foreign pressure onPakistan to reduce defence expenditures (no, not even from the imf!); in the summer of1990, the Pakistan air force’s trial runs to air-deliver nuclear weapons may havebeen interpreted by the US as the real thing and hence the famous Gates mission to theregion; A. Q. Khan, the man supposedly most responsible for the Pakistani bomb, was notplanted in Holland by the Pakistani government; it was his rival Samar Mubarikmand whocarried out Pakistan’s six nuclear tests; the Pakistan-China nuclear and missile axisarose in part from Pakistanis giving western military technology to China (a pointI’ve been arguing for some time!); and Beijing refused to help extend the shelf-lifeof the M-11 missiles beyond the year 2000.

No book of this kind would be complete if it did not deal with Pakistan’s nuclearposture and the Kargil war. What it says bears out what some in India have been arguingsince the war-torn summer of 1999. Siddiqa-Agha confirms that Pakistani decision-makersconcluded that with nuclear weapons as a shield they could do a Kargil without fear oflarge-scale conventional retaliation by India (as in 1965). Kargil was intended to gain aquick military advantage over India, internationalise Kashmir, link the dispute to nucleartensions, and push India closer to the negotiating table. Siddiqa-Agha concludes that itsstrategy failed; but given where we are in India-Pakistan relations today, wereIslamabad’s calculations so wrong? Food for thought as Musharraf comes calling.

As a former civil servant working in the armed forces, Ayesha-Siddiqa Agha has writtena brave and informative book. Her judgments about Pakistani decision-making andperceptions are clear-eyed and ultimately rather critical. She closes on the note that thelarger part of security is internal peace and human development and that Pakistanis ignorethis at their peril. Alas, so do we in India.