Strategic Playbook continues……….

This seemingly reckless, and counter-productive behaviour on the part of the military leadership stems from certain factors which need elaboration for its relevance to the situation unfolding in Afghanistan and within Pakistan itself.

First and foremost, is the question of identity. Pakistan came into existence as a nation for Muslims. But early enough, different Muslim sects fought bloody battles in the streets of Lahore and other cities in Punjab, compelling a judicial commission to pose a simple but compelling question: Who is a Muslim? Ever since then, Muslims have fought on ideological grounds in different parts of Pakistan resulting in one sect, the Ahmadis, being officially declared as kafirs or infidels. The Shias have fared no better. Sunni extremist groups have targeted Shias since the early 1980s after the latter dared to protest the Sunni military dictator, Zia-ul Haq’s plans to impose a Sunni rule in Pakistan. A major general summed up the dilemma in The Green Book, a collection of articles written by senior Army officials published by the Pakistan Army in 2000, that Pakistan “could neither be wholly Islamic nor completely national since the imperatives of citizenship in a territorial nation-state cannot be squared with supra-territorial notion of a Muslim Ummah.”

The Army, on its part, had another identity to resolve, that of a colonial army where religion and nationalism were subsumed by the need to subjugate the masses. After Independence, the colonial army, with officers schooled in Indian and British military institutions, had to defend not only a new territory, but also an ideology. These underlying schizophrenic layers of identity had a significant impact on how the Army transformed itself from a colonial army into an army of a Muslim nation.

To be continued………