Strategic Playbook continues……….

The second factor has been the diverse ethnicity in Pakistan. With Punjabis cornering all the prime fertile lands along the Indus, and dominating the political and military leadership, other ethnic communities have remained on the fringe. These differences were reflected among the men and officers of the new Army. Although the Punjabis dominated the Army, Pathan officers led it for almost a quarter of a century. The Hyderabadi Muslim officers were discriminated against. Ayub Khan never promoted any of them beyond the rank of Major. The Bengalis, who by their sheer number were in majority, found themselves sidelined in appointments and promotions in the early years itself. Though Jinnah was keen on raising Bengali units, Ayub saw to it that this never happened. These differences sharpened when officers trained in the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, began joining the hierarchy. Islam, therefore, became perhaps the only binding factor for the Army. It was therefore not surprising that both Ayub and Yahya, both Pathans, used religious symbols and motifs to keep up the morale and unity of the forces.

The third most critical influence has been the India factor. Besides the horrors of Partition, for which many officers who witnessed it blamed India, the Radcliff Award had considerable influence on the intense anti-India feeling among the officer corps. Although many of them had come from the Indian Military Academy, they saw the accession of Kashmir, the military operations in Junagarh and Goa as a run up to India’s plans to militarily annex Pakistan. These conspiracy theories prompted some of the senior officers to adopt the weapon of religion to counter imagined threats from India. Major Akbar Khan, for instance, raised the bogey, ‘Islam in Danger,’ among the tribal leaders in Pakistan’s frontier areas to persuade them to launch an attack on India to liberate Kashmir in 1947-48.

To be continued………