Distasteful Boast

In his satirical anti-war best seller Catch 22, Joseph Heller underscores the absurdity of war and army life by weaving an insanely hilarious plot set in the dying days of World War II. One of the events in this novel is about the group commander of a US Air Force base who's at his wits end trying to retrieve a discomforting situation. After debating various options with his subordinates, he agrees with the suggestion “to act boastfully about something that we ought to be ashamed of,” since, “That’s a trick that never seems to fail.” 

One doesn’t know whether Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir has read Catch 22. But isn't comparing India to a Ferrari and Pakistan a dump truck filled with gravel an undisguised attempt by him to act boastfully about something one ought to be actually ashamed of?

Munir’s Morbid Message

The aim of this [to use Field Marshal Munir’s own words] “coarse analogy” however was not to compare the progress and development made by India vis-a-vis Pakistan, but only to highlight the consequences of vehicle collision dynamics  when the Pakistani gravel laden dumper truck hits the ‘Indian Ferrari’. Being an uncouth remark with a discernibly aggressive undertone would definitely mortify every self-respecting Pakistani national.

However, Field Marshal Munir’s message wasn't meant for discerning Pakistanis but those who have been made to believe that a “Hindu” is an existential enemy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And coming on the heels of his provocative “we are different from Hindus in every way” remark endorses this assessment. While such a confrontational outlook may temporarily divert public attention from Rawalpindi’s other humongous failures on the military front, stoking religious sentiments is a double edged weapon that does more harm than good-a fact that the Pakistan army knows very well.

The Dumper Truck Makers

The question that the Pakistan army chief’s remark raises is-who has reduced Pakistan to a “dumper truck” filled with gravel? Having ruled the country right since its creation-either directly or from behind the scenes, the Pakistan army cannot shirk responsibility for the sorry state of affairs afflicting the country. Didn’t Pakistan’s ex President and former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf proudly proclaim that "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it"?

It was Gen [later Field Marshal] Ayub Khan’s harebrained plan [codenamed “Operation Gibraltar”] to annex J&K by inciting a local insurrection led by army regulars disguised as razakars [civilian volunteers] that resulted in the 1965 Indo-Pak war of war with India and drained  Pakistan’s exchequer. Just six years later, the then army chief Gen Yahya Khan authorised the Pakistan army to commit inhuman atrocities against the civilian population of what was then called East Pakistan that led to the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and saw Pakistan lose its Eastern wing. Thanks to Rawalpindi’s cavalier ways and utter disregard towards democratic norms, Pakistan was [literally] cut down to size!

In the late seventies, Gen Zia ul Haq played a significant role in advancing Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and ended up further widening the existing sectarianism chasm. He also entered into a Faustian deal with Washington, allowing the CIA to use Pakistani soil for setting up facilities for religious radicalisation and military training of locals as well as foreigners to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. While Rawalpindi’s assistance helped Pakistan to get a lavish US aid package and plenty of funds, religious radicalisation also ignited fundamentalism amongst Pakistanis and spawned home-grown terrorism that still endures.

While the Pakistan army boasts to no end about its professional excellence, none of the Pakistan army chiefs ever took the adverse effects of nurturing Islamist terrorism seriously. Instead they promoted the perverse 'strategic asset' doctrine of using terrorist groups to wage proxy war against its neighbours.  No one cared to take decisive action against anti-Pakistan terrorist groups. Au contraire, making peace accords with terrorist groups by extending unimaginable concessions like permission to retain weapons, making monetary reimbursements and unconditionally releasing apprehended terrorists became a routine feature.

These shocking compromises to ‘buy’ peace were encouraged by the Pakistan army’s top brass to obviate any major terrorism related incident and allowed terrorist groups to recuperate and enhance their fighting capabilities, and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] terrorist group is a case in point. Despite this terrorist group being responsible for the 2014 Army Public School Peshawar massacre in which nearly 150 innocent students and staff members were killed and many more injured, the Pakistan army not only accepted a ceasefire offered by TTP in 2021 but even released more than a 100 of its jailed fighters, including commanders responsible for killing several members of the armed forces, law enforcement agencies and civilians.

A brief recap of Pakistan army’s stellar contribution towards nation building is depressing- two unsuccessful military attempts to annex J&K [in 1947 and 1965], the 1999 Kargil War fiasco during which the Pakistan army disowned and left behind corpses of its own rank and file killed in combat; making at least four documented peace deals [the 2004 Shakai agreement, Sararogha Agreement of 2005, Miranshah Accord of 2006 and the 2009Swat Agreement] as well as several un-publicised covert accords with the Hafiz Gul Bahadur terrorist group and Faqir Muhammad’s Taliban faction. 

Accordingly, if Pakistan is today a gravel laden dump truck, then in all fairness doesn’t the entire credit for this disgraceful accomplishment entirely go to the Pakistan army?  

  Email:-----------------nileshkunwar.56@gmail.com