The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality

Description

This book is not an orthodox history of the Pakistani armed forces. Instead, it is an attempt to present the “imagined” history of the army and the impact of this perceived image on the reality of its establishment.

This “imaginal” point of view is a highly eulogistic and one-sided version fed officially to the public to the exclusion of, or in opposition to, the reality itself.

The image which is presented has the full backing of the state but it is not always real or true and rarely reveals the whole picture. Like the civil services, the top echelons of the army are British oriented and remain wedded to the colonial image long after the political and commercial classes have acquired an indigenous identity of their own.

Over time, however, military power has become synonymous with the health of me state itself and come to dominate the “national” image of the country.

The military has acquired a mystique and charisma which exceeds its objective reality and functional limitations. This book examines the military’s ceaseless pursuit of an imagined image of itself. It also shows how triviality rather than greatness, accident rather than design, fiction rather than fact have often been the quintessence of Pakistan’s military history.

Author Biography

Brigadier A. R. Siddiqui (retd.) has seen action in the sectors of Bedian, Rajastan and Chamb during the war with India in 1965. He is the editor of Defence Journal, a monthly digest of geo-strategic affairs. Brig Siddiqi is a regular contributor to the editorial pages of The Nation from Lahore.