India eyes Pakistan's leaner, meaner
army By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - For the first time in its 57-year
history, Pakistan has announced the downsizing of its
army, by 50,000 troops. While India has dismissed the
move as "no big deal", the announcement has stirred
debate over whether a similar trimming in the Indian
armed forces should be carried out.
The decision
to cut the size of its 600,000-strong army by nearly 10
percent was taken at a two-day meeting of the army top
brass, chaired by President General Pervez Musharraf, in
Rawalpindi this month.
The downsizing comes at a
time when relations between India and Pakistan are
looking up. The two sides are observing a ceasefire
along their international border and the Line of Control
in Kashmir and guns have remained silent along their
frontier since November last year. Officials from the
two countries are due to meet in a few weeks.
When Musharraf first spoke about the proposed
downsizing of the army in March in the course of a
speech via satellite to a conclave organized by the
Indian newsmagazine India Today, he described the move
as an initiative to cut down defense expenditures.
Pakistan's decision to downsize its army appears
to be, in part, an attempt to meet International
Monetary Fund (IMF) requirements. The IMF requires all
debtor nations to cut defense expenditures to well below
3 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP), a limit
Pakistan has consistently exceeded for years.
The cutback in troop strength would have been
widely welcomed in Pakistan (as well as in India) if it
were as Musharraf presented it: an attempt at
cost-cutting. However, the decision to downsize is more
about improving combat efficiency than cost-cutting (if
it was about cost-cutting, the best way to achieve that
would be to economize on the luxurious lifestyles of
Pakistan's military top brass). It is true the cutback
in troop strength will save millions of dollars.
However, as Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense expert based in
Islamabad points out, "The money saved from these cuts
will probably be spent on purchasing more weapons."
A statement issued by Pakistan's Inter Services
Public Relations Department admits that the downsizing
"will improve the teeth-to-tail ratio [this refers to
the number of personnel engaged in combat to those in
support duties], in which the tail is being reduced by
about 50,000 men to allow sizable savings in funds." In
effect, the downsizing is all about cutting the "tail",
ie it will reduce the huge number of orderlies or
"batmen" appointed to serve officers (including doing
their household chores) in Pakistan's army.
The
army's fighting capacity will not suffer as a result of
the reduction. On the contrary, the downsizing aims at
sharpening its "teeth in a cost-effective way", making
the Pakistani army a "lean and lethal" fighting machine.
As Brigadier Fayyaz Ahmed Satti told the Agence France
Press: "The savings resulting from troop reduction will
be used to further upgrade the fighting capability of
the army."
India's response to Pakistan's
downsizing of its army has been cautious. An editorial
in the Indian Express argues that the move to cut troop
strength would be welcome if it was based on "reduced
threat perceptions" from India: "Even if the move was
meant to be a symbolic one, linked in even an oblique
manner to the ongoing attempt at reducing tensions
between the two countries, it would be welcome. The
proposed cuts would be even more welcome if they were to
be implemented from the army cadres manning the ISI
[Inter-Services Intelligence]."
The editorial
goes on to say that "the official announcement does not
provide any scope for optimism in this direction. In
fact, what we are promised is a more 'lethal' army."
In an op-ed piece titled "Numbers cut, might
remains" in the Deccan Herald, noted defense analyst
Rahul Bedi writes that the "cutbacks in the army will be
more than balanced out by increasing force levels in the
70,000 strong para-military organizations, namely the
Frontier Corps [FC] and the 35,000-strong Pakistan
Rangers [PR]." He argues that the 50,000 personnel who
are laid off as a result of the downsizing "are likely
to be absorbed in these two forces, cleverly finessing
IMF requirements, but in no way depleting the country's
fighting force. The 'tail' would merely be moving
sideways. Though designated para-military organizations
and in peace time, subordinate to the Interior Ministry,
the FC and the PR are commanded by two-star ranked army
officers and are almost entirely military in
orientation."
Attention is also being drawn to
the complete opaqueness in Pakistan's military budget.
Given this, there are fears that there is no way of
validating that Pakistan is indeed cutting back on the
size of its army.
Few in India see the proposed
reduction in the numerical strength of the Pakistan army
as a gesture on the part of Pakistan to build confidence
with India. It is widely seen as an attempt by Islamabad
show the world that Pakistan is serious about making
peace with India and is backing its statements with
action on the ground.
"Pakistan's decision to
downsize its army is not the result of a change of heart
or of priorities," an official in India's Ministry of
External Affairs (MEA) told Asia Times Online. "The
Generals are not doing this out of concern for the
country's lagging social sector. They are not about to
save funds and direct it towards human development."
Outlining the multiple factors that are behind
Pakistan's downsizing of its army, the MEA official said
that the move "is part of Pakistan's persistent effort
to score brownie points with the international
community, particularly the West, on the India-Pakistan
issue. It is also in response to pressure from
international financial institutions to freeze its
military spending." The MEA official pointed out that
"the promise of generous military support from the US"
as a result of Pakistan's new status as a "major
non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] ally" of
the US will make it "easier for Pakistan to manage with
a leaner army".
Now with Pakistan downsizing its
army, India is bound to come under international
pressure to reciprocate Islamabad's "gesture".
For several years, Indian defense analysts have
been calling for cutting down troop strength, especially
in non-combatant areas, in keeping with new military
doctrines. They have been pointing out that "cutting the
flab" in the Indian armed forces would free funds that
could be diverted to modernization of equipment.
In fact, in the late 1990s, Indian army chief V
P Malik had undertaken cutting down the army's size by
50,000 over a two-year period by not filling in
vacancies in the non-combatant categories. But following
the India-Pakistan conflict at Kargil in the summer of
1999, this downsizing was put in cold storage.
The decision to downsize is a complicated one
for India. On the one hand, operational efficiency and
new military doctrines call for cutting flab. The Indian
army's "tail" is among the longest in the world and
there is substantial scope for trimming it.
Nevertheless, as an editorial in English daily The Hindu
points out, India's "commitments are also exceptionally
demanding. Logistical challenges are formidable in India
and, by some estimates, areas like Dras [where the
weather and terrain is extremely hostile] need seven
support personnel for each combat soldier."
The
security situation in Jammu and Kashmir and other
strife-torn areas of the country continue to be worrying
and call for more combat personnel. India is already in
the process of raising 30 additional Rashtriya Rifle (an
elite unit raised by the army exclusively for
counterinsurgency operations in J&K) battalions and
Special Forces units. While infiltration of militants
from across the border might have dipped, it hasn't
stopped. The ceasefire with Pakistan notwithstanding,
India is not about to drop its guard along its long
frontier with its western neighbor yet.
So how
should India go about downsizing its army given its
security concerns in the context of continuing
cross-border terrorism and in a way that it will not be
sacrificing its combat efficiency? "Across the board
cuts seem out of the question," says The Hindu. It goes
on to recommend reducing the army's role inside Jammu
and Kashmir. "For two decades, most experts have argued
that counter-terrorism tasks should be dealt with by the
police and paramilitary forces, not the regular army.
For a variety of reasons, notably lack of doctrinal
clarity and political confusion, this has not happened.
Now perhaps is a particularly good time to address the
issue squarely - and give the army the resources and men
it needs to guard the country's borders, not patrol the
streets of Jammu and Kashmir or Nagaland."
Pakistan has often sought to justify the size of
its army, its hunger for state-of-the-art weaponry and
its excessive defense expenditure by pointing to its
hostile relations with India - a country eight times its
size and with an army that is twice as large as its own.
Indeed, the size of India's army is around 1.3
million. Recent data compiled by the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute reveals that
India's military expenditure (at 2000 prices) was over
four times that of Pakistan. India's military
expenditure shot up from US$8 billion in 1990 to $12.8
billion in 2002. Pakistan's defense expenditure shot up
from $2.6 billion to $3.1 billion in the same period.
India's military expenditure might be higher
than Pakistan's, but it constitutes just 2.3 percent of
its GDP when compared with Pakistan's 4.6 percent. (Not
only does Pakistan spend more on defense in relative
terms but also spends less on the social sector than
does India.) Indian defense analysts point out that
India's defense spending and size of its conventional
forces is necessitated not just by the threat posed by
Pakistan but also that by China. India shares long
borders with both countries and while its relations with
China are improving slowly, the fact that India fought a
war with China in 1962 and suffered a humiliating defeat
then continues to cast a shadow on Indian security
threat perceptions.
While defense analysts in
India and Pakistan justify the huge armies that their
respective countries have, economists and social
activists in both countries have been saying for decades
that neither country can afford this. For this section
and perhaps the vast majority of the population in both
countries, the downsizing of Pakistan's army and any
similar reduction in troop strength in India will have
meaning only when the consequent savings are diverted to
human development. That is unlikely to happen.
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