Academic literature on the topic 'Pakistan. Army – History'

The article studies the political development of the country in the modern period. Special attention is paid to the position of the army and its role in the Pakistani society. The article explores in detail the processes of gradual distancing of the army from politics and strengthening of civil society institutions. It is the first time in the Pakistani history that the civilian government managed to complete its full five-year constitutional term. Meanwhile, the country has been advancing on the path to democracy even after the elections 2013: a new civilian government has been formed in Pakistan. As compared with the previous phases of the country's development, the status of the army has considerably changed, evolved from "guiding force" to "shadow" guarantee of democratic development. The process has been largely encouraged by popular among officers feeling of tiredness: many of them are not ready to take power into their own hands and committed to their strictly constitutional duties. Despite this recent positive trend, the army continues to enjoy great authority in the society, often brokers political crisis and helps civilian authorities in settling such pressing problems as, for example, fight against extremism. The military will exert influence on government unless civil authorities are able to resist the current challenges and settle the actual problems. The role of "power broker" fully serves the interests of the top army brass.

This article thoroughly examines the socio-economic requisites of democracy in Pakistan in the context of history. It also discusses the social and economic difficulties faced by Pakistan's due to the uneven transition of democracy. The objective of the research is to evaluate the element related to democratic change and moreover, it investigates the variables connected with Pakistan's democracy decline. This article is descriptive and analytic in nature. Secondary sources such as books, research papers, newspaper articles and reports are used for the collection of data. The findings suggest that Pakistan’s democratic transition has been faced many socio-economic problems. This critical socio-economic condition challenges local security allows the military to take over Pakistan several times. The involvement of the army in government raises many issues related to socio-economic challenges. The patterns of continuous ascent in Islamic hostility have also been related with the military government. Pakistan promotes the religion-nationalistic institution worked as local armies to achieve foreign policies to come up with military governments; therefore, socio-economic development was neglected. As the result, Pakistan faced an uneven transition to democracy.

Juxtaposing the private papers of Louis Mountbatten and Claude Auchinleck, this article seeks to shed light on the most influential factor in the reconstitution of the British Indian Army into the Indian and Pakistani armies, namely, the two men's worsening relationship between April and November 1947, in view of what each saw as the other's partisan position, and its consequences: the closure of Auchinleck's office and his departure from India. In doing so, it brings to the fore another aspect of that fraught period of transition, at the end of which the British Indian Empire was transformed into the dominions of India and Pakistan, and highlights the peculiar predicament in which the British found themselves during the transfer of power.

A commonly accepted definition of the democracy is; “Rule of the majority by the supreme power vested in the people and exercised by them directly”. The democratic government may remain in power until and unless people repose the confidence over it. In Pakistan the main reason of failure of the democracy is that, it is generally against the social behavior of Pakistan. Just because of this the democracy could not come around in Pakistan, yet people cannot be incriminated for the same. The history is witnessed that Pakistani people had supported all social movements having collective ambitions but unluckily after freedom no political party or leadership was available to Pakistanis which could do something for them. Soon after freedom bureaucrats had prevalence in the government due to this the overall control remained in the hands of Governor General or non-representatives. So, democratic institutions could not attain freedom from them. Undoubtedly from the beginning the Pakistan Army attained a dominating role in the system of government and in the field of politics and during the last 60 years they remained in rule for more than a half of the tenure and the political governments were never allowed to take any step freely. In the current scenario Pakistan should have to pass through a democratic way which was stopped by the Armed forces and bureaucracy by adopting different means.

Naya Pakistan? The Selected Issues of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy in View of the Transformations in the Regional Security
 The Islamic Republic of Pakistan faces many internal and external challenges and remains a major point of reference in contemporary international security analysis. This article examines selected issues relating to Pakistan’s foreign policy contextualized within the transformations in the security dynamics of South Asia. The specificity of the security environment in South Asia, the least politically and economically integrated region of the world, engaged in the protracted Kashmir conflict, serves as the starting point for the multi-dimensional study of the key objectives of Pakistan’s foreign strategy towards its neighbouring states, such as India, China and Afghanistan. Methodological approach for this research is based on offensive realism, which seems to present the appropriate explanatory tool for studying the South Asian securityrelated specificity. The naya (new) Pakistan narrative, promoted by the Prime Minister Imran Khan seems hardly a game-changing chapter in the history of the state. Analysis of Pakistan’s current policies, persistent domination of the army over the state’s bureaucracy, increasing dependency on external loans and bailouts provokes rather opposite conclusions. Pakistan’s strategic goals vis-à-vis Afghanistan and India exploit its own resources and strongly affect the regional security system whilst the country has no adequate means to achieve them. Consequently, there is a vital need of a paradigm shift in Pakistan’s regional security calculus from ideologically motivated, unfeasible claims to a more cooperative posture, supplemented by campaigns for de-radicalization. This research study was conducted during seven trips to Pakistan during the last decade; the results and conclusions of this study were discussed and debated with academics and other South Asia experts both in Asia and in Europe.

In 1971, by a devastating war, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) achieved independence from (West) Pakistan. Since then, both parties have documented and presented their research findings on the war. However, many of these findings have lacked credibility. Perhaps the only objective account on the 1971 war has been Richard Sisson and Leo Rose’s War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (1991). Sarmila Bose’s recent work, Dead Reckoning, today constitutes a significant contribution to the research on Bangladesh’s war of independence, all the more so for its unique methodology in using multiple sources of original information and cross-checked eyewitness testimonies from all parties involved. Pakistani army personnel as well as Bangladeshi muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) and victims of the war were interviewed to authenticate currently available materials, many of which appear to have been exaggerated with the force of emotion. This distinguishes the work from many other books authored by proponents of either party to the conflict. This book is certainly an eye-opener for researchers on the 1971 war.

Pakistan, the second most populous Muslim country after Indonesia, came into existence on 14th August, 1947, after the division of ‘British ruled’ India (into India and Pakistan). From its inception to present, Pakistan covers a tumultuous history of over seven decades (1947-2019). Among the South Asian countries, no quantum of scholarship has been produced on any country—its history, religion (and religious ideology), politics, society, economy, and other inter-related issue—than Pakistan. This has continued in the last as well as present century. From 2010 onwards, numerous works have been published on religion, politics, military, and other aspects of Pakistan. This review essay, in this framework, presents an assessment of three (3) important works, published in between 2012 and 2014, so that to get clues of the various aspects of Pakistan. Following a descriptive-cum-comparative methodological approach, the books assessed and examined are: Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A New History (2012); Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (2013); and Aqil Shah, The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan (2014). This assessment helps us in understanding the diverse scholarly approaches adopted (by different scholars) in studying Pakistan. The major argument put forth is that such an appraisal helps us not only in understanding the history of Pakistan, but in analyzing the issues and challenges Pakistan has faced, and is facing—be they religious, political, or related to military and security, etc.

The concept of intelligence cooperation and national security is not new, particularly after realism which interpreted these concepts with different perspectives. International states are sovereign, and they got the capacity to secure themselves from internal and external threats, i.e., army is a key to state security as it can attack the enemy to protect its borders. States are not all the time hostiles, but after 9/11, the concept of national security with refers to intelligence cooperation is a highly debatable issue. This paper study the concept of intelligence cooperation with reference to Pakistan in the previous history and present perspectives after 9/11 and the Global war against terrorism.

This article seeks to ethnographically highlight the multiple uses of gene/alogy (as explored by Franklin and McKinnon in the 2000s) in the context of the Bangladesh war of 1971, and hence maps out the range of violence and ambivalences at the heart of kinship. It aims to do so by exploring the process through which disrupted kinship futures are seen as a cornerstone for discourses of war and sovereign practices to justify sexual violence during wars. The formation of Bangladesh in 1971 coincided with the rape of 200,000 (contested and official numbers) Bengali women perpetrated by the Pakistani army and its local collaborators. The article explores the occupation of the womb, that is, the connotation of genetic or ethnic fixing through sexual violence by the Pakistani army, which is apparently an attempt to disrupt the kinship futures of East Pakistan (that later became independent Bangladesh). The sovereign logic of disrupting kinship futures of those that one feels the need to attack, weaken and annihilate (in this case East Pakistanis) is, however, based on a process of naturalisation of inequalities drawn from historical and racialised accounts. The article argues that the sovereign belief in being able to genetically and behaviourally ‘fix’ East Pakistanis through wartime sexual violence, and to instil fear, is possible through the sovereign inhabitation of the inhumanity of sexual violence. Therein lies the vulnerability of sovereign power, the paradox of kinship and its processes of inclusions and ruptures in the future. In seeking to develop a wider theoretical contribution about kinship as the cornerstone of statecraft and wars, the article also seeks to show how military rape alters the grounds of the nation itself, the experiences and imaginations over a period of half a century, and instils various forms of ambiguities about the history of wartime sexual violence.