The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps

Abstract

The Pakistan Army elicits many concerns about terrorism, nuclear and the coherence of the state. However, very little is actually known about this institution. This article mobilizes unique data to address one important facet: the Army's geographical recruitment base. We find that the Pakistan Army has been successful at expanding the geographical recruitment base while some groups (namely those who are native to Sindh) remain highly under-represented. We also find that the officer corps is increasingly coming from urban areas. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these important shifts subject to the limitations of our data.

Key Words:

• Pakistan Army
• Changing Demographics
• Pakistan Army Recruitment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Stephen P. Cohen, John H. (aka Jack) Gill, David O. Smith, and Ashley J. Tellis for reading earlier versions of this work. The authors are also thankful to Lisa Myashiro, who did our GIS analyses; Aine Mccarthy, who performed data entry; and Shiv Sarin who helped create needed district-level crosswalks. Despite the guidance and assistance of these persons, the authors are alone responsible for any errors that persist.

Notes

¹Following the 1971 war when the Pakistan Army lost Bangladesh, antipathy towards the Army was prevalent. In 2007, Pakistani regard for the Army again plummeted owing to President Pervez Musharraf's unpopular policies, including alignment with the US-led global war on terror, the military operations against domestic militants, and failed domestic policies with respect to energy and the economy among other concerns. Since then, the Army has recovered its standing. See International Republic Institute, ‘IRI Index: Pakistan Public Opinion Survey 15 July–7 Aug.’, 1 Oct. 2009. <www.iri.org/mena/pakistan/pdfs/2009_Oct._1_Survey_of_Pakistan_Public_Opinion_July_15-August_7_2009.pdf>.

²Command and control has been formalized through the creation of the National Command Authority (NCA) in 2000. NCA is the country's topmost decisionmaking body on issues pertaining to Pakistani nuclear affairs, including nuclear use. Its ten-member body is headed by the country's president and also includes the prime minister and army chief of staff. However, the army-dominated Strategic Plans Directorate (SPD) is responsible for oversight of the nuclear weapons program. SPD is currently headed by a retired army lieutenant general. It acts as the secretariat of NCA and has the responsibility for the implementation of policies and measures relating to the nuclear arsenal. See International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the Rise of Proliferation Networks: A Net Assessment (London: IISS 2007).

³See US Government Accountability Office (GAO), ‘Combating Terrorism: US Oversight of Pakistan Reimbursement Claims for Coalition Support Funds’ (Washington DC: GAO 2008); John D. Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State, ‘Pakistan's Fata Challenge: Securing One of the World's Most Dangerous Areas,’ Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 20 May 2008; Peter Beaumont and Mark Townsend, ‘Pakistan troops “aid Taliban”: New classified US documents reveal that mass infiltration of Frontier Corps by Afghan insurgents is helping latest offensive’, The Observer, 22 June 2008, <www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/22/pakistan.afghanistan>; Ann Scott Tyson, ‘A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan: Outgoing US Commander Cites 50% Spike in Attacks in East’, Washington Post, 15 June 2008 <www.washingtonpost.com/wpyn/content/article/2008/06/14/AR2008061401639.html>.

⁴Hassan Abbas, ‘A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’, CTC Sentinel 1/ 2 (Jan. 2008).

⁵C. Christine Fair and Seth G. Jones, ‘Pakistan's War Within’, Survival 51/6 (Dec. 2009–Jan. 2010), 161–88.

⁶Russ Wallen, ‘Keeping Pakistan's Nukes Extremist-Free’, Asia Times Online, 16 June 2009, <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KA16Df01.html>; Shaun Gregory, ‘The Terrorist Threat to Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons’, CTC Sentinel 2/7 (July 2009).

⁷Mushahid Hussain, ‘Reforming the Armed Forces’, 10 June 2001, originally published in The Nation, <http://chowk.com/articles/5060>; Selig S. Harrison, ‘Pakistan's Ethnic Fault Lines’, Washington Post, 11 May 2009, <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051001959.html>.

⁸Selig S. Harrison, ‘Drawn and Quartered?’New York Times, 1 Feb. 2008, <www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/opinion/01harrison.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Selig+S.+Harrison&st=nyt>.

⁹Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army and the Wars Within (Oxford: OUP 2008).

¹⁰Districts are the third layer of administration in Pakistan. The most central level is the federal government, followed by provincial and finally district governments.

¹¹Nawaz, Crossed Swords.

¹²Two persons independently entered the data into Excel spreadsheets. The team's quantitative analyst converted these two spreadsheets into Stata (a statistical program) and electronically compared the two independently entered datasets for officer recruitment data. This allowed us to identify and correct data entry errors in the spreadsheets to render them identical to each other and to the hard copy originals. The raw data contained many errors in spelling, districts were sometimes put under incorrect provinces, or (rarely) the Pakistan Army used a geographical area that we could not identify in any census or district report. The raw data file only corrects spelling.

¹³For more information about data handling and data cleaning, please contact the authors.

¹⁴NWFP is known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). NWFP will be retained in this article as the name was in use during the period covered by the data and our study.

¹⁵Brig. (now Maj. Gen.) Khawar Hanif, Defence Attaché, Pakistan Embassy, 2007.

¹⁶The graduate course and the technical graduate courses (for signals and engineering services) run one year. The integrated courses (for doctors and specialized master's degree holders) and the women's courses run only six months. Officers commissioned from the integrated course are inducted directly as captains in the Pakistan Army.

¹⁷Except serving Junior Commissioned Officers (i.e. warrant officers) of the armed forces, who may be married.

¹⁸Pakistan Army, ‘Regular Commission in Pakistan Army’, <www.joinpakarmy.gov.pk/intr-procedure-for-comission.php>. There was also a (now defunct) Junior Cadet Course (JCC) co-located with the PMA and was designed to be a feeder school for the PMA, providing military instruction in addition to other subjects. The JCC began in 1976 and was shut down in 1988. The aim was to compensate for the lack of high quality candidates by preparing JCC entrants through intensive coaching.

¹⁹One enters an FA (or FSc) program after the 10th grade. It is a two-year program equivalent to the 11th and 12th grades. (In the United States this would be a high school diploma). After satisfactorily completing the 12th grade, students take a standardized test in their academic subjects. Upon passing these examinations, students are awarded a Higher Secondary (School) Certificate (or HSC), also known as an FA or FSc, depending on their major. This is also known as an ‘intermediate' degree.

²⁰Official website of the Pakistan Army, <www.joinpakarmy.gov.pk/intr-procedure-for-comission.php>.

²¹Official website of the Pakistan Army, <www.joinpakarmy.gov.pk/intr-procedure-for-comission.php>.

²²The percentage scores of candidates in their Intermediate (12 year) examinations are placed into grade levels A, B, C, etc. B is the standard minimum grade level, except for areas that are being favored by an affirmative action policy. Candidates from the favored areas may be admitted with C grades.

²³Information provided to S. Nawaz from Army General Headquarters.

²⁴See Douglas M. Peers, ‘The Martial Races and the Indian Army in the Victorian Era’, in D. Marston and C. Sundaram (eds), A Military History of India and South Asia (Bloomington: Indiana UP 2008), 34–52.

²⁵The British remained convinced of the notion of martial races for most of their tenure in South Asia. See Hassan Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan: 1947–1997 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel 2000); Hassan Askari Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan (London: Palgrave 2000); Peers, ‘The Martial Races and the Indian Army in the Victorian Era’.

²⁶See Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2002) for more on this competitive history and the role of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier Province.

²⁷Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan.

²⁸Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan.

²⁹In addition, in 1885, the British-Indian government began developing an important network of canals to irrigate the Punjab, which made those lands even more productive and thus attractive as allurements into army service. The British allotted these lands in reward for service to the Raj, especially to ex-servicemen (both officers and ranks). The net impact of these policies made the Army an extremely lucrative profession for Punjabi peasants seeking to improve their socioeconomic standing. Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan.

³⁰For more information, see Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Oxford: OUP 1990), esp. 32–56.

³¹Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan; Stephen P. Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1984); Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, The Armed Forces of Pakistan (Karachi: OUP 2002).

³²Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan; Cohen, Pakistan Army; Cheema, Armed Forces of Pakistan.

³³Cohen, Pakistan Army, 7.

³⁴Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan, 56.

³⁵Rizvi, Military and Politics in Pakistan; Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan; Cohen, Pakistan Army.

³⁶Rizvi, Military and Politics in Pakistan; Cohen, Pakistan Army.

³⁷Ibid.

³⁸Cohen, Pakistan Army, 43.

³⁹Ibid.

⁴⁰Rizvi, Military and Politics in Pakistan.

⁴¹See Harrison, ‘Pakistan's Ethnic Fault Lines’.

⁴²See text of the 1973 constitution, with the various alterations, <www.pakistanconstitution-law.com/theconst_1973.asp.> accessed 2 Dec. 2008.

⁴³B. Horeman and M. Stolwijk, ‘Refusing to Bear Arms: A World Survey of Conscription and Conscientious Objection to Military Service’, War Resisters International, London, 1998, <www.wri-irg.org/programmes/world_survey/country_report/en/Pakistan> accessed 2 Dec. 2008.

⁴⁴The Pakistan Army is still largely a male institution. Women are mostly in the fields of health and education. Pakistan is distinctive among countries in the Muslim world in that it produced the first Major General. Dr Shahida Malik became the first female Major General of the Pakistan Army on 17 June 2002. She assumed the position of Inspector General of some 31 Pakistan Army hospitals.

⁴⁵International Republic Institute, ‘IRI Index: Pakistan Public Opinion Survey 15 July – 7 Aug’.

⁴⁶Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy (London: Pluto Press 2007).

⁴⁷Hussain, ‘Reforming the Armed Forces’; Harrison, ‘Pakistan's Ethnic Fault Lines’.

⁴⁸Cohen, Pakistan Army, 40–1.

⁴⁹Hussain, ‘Reforming the Armed Forces’.

⁵⁰Background note provided to author by General Headquarters, Pakistan Army, 1990.

⁵¹Sher Baz Khan, ‘Punjab's dominance in army being reduced: ISPR’, The Dawn, 14 Sept. 2007, <www.dawn.com/2007/09/14/top13.htm>.

⁵²Stephen Cohen in his review of this document.

⁵³Ibid.

⁵⁴Provincial population data is available at the website of the Pakistan Population Census Organization, ‘Population by Province/Region Since 1951’. We estimated annual provincial population using the TREND command in Microsoft Excel.

⁵⁵At the time of independence, Karachi was the capital. Ayub Khan undertook the decision to establish a new capital beneath the Margalla Hills. The first office building was occupied in 1966.

⁵⁶An urban area is defined by the Pakistani Federal Statistics Bureau as an area that has a large number of residents as well as a municipal or local government and the provision of local services. Population densities of 400 persons per square kilometer (1,000 persons per square mile) are typically considered urbanized even if the provision of public services has been organized on a communal basis. See Mohammad A. Qadeer, Pakistan: Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation (London: Routledge 2005), 14–15, 51.

⁵⁷Ibid., 49–51.

⁵⁸We would have liked to have done so for the 1972 census as well. However, the hard copy census data for 1972 do not provide urban and rural breakdown for each district. Overall, in 1972, about 25 percent of the population resided in urban areas. See Pakistan Census Organization, ‘Population by Province/Region Since 1951’, <www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/pco/statistics/pop_by_province/pop_by_province.html>. Moreover, the early years of the Army data are also unreliable perhaps owing to post-war turbulence in data collection.

⁵⁹There are wide gaps in literacy between adults, between males and female, among provinces, and between those in rural and urban areas. For example, according to the most recent Pakistan Social And Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM) from 2006–07, total literacy of persons 10 years or older was 72 percent in the urban areas compared to 47 percent in rural areas. For more disparities, see Pakistan Federal Bureau of Statistics, 2007.

⁶⁰See Bruce R. Orvis, Narayan Sastry and Laurie L. McDonald, Military Recruiting Outlook: Recent Trends in Enlistment Propensity and Conversion of Potential Enlisted Supply (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1996).

⁶¹Orvis et al., Military Recruiting Outlook.

⁶²See Ziad Haider, ‘Baluchis, Beijing, and Pakistan's Gwadar Port’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (Winter/Spring 2005), 95–103; Frederic Grare, ‘Pakistan: The Resurgence of Baluch Nationalism’, Carnegie Paper No. 65 (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jan. 2006); International Crisis Group, ‘Pakistan: The Forgotten Conflict in Balochistan’, Asia Briefing No. 69 (Islamabad/Brussels: International Crisis Group 22 Oct. 2007).

⁶³C. Christine Fair, ‘Islamist Militancy in Pakistan: A View from the Provinces’, WorldPublicOpinion.org, 10 July 2009, <www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jul09/PakProvinces_Jul09_rpt.pdf>. See also International Republican Institute, ‘IRI Index: Pakistan Public Opinion Survey July 15–August 7’.

⁶⁴One illustrative exception is Fair, ‘Islamist Militancy in Pakistan’.

⁶⁵Cohen, Pakistan Army and Rizvi Rizvi, Military and Politics in Pakistan, and Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan.