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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