Aryan

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.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FE18Df06.html

Hawk_eye

Very intresting article... I read some nagative comments by indain commentators as regards to the reduction. Frankly this is a win-win situation for Pakistan and many of my friends in the forces aggree, and it is a serious gesture regardless of what some people might think...

__________________
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/8...taneditres.jpg

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence.
--Albert Einstein

Jay

If its going to be vertically absorbed, then all this hoopla doesnt make sense.
Again with regards to monetary reductions, does PAkistan has a transparent budget where all the allocations to defence companies/forces are accounted and scrtunized by a controller general??

With out any concrete evidence, its just not the Indians, the whole world will not take it serious. So lets wait till next years IMF/WB reports and see the general share of Pakistani defence spending % wrt GDP.

__________________
A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

Hawk_eye

[qoute] does PAkistan has a transparent budget where all the allocations to defence companies/forces are accounted and scrtunized by a controller general[/quote]

Well yes, its called the planning and development division and works under the national audit office.

You can view the 2003-04 budget at the link bellow:
http://www.pakistan.gov.pk/planninga...get2003-04.jsp

Click on defence.

And its very prudent of you to be so speculative of the pakistan downscaling. But you cant say that no legal framework exists to account for government spending in Pakistan.

Secondly Pakistan dose not disrectly sponser Defence Companies such as HIT they are either part of the Defence Instutite or are private orginizations run by private individuals or corporations.

Pakistan has made improvements in macroeconomic fundamentals, as well as recovery in the economy, were further consolidated in FY2003. Given continued buoyancy in both domestic and external sectors in the first half of FY2004, GDP growth is likely to exceed the government target of 5.3% for the year. It seems that the foundations have been laid for significantly higher growth and it should be possible to exceed the target of 5.8% in FY2005 and move to a path of over 6% in subsequent years.

Latest financial summary for march 2004:
http://www.finance.gov.pk/summary/march_2004.pdf
Take notice of the stock exchange numbers. Over 100% increase in index and capitalization.

Another misinformation in the original article is that Pakistan is still a debtor to the IMF well please read this:

Pakistan bids farewell to IMF

Pakistan formally told the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Friday that it will not need the Fund’s assistance any more as its economy is on the track to recovery as also to achieve faster growth. The visiting Pakistan Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz, met the acting IMF Managing Director, Ms Ann Krueger, in Washington and informed her of Islamabad’s decision not to seek further help while thanking the Fund for its “valuable assistance” in the past. After the meeting, Aziz told reporters in Washington that having achieved economic sovereignty, Pakistan was bidding farewell to the Fund. The IMF is an international organisation of 184 member countries. It was established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment. “The Pakistan delegation met the IMF Friday and told them that this is going to be the last year that we seek Fund’s valuable assistance,” the finance minister said. “Pakistan has been able to register successes, as the bulk of its economic programme was homegrown and due to the continuity and consistency in its reforms policies,” he added. Pakistan has been successful in overcoming its ‘initial backlog handicaps’ and straighten out its affairs and was moving forward. The minister said all economic indicators were favourable; there is rapid economic growth; the currency is stable; the national reserves are all time high; exports are growing; interest rates are low; manufacturing, housing and real estate business is thriving while stock exchanges are doing a brisk business. Shaukat said floating of Euro-Bonds of 500 million dollars in the capital market were over-subscribed by four times. “We are excited because we find that our economic achievements have been outstanding, under the capable leadership of President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali.”


http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/Apr-...5/main/top5.asp



Things arent as bad as the global blood hungry press make it out to be. And its all because of that so called dictator and his US alliance.

GOD BELSS PAKISTAN

Blademaster

We don't need to take any lessons from Pakistan, an enemy that we defeated 4 times.

Aryan you can post all this crap to make you feel good or feed your inferiority complex but we are not like you and we don't want to compare ourselves to you.

Officer of Engineers

It seems that every army is determined to repeat this same mistake. This downsizing is NOT going to work. The only way you are going to reduce the tail is to reduce the teeth. And I can speak with authority.

Why?

First, it was us, the Canadians, then it was the British, the Australians follow suit, the Chinese are now doing this, and the Americans are thinking this through, and what have we learned? It doesn't work.

About the only ones who did this right the first time around are the Russians who reduced their combat arms to be follow by the combat service and cbt support.

Your guy at the front doing the shooting still needs the guy at the back hauling water and ammo up to him. Cutting the rear guy off and your front guy is in trouble. And shifting some of the work to civies may work in peace time but does not work on deployments. The peacetime civie cafeteria cook ain't going to follow you into the field to cook for the men in the field.

But don't take my word for it, within five years, your tail is either going to grow back to its old proportions (under new names) or your teeth is going to shrink to match your tail.

__________________
Chimo

Jay

Colonel,
But say we can optimize the whole process right?? When you optimize the process, productivity increases, there by you can less number of people...right? Its not they gonna lay off everyone of them, but its just that you need to find the right mix.

And this post is not related to Pakistani army, I'm just asking a general question to the Colonel.

Aryan

Blademaster

Try not to flame every thread, lets have some civil discussion at least.

Colonel

I'm suprised at your opinion. I agree in some cases reducing the numbers of soldiers can weaken the armies overall fighting capability, but these cuts intend to modernise the Pakistani army. I understand the vast majority of soliders are not issued body armour, for instance.

Reducing numbers will free up money allowing a greater number of soldiers to be issued body armour, increasing the overall effectiveness of the army.

Officer of Engineers

There is no such thing as "optimizing." I've been three re-orgs (from 1st Canadian Division to the Canadian Mechanized Brigade Groups, from the CMBGs to the Battle Groups, and from BGs to Combat Teams/Company Groups) and each time, we had to give up something. We had to stop doing a few things that still makes me cringe.

You've got things like cameras replacing patrols; mortars replacing howitzers; actually, directed fire taking big time precedent over indirect fire; the camera and GPS replacing the FOO (Forward Observation Officer) and trusting that birdbrain not to misread his instruments (the fact that we've lost 4 guys to an idiot birdbrain says that we have a long way to go). Now, who is comfortable?

Bear in mind that I am a dinosaur. I've seen a great decline in actual combat capability since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, we had a two and a half war doctrine - meaning that we were to take on the Soviets in both Europe and the Far East while fighting an Iraq type enemy somewhere else. Look how far we've fallen when we consider the Iraq War as a major war. Think about this. The Americans and Soviets were in Vietnam and Afghanistan respectively and they still managed to field the kind of forces needed to fight WWIII. Today? Both are done in by Chechnya and Iraq.

Now, I know that I'm a dinosaur and my kind would probably be still knuckle dragging around with clubs but are my concerns valid?

Back to the topic at hand, I'll answer you this way. What are you going to give up and how comfortable are you at giving it up?

Officer of Engineers

Read my previous post but I'll tell you what you're telling me. You're getting rid of the guy who's bringing water and ammo to the front guys so that they can have body armour which means not only does the front guys have to carry the extra weight of new body armour, they now have to carry the extra ammo and water that they're not getting resupply with. I'm oversimplifying things of course but the idea is there. The CS and CSS are in place for a reason - they react in direct proportion to the cbt arms. Cutting them means reducing their ability to support the current cbt arms size.

Aryan

I see your point but I don't think it is as relevant to Pakistan as it is to other nations. Our army is 600,000 strong, but I think it is this size because some policy makers felt matching India numerically would be more important than matching them in terms of effectiveness, we cannot financially maintain an army this large and keep it up to date, you agree with this at least don't you?

Officer of Engineers

I don't know. I'm not within the Pak decision ciricles and hence, I'm not qualified to judge what they can afford and what they have to afford. All I can tell you is that this kind of cost-cutting has been done before by the ABCA armies and the Chinese PLA. In all instances, we saw reduced combat capabilities and had to reverse the changes.

Blademaster

You are the one that is trolling here. You are the cause of the flaming. This forum was fine till you showed up and started trolling around. There was no flame war but you had to bring your **** regarding the Indians and that's when the flaming started.

So don't go around whining like a little brat and crying, "Mommy!"

Stop trolling and you won't get any flame on you.

Blademaster

as for this thread, InA cannot downsize any further. We already reduced our strength from 1200000 to 900000. We are facing a critical shortage of officers. We are trying to boost up our retention rates.

The reason for it is because we are facing two enemies, Pakistan and China and they share long borders with us. At the same time, the reservers of InA are busy shoring up the counter insurgency operations in Kashmir and NE.

There will be no further downsizing. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised several years later, there will be increased pressure to increase the size of the army to 1100000.

Officer of Engineers

BM,

Sorry, I just don't buy that the InA doesn't have room to reduce. The Soviets faced China with a combined Army/Navy/AF/SRF of 450,000 men. Col Denis Blasko has stated that the PLA could be reduced by 50% and still retain combat effectiveness. By extention, the PLA is wasting 50% of its army budget.