An Introduction to Pakistan’s Military July 2011 Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Fax: (617) 495-8963 Email:
[email protected] Website: http://belfercenter.org Design and Layout Tim Duffy Copyright 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of America Contents Introduction 4 Pakistan’s Strategic Challenges: Traditional Threats and New Adversaries 8 External Threats, Inconsistent Partners 8 Internal Threats 19 A Short History of Pakistan’s Military 22 Indian Partition, Kashmir, and the Use of Proxies 22 US Military Aid, the First Military Regime, and the 1965 War 23 The 1971 War and a Return to Civilian Rule 24 Islamization, the Mujahideen, and Nuclear Stumbling Blocks 25 A Return to Civilian Rule 26 Musharraf and Kargil 27 The Post-September 11 World 27 Conventional Capabilities 30 Army 30 Air Force 31 Navy 32 Proxies 32 Nuclear Strategy and Security 34 Command and Control 35 Nuclear Doctrine 36 Key Concerns About Pakistan’s Nuclear Program 36 Counterinsurgency 38 Appendices 40 Acronyms 41 Endnotes 42 Introduction Pakistan’s military is a central actor in many of today’s most pressing security challenges, and few institutions face such extreme pressures from such diverse forces. In recent years the military has been asked to simultaneously combat a vicious internal insurgency, suppress international terror- ist groups, and respond to Pakistan’s worst floods in eighty years, all while squaring off against a much larger rival in one of the most strategically complex regions in the world. Pakistan’s armed forces are not only an instrument of the state’s foreign policy, but also the most influential actor in the country’s internal politics.