CREATESPACE Pakistan Army, 1971 India Pakistan War and after

The strategic concept of Pakistan’s defence i.e. ‘Defence of East Pakistan lies in the West’ was formulated by Ayub Khan in late fifties and became the foundation of Pakistan’s defence policy. The concept envisaged having bulk of the army in the northern half of the West Wing and was based on the assumption that this arrangement would force India to keep bulk of its army/strategic reserves on its western front. We will analyse the various aspects of this concept as following:- ALPHA :-- The interconnection between the internal and external fronts. The basis of defence and stability of a country is absolute harmony and in consonance with the internal and external fronts. The internal front means ‘morale of the civilian population’ ‘their belief in the legitimacy and moral credibility of the political government’ ‘belief in national aims and ideology of the country’ ‘identification with the Armed Forces of the country as defenders of the country’s integrity’ etc etc. External front includes the country’s Armed Forces, and its foreign policy. A country’s defence is based on both and any weakness in one will weaken the other. This inter-relationship was ignored by Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership during the period 1947-71. The Muslim League was initially dominated by a partnership of refugees from Muslim minority provinces and later by a combination of Punjabi Muslims and civil-military bureaucrats. The Bengalis were alienated first because of the National language issue and later because of the constitutional representation issue. The Bengalis were initially patriotic and only demanded linguistic equality and had even agreed to political parity in 1956. This arrangement was seriously disturbed once Ayub usurped political power in 1958. Immediately after independence the founder of the nation Mr Jinnah made an attempt to broaden the army’s recruitment base by ordering the raising of the East Bengal Regiment in 1948.