Military and society

Forgive the caption. What follows hardly justifies the full expanse of what it encompasses. It is too broad – almost a science, incapable of being enclosed in the limited space that this page offers. It is, however, a certainty that when the garrison and the civil community coexist they tend to rub on each other their effects, usually affable and progressive. At times frictions develop which need to be tended with care.
An economy specific to the needs of the garrison generates itself, causing significant upward mobility in the community where civilian enterprises expand and deliver. Discipline, so inherent in military societies, will begin to rub off to a degree on how the community organises itself in return.
In the American military tradition every presentation that the military gives to its own, or other, dignitaries, will contain the number of jobs that the presence of the garrison has created in the community. The grocers, the janitors, the local suppliers of commodities, services necessary to administer support at the garrison itself, strictly out of the military pale are all job-creating options for the community and are suitably emphasised.
The sense of ‘paying back’ to society is germane to such civil-military coexistence. Interdependence and congeniality result in moving them towards becoming a single civ-mil community. Garrison towns in Pakistani parlance are a well known adaptation reflective of such intermixing, though with suspect results over time. Civil-military relations in Pakistan remain tenuous.
The American communities in such settings own the garrison, flying its flags on special days and proudly boasting of its presence at city entrances, while the military is forever seen to be grateful to the community for hosting them. In return the garrison will organize Open Days for the community to visit, understand and be a part of what the military does all year. Many military men, especially married, will – of their own choice – live among the civilian community and hence be both: members of the community as well as the garrison.
There are problems too. The noise and the restrictions on movement particularly irk their civilian counterparts, though as a part of their duty to the nation communities will gradually subsume the negatives.
However, if you were in Denmark, or Norway, expect a community to seek a closure of a base simply because the noise is too much or the environment is forever polluted by the activities that the military will undertake as a part of their occupation. And expect such complaints to be heard and complied to. Asian societies remain laggard in terms of proffering humanism in the face of popular nationalism to make such demands, and where made to hope for accommodation even by proclaimed democracies.
Since most of how we structure ourselves in the military is a hybrid composition of English tradition and American progressiveness, it is time to revisit the incumbent responsibilities that the military may carry when coexisting with civilians. I know it can make for sordid details, how the military seems to have taken over slices that were originally meant to have been leased for occupational functions only, but what is important is to reinforce the sense of responsibility and payback to the community on whose lands we coexist. An active sense of gratitude to the hosts of military garrisons is a paradigm shift that needs to be made to foster an assured sense of civ-mil balance in the grassroots of society.
The American and English answer to this need is through two offices under the commander of a garrison – ‘The Office of Public Affairs’ and ‘The Office of Media Affairs’. The former is yet an un-thought quantity and will need to be instituted in Pakistan’s military system. The military does a poor job of this imperative by keeping the function at the headquarters only under a Principal Staff Officer, and uses it mostly to compensate those whose home and hearth may have been affected by a military action. The need for one is not considered pervasive, and thus the function comes alive only sporadically.
There is a need to institutionalise interaction with the public and respond to their concerns. Such an office must be devolved at the garrison level, keeping in touch with community leaders of all hue. The office can keep the community informed of any unusual activity as indeed be aware of any special support and convenience that the military could provide. Natural or man-made disasters, health and education, rescue and perhaps some relief in emergent conditions, count high on the needs matrix for a community that isn’t yet fully developed and whose civilian support system is fragile.
Public Relations rather than Public Affairs has been the focus of the Pakistani military traditionally. ISPR so spells itself but essentially relates to media affairs only, now upgraded to a fetish since the explosion of electronic and social media. Headed by the veritable Asim Bajwa, ISPR has been through a steep learning curve. But is now placed at a crossroads to determine if the direction it has taken is really the direction that media affairs must take given the sensitivity of the military as a non-political national institution. For one, it must have a role and objectives far different than those of the PML-N and PTI’s media cells.
It does not belittle in any way the impressive work of Asim Bajwa himself because he has given ISPR the missing fillip it needed, but here-on without a noticeable change in the functioning paradigm things will only muddle more. On a personal level, I am for Asim Bajwa being excused all his omissions and commissions in life, here and in the hereafter, simply for the two songs, ‘mein aisi kaum se houn jis ke tou bachon se darta hai’ and ‘Naara e Takbeer, Allah O Akbar’. These by themselves were enough to turn the tide in Pakistan’s war-on-terror. And that is on the same scale as the impact that nationalist songs had in 1965, only under challenges that were existential.
A review of the civil-military interface must relate to a wholesale change in the structures with the role and its intended impact devolved to the garrisons and the Bases. For the rather absent local media in the far-flung and agrarian towns and villages where garrisons and bases are located, the focus perhaps will remain on bigger cities and bigger cantonments. Yet, instituting a culture that demands an increased local interface is now almost an imperative. The civil-military balance that we seek in our socio-political interface will be gained there, not on the battlegrounds of Islamabad where the positions are already taken.
I have seen Sargodha grow from a dusty, agrarian outpost when the air force first moved in there. From a city where it was famously fabled that one lived a half of one’s life waiting on one side of a railroad crossing to get to the other and the second half in making the return journey, is now a city with shopping malls, flyovers, and underpasses.
With only two roads and a railway line to count, the entire commercial centre was arrayed along these two roads. Those with money and motorcars could make to Lahore where travelling took between 4-5 Hours. It now resembles any other big city of Punjab with specialised clientele that has pushed the city to cater for diverse products. It is now a politically vibrant centre of Punjab politics. A sleepy, muddy town sprung to life.
Inversely, there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that cities like Karachi made military-men more progressive and egalitarian – and ‘commercialised’ – in their outlook in comparison. It is always a challenge to keep a strictly military focus in these environments. ‘Waywardness’ is thus far more frequent. But this is just another nice way to keep the balance going.
Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.