This study is the first systematic examination of the experiences of U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) who attended the Pakistan Army Command and Staff College. 12 These FAOs are the only U.S. personnel, military or civilian, governmental or non-governmental, ever to have had sustained interactions over an extended period of time with three distinct groups of Pakistan Army officers:
senior officers (brigadier and major general), senior mid-level (lieutenant colonel and colonel), and junior mid-level (captain and major). The purpose of the study is to examine their experiences at the Staff College to ascertain the attitudes and values of the Pakistan Army officer corps over a 37-year period from 1977 to 2014, to determine if they changed over time, and if so, to discover the driver(s) of that change. In the course of developing the scope of this study, the author and project manager had several discussions with senior officials of the U.S.
government policy and intelligence communities. All expressed concern about the following questions, which are a major focus of the study:
• Have demographic changes altered the traditional recruitment and socialization patterns of the officer corps and made the Pakistan Army more susceptible to radical Islamic influence?
• Have events since 9/11 changed the perception of the Pakistan Army about the desirability of the United States as a security partner?
• Has the threat perception of the Pakistan Army changed? More
specifically, does the Pakistan Army view the internal security threat posed by radical Islamic groups to be greater or lesser than the external threat posed by India?
• How likely is it that the Pakistan Army will cease supporting Afghanistan-focused radical groups like the Afghan Taliban senior leadership and the Haqqani Network, and India-focused radical groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad?
• What is the likelihood that the Pakistan Army will stage another coup against an elected civilian government?
• How does the Pakistan Army view the efficacy of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, and has a doctrine been developed for their use?
METHODOLOGY
This study relies primarily on personal interviews with U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) that attended the Pakistan Army Command and Staff College as part of the In-Country Training (ICT) phase of FAO training. When these officers are referred to in subsequent portions of the study they will be designated as
“Student(s)” with a capital “S” to differentiate them from the more generic term, “student(s).”
The base year of the study is 1977, the earliest Staff College course from which a FAO graduate was found. During the 37-year period from 1977 until 2014 a total of 42 U.S. Army FAOs attended the Staff College. Of these, 37 were found and 31 agreed to participate. The author conducted personal interviews with 26. Three others submitted responses to a detailed questionnaire, two because they were serving in an overseas assignment and it was not possible to travel to their location, and one who declined to be interviewed but agreed to submit a questionnaire. The author, a Staff College graduate himself, submitted a detailed statement of his experience that was based on the questionnaire.
The author also discovered a copy of the end-of-tour report submitted by the 1980 student, who was not located, and portions of the report responsive to the questionnaire were extracted. Thus, a total of 31 data samples covering 25 years of the 37-year study period were obtained. In three years of the study period, 1979, 1991, and 2005, no American student attended the Staff College. The only significant gap in the study occurs in the three-year period of 1998 through 2000 when Staff College graduates were either deceased, not found, or did not agree to participate.13
No attempt is made to quantify the responses given by the Students because the sample size is too small for meaningful statistical analysis. The responses are used to identify broad patterns of behavior and attitudes in the three different sub-groups of the Pakistan Army officer corps that the Students observed during the study period: senior officers, the faculty (Directing Staff), and Pakistani students.
The original concept for obtaining data was to convene a series of regional conferences where FAOs would participate in a series of structured discussions over a two-day period. The first conference was scheduled for 26-27 October 2012 in Charleston, South Carolina, but was cancelled when legal objections were raised by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) General Counsel over future reimbursements for travel and per diem expenses for serving government and military personnel. A subsequent one-day event for
FAOs residing in the Washington, DC area was held on February 9, 2013. A transcript of the event was prepared by a LLNL employee, but after reviewing the document, the author and project director agreed that no future gatherings should be held. They discovered that in each of the five lines of inquiry being examined, there was a wide variation in the level and quality of participation by the attending FAOs. Additionally, the lack of time available for the five sessions, roughly 90 minutes for each, inhibited detailed discussion and was too short to cover every question in the research methodology. Therefore, the decision was made to conduct one-on-one interviews with all future study participants and to re-interview the six participants that attended the February 9 event. The 26 personal interviews that resulted from this process required two and one half to three and one half hours to complete for each participating FAO. The transcribed notes from these interviews range from five to twelve single-spaced pages. The interview notes, questionnaire responses, the statement by the 1982 student, and the single end of tour report are in ANNEX B.
The ability of individual FAOs participating in the study to recall specific information about their Staff College experience varied considerably from person to person. These differences were likely influenced not only by how long ago they attended the course, but by their attitude at the time. Some FAOs considered their year at the Staff College to be a seminal experience in their professional lives, while others considered it merely to be another military course they had been ordered to attend—and endure—a very long time ago. Some FAOs arrived at the Staff College exceptionally well prepared by a year of graduate school, consultation with earlier graduates, and as much as 44 weeks of Urdu language training; others showed up with virtually no preparation or knowledge of Pakistan. Some used the year at the Staff College to immerse themselves in the culture and society of Pakistan, while others were frustrated, and even angry, about the relatively austere living conditions, separation from their families (no Student attending after 2001 was allowed to bring family members with him), the onerous security restrictions imposed by the Staff College after 9/11, and what they considered to be the outdated military doctrine being taught. As a consequence, some FAOs had vivid memories of their experience in Quetta, while others had almost no memories at all, being unable without prompting to recall the names of individual Pakistani students in their syndicates or even the Staff College Commandant. Many, though not all, retained their Staff College yearbook, The Review, and made it available to the author, who extracted information from them about student demographics, allied student participation, major exercises, guest speaker lists and topics, and the college’s annual seminar topics. Only two participants, the 1982 Student and one of the 2011-2012 Students, kept the weekly training schedules that allowed
a close examination of the hours allotted to the internal security, joint operations, and nuclear portions of the curriculum in those years.
A final limiting factor was the zeal with which the Pakistan Army protects virtually all information about itself, even in areas that most Western observers consider to be completely innocuous. For example, the standard biographic information released about newly promoted senior officers in the Pakistan Army normally omits assignments, unit designations, and military schools attended, typically disclosing only that the officer has held a variety of command, staff, and educational appointments. The 1987 Student once took to his seminar room an issue of The Army Times, a weekly commercial newspaper published in Washington D.C. focused on information of interest to U.S. Army personnel.
His Pakistani classmates were amazed at the transparency of the U.S. military in matters that are considered to be extremely sensitive in Pakistan: criticism of senior military leaders and their military policy decisions; data about weapon system performance, development, and testing; numbers of troops and their locations in operational areas around the world; and details of officer promotions and postings.14 The complete lack of transparency in the Pakistan Army in these and many other areas are probably the basis for the perception of many Students that their Pakistani classmates had been briefed—or warned—not to discuss with them the following subjects: religion, the role of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and all nuclear issues.
This study originally was designed to identify the attitudes and values of the Pakistan Army officer corps in the five general lines of inquiry listed below. More detailed questions that formed the basis of the personal interviews and survey questionnaire were developed jointly by the author and project manager. The complete list of questions used in the study is at ANNEX C.
Demographic and Social Issues
How have the social class origins of Pakistani students and faculty at the Staff College changed over time? Are the attitudes of students from previously under-recruited areas different from those from traditional recruitment areas? Are current students more conservative religiously than earlier students? What is their level of social cohesiveness and is there any potential for factionalism in the Army based on religion, ethnicity, or social class?
Perceptions of External Threats and Friendships
Have the attitudes of Pakistani students toward India changed over time, and is India considered a greater or lesser threat than previously thought?
Similar questions will be asked about the United States, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. A particular focus of inquiry will be whether the general nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan has
been irreparably damaged by recent events or if there a residue of trust that may allow it to be refurbished?
Perceptions of Internal Threats and Friendships
Have the attitudes of Pakistani students toward extremist groups operating on Pakistani territory changed over time? How has the threat perception of the generation of Army officers in the last 10 years been changed by the experience of fighting extremist groups in the western areas of Pakistan?
Attitudes toward the State and its Institutions
Have the attitudes of Pakistani students toward the Pakistani state and
democratic governance evolved over time? Are they more or less amenable to another military government? Have the influences of the internet, news media, and social networking affected their attitude?
Attitudes toward Nuclear Issues
Have the attitudes of Pakistani students and faculty concerning the employment of nuclear weapons evolved over time? More specifically, what are their views about the efficacy of using tactical nuclear weapons? What kind of warfighting doctrine might be employed in a future conflict with India?