|
Pakistan
Personnel and Training
The manpower base of Pakistan, with its population of more than
120 million, is more than adequate to maintain force levels that
the country can afford. In 1994 there were an estimated 6.4 million
men and 5.7 million women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two
and another 10 million men and 9 million women between the ages
of twenty-three and thirty-two. About two-thirds of the individuals
in these groups were estimated to be physically fit for service.
Although there is provision for conscription, it has not proven
necessary because there are more than enough volunteers for a
profession that is both honored and, by Pakistani standards, financially
rewarding.
Although recruitment is nationwide and the army attempts to maintain
an ethnic balance, most recruits, as in British times, come from
a few districts in northern Punjab Province and the adjacent North-West
Frontier Province. Most enlisted personnel come from rural families,
and although they must have passed the sixth-grade level in school,
many have only rudimentary literacy skills and very limited awareness
of the modern-day skills needed in a contemporary army (see Education
, ch. 2). Recruits are processed gradually through a paternalistically
run regimental training center, perhaps learning to wear boots
for the first time, taught the official language, Urdu, if necessary,
and given a period of elementary education before their military
training actually starts. In the thirty-six-week training period,
they develop an attachment to the regiment they will remain with
through much of their careers and begin to develop a sense of
being a Pakistani rather than primarily a member of a tribe or
a village. Stephen P. Cohen, a political scientist specializing
in military affairs, has noted that the army "encourages the jawan
(basic private) to regard his regiment and his unit as his home
or substitute village; and it invests a great deal of time and
effort into . . . `man management,' hoping to compensate in part
for generally inferior military technology by very highly disciplined
and motivated soldiers." Enlisted men usually serve for fifteen
years, during which they participate in regular training cycles
and have the opportunity to take academic courses to help them
advance.
About 320 men enter the army annually through the Pakistan Military
Academy at Kakul (in Abbotabad) in the North-West Frontier Province;
a small number--especially physicians and technical specialists--are
directly recruited, and these persons are part of the heart of
the officer corps. They, too, are overwhelmingly from Punjab and
the North-West Frontier Province and of middle-class, rural backgrounds.
The product of a highly competitive selection process, members
of the officer corps have completed ten years of education and
spend two years at the Pakistan Military Academy, with their time
divided about equally between military training and academic work
to bring them up to a baccalaureate education level, which includes
English-language skills. There are similar programs for the navy
at Rahbar (in Karachi) and for the air force at Sarghoda.
The army has twelve other training establishments, including
schools concentrating on specific skills such as artillery, intelligence,
or mountain warfare. Plans are being drawn up for the National
University of Science and Technology, which would subsume the
existing colleges of engineering, signals, and electrical engineering.
At the apex of the army training system is the Command and Staff
College at Quetta, one of the few institutions inherited from
the colonial period. The college offers a ten-month course in
tactics, staff duties, administration, and command functions through
the division level. Students from foreign countries, including
the United States, have attended the school but reportedly have
been critical of its narrow focus and failure to encourage speculative
thinking or to give adequate attention to less glamorous subjects,
such as logistics. The air force has an advanced technical training
facility at Korangi Creek near Karachi for courses in aeronautical
engineering, and the navy's technical training is carried out
at Karsaz Naval Station in Karachi.
The senior training institution for all service branches is the
National Defence College at Rawalpindi, which was established
in 1978 to provide training in higher military strategy for senior
officers. It also offers courses that allow civilians to explore
the broader aspects of national security. In a program begun in
the 1980s to upgrade the intellectual standards of the officer
corps and increase awareness of the wider world, a small group
of officers, has been detailed to academic training, achieving
master's degrees and even doctorates at universities in Pakistan
and abroad.
Pakistani officers were sent abroad during the 1950s and into
the 1960s for training in Britain and other Commonwealth countries,
and especially to the United States, where trainees numbering
well in the hundreds attended a full range of institutions ranging
from armored and infantry schools to the higher staff and command
institutions. After 1961 this training was coordinated under the
International Military Education and Training (IMET) program,
but numbers varied along with vicissitudes in the United States-Pakistan
military relationship. Of some 200 officers being sent abroad
annually in the 1980s, over two-thirds went to the United States,
but the cessation of United States aid in 1990 entailed suspension
of the IMET program. In 1994 virtually all foreign training was
in Commonwealth countries.
Pay scales and benefits for enlisted personnel are attractive
by Pakistani standards. Officer pay is substantially higher, but
with inflation and a generally expanding economy, officers find
it harder to make do and feel that they are falling well behind
their civilian counterparts in the civil service, where salaries
are somewhat higher and the opportunities for gain considerably
greater.
Officers retire between the ages of fifty-two and sixty, depending
on their rank. The retirement age for enlisted personnel varies
similarly according to grade. Retirement pay is modest, especially
for enlisted men, but the armed services find ways to make the
retiree's lot easier. Especially during periods of martial law,
retired senior officers have found second, financially rewarding
careers in government-controlled organizations. Land grants to
retired officers have been common, and scholarships and medical
care are available on a relatively generous basis. In the event
of an officer's death on active duty, certain provisions, including
grants of free housing, are often extended to his family.
The Fauji Foundation is a semiautonomous organization run for
the benefit of active and, especially, retired military personnel
and their families. It engages in a variety of lucrative businesses
throughout Pakistan and annually produces a surplus of US$30 million
for its beneficiaries. The Baharia Foundation provides a similar
service to navy families, as does the Shaheen Foundation to those
of the air force. )
Data as of April 1994
|
