Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State

The cover piece in the May 2010 edition of Jane's Intelligence Review was introduced as "While Pakistan and the US have much to gain from cooperating with each other, overarching self-interest and a history of mutual mistrust continue to complicate their interaction. Brian Cloughley looks at the past, present and future of bilateral relations between the two countries."

A History of the Pakistan Army:
Wars and Insurrections

A fourth edition of A History of the Pakistan Army is to be published in 2011. There will be extensive revision, and it will be brought up to date with much hitherto unpublished information.

Comments on the third edition, in 2005, included one from the former Director General of Military Operations in the Indian Army, Lieutenant General VR Raghavan, who observed that "This book has the special advantage of being written by an observant military author who is both candid and objective."

And Lester Grau of the Foreign Military Studies Office at the US Military College at Fort Leavenworth - "The intellectual centre of the Army" - said that "I have read some three to four dozen books about South Asia. I only wish this could have been the first. It is a basic primer on an important regional military in a potential war zone."

Letters from a Kashmir Memsahib
by Margaret Cloughley

This book is a collection of letters from Margaret Cloughley to her mother in 1980-82 when she lived in Kashmir where her husband, Brian, was deputy head of the UN Military Mission.

"I was sitting in the drawing room when I heard a crash in the kitchen, followed by a series of thumps. Grabbing a poker, I went through, and gingerly opened the kitchen door, expecting an intruder. There was a very large rat caught in the trap, but very much alive, and protesting violently. There was no way I could bring myself to despatch it, so I called the guard, three of whom rushed in with bayonets fixed on their rifles. None of them was any more anxious to deal with the situation than I was, but I gave instructions and fled. The three armed soldiers thrashing around in that confined space, must have been quite a sight, but eventually all was calm so obviously the enemy was subdued.

Politically, things are a little tense here at the moment. The spark this time was the incident where 'someone' put a pig in a mosque in a town somewhere south of Delhi. The subsequent riots resulted in the deaths of 108 people, and the unrest spread like wildfire throughout the subcontinent. For a country with 75% illiteracy, it is amazing just how fast news spreads around a vast area. Here in Srinagar, trouble breaks out with amazing speed in pockets around the city and there are an average of 3 dead per night, in spite of a curfew and the prohibition of people gathering in groups of more than four."

War, Coups & Terror:
Pakistan's Army in the Years of Turmoil

In recent years Pakistan has changed from being a state of regional strategic significance to one of major global importance. Its geographical position and delicate religious and tribal mix, coupled with a complex political structure, have ensured that its actions - and inactions - have attracted close scrutiny since Nine-Eleven and the declaration of the 'War on Terror.'

Trumpeters: The Story of the Royal Artillery's Boy Trumpeters

This history of the Royal Artillery's boy trumpeters covers not only the 1920s and 30s - when some of 3,000 of them were trained at the Grand Depot at Woolwich in London and various Depots in India until the 1940s - but is also the tale of the trumpeters who were so much a part of the British Army over the centuries.

One of these teenage Trumpeters, Boy Richard Samson, was a born writer.   He loved his horse, Tess, and in 1938, aged 16, when mechanisation was about to dispense with horses he asked to see his commanding officer to see if anything could be done so that he could keep his beloved steed.  “And Colonel Fairclough was a real gentleman who took a special interest in the unit’s trumpeters.  He explained that it was absolutely necessary that the unit be mechanised and that the horses must go.  He would hate it as much as I would . . .   The day came when Tess and all the other beautiful horses were sold.  I last saw her being led out of the gate, and to this day I often think of her.  I went back to barracks, a barracks that seemed so still and silent, a barracks that had lost its heart.  I walked through the stable door and stood by her stall. Her nose-bag still hung on the hook. I touched it, then, ‘goodbye Tess.’ And walked briskly away.  Soldiers don’t cry, do they?”

About Brian Cloughley

Brian Cloughley and his wife Margaret live in France, in the small village of Voutenay sur Cure in Burgundy.

He has studied South Asian affairs since the late 1970s and is South Asia defence analyst for Jane’s Sentinel, Country Risk, covering Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, updating the material monthly. A March 2009 analysis in Jane’s Intelligence Review (JIR) described India’s possible intentions along the Line of Actual Control with China, and a major JIR piece of 16 July examined Pakistan’s counterinsurgency operations in the North and West of the country. 

In February 2010 he had a cover (but unattributed) piece in Jane’s Intelligence Weekly (JIW) about Pakistan’s military operations in the Bajaur Federally Administered Tribal Area.  His examination of contenders to be the next Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan was in the 24 March JIW (but again without a byline:  ‘Pakistan army chief succession fires debate’).  A 4,000 word  analysis of US-Pakistan relations was in the May 2010 edition of JIR (see panel to the left), and a 1,000 word piece on India’s Defence Research and Analysis Organisation (DRDO) appears in the mid-June edition of Jane’s Defence Weekly.  He has been asked to write a 4,000 word study of DRDO for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies in Delhi, to be published at the end of the year.

He analyses chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) developments in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for Jane’s Information Group and contributes papers to the Pakistan Security Research Unit of Bradford University in the UK.  See PSRU Brief 53 of 10 December 2009:  Insurrection, Terrorism and the Pakistan Army at http://spaces.brad.ac.uk:8080/display/ssispsru/Publications.

His book War, Coups and Terror, describing the Pakistan Army from 1972 to 2008, was published by Pen & Sword (UK) in October 2008, and, in a new edition, updated to February 2009, in the US in May 2009 by Skyhorse Publishing (New York). See http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/details.php?TitleID=371

Trumpeters, his history of the boy trumpeters of the British Army’s Royal Artillery, was published by Woodfield Publishing (UK) in December 2008, as was Letters of a Kashmir Memsahib, by his wife Margaret, a collection of letters she wrote to her mother while in Kashmir when he was deputy head of the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan in 1980-82. See both at http://www.woodfieldpublishing.co.uk/index1.html. Margaret is now researching the history of an ancient and distinguished family of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

He visits the sub-continent most years, and spent November-December 2003 in Pakistan, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and India and Indian-administered Kashmir. In that time he had discussions with President Pervez Musharraf and resulting exchanges with senior Indian figures in Delhi, some of which will be detailed in the fourth edition of his book A History of the Pakistan Army, to be published next year (see below and the box to the left).  The message passed by Cloughley to President Musharraf from the deputy head of RAW was intriguing.

He visited both Kashmirs in September 2004, and during his stay in Pakistan and India in December 2005 – January 2006 he again met with President Musharraf and had discussions in Delhi and Islamabad. In 2007 he met twice with the then Director General Inter Service Intelligence, General Kayani, who was appointed Chief of the Army Staff in November that year. During a visit to Afghanistan in 2007 he met with officials in Kabul but was unable to travel more widely.  In 2008 he visited Pakistan twice, and met with senior figures in the military and government. He intends to visit in 2010 but has been advised against this in view of the internal security situation.  We’ll see.

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Brian Cloughley served in the British and Australian armies and saw active service in the 1960s in what Indonesia called ‘Confrontation’ with Malaysia. As a Forward Observer in 6th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, in Borneo,  he was fortunate enough to be attached to 42 Commando, Royal Marines; 1st Battalion Sarawak Rangers, of the Royal Malaysian Army; and 4th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, following which connection he was asked to join the Australian Army, which he did in January 1970.

His military life included service as an intelligence officer in Cyprus at the end of colonial rule, then, also in Cyprus, as a regimental officer with 42nd Field Regiment, during which time he was able to travel extensively in Libya. His attachment with the Jordan Desert Police Force (then patrolling by camel, intercepting salt smugglers from Syria to Saudi Arabia), was especially interesting, as were tours as Reconnaissance and Survey Officer in 39 [nuclear] Missile Regiment in Germany, and fascinating but futile involvement in Australian Psychological Operations in Vietnam.

Later appointments included being deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir in 1980-82;  Senior Staff Officer (Force Structure), in Australian Army HQ, during which time he was honoured by being appointed to the Order of Australia;  Director of Protocol for the Australian Defence Force;  and, lastly, Australian Defence Attaché in Pakistan from December 1988 to July 1994.  In that agreeable posting he visited almost every part of the country, including some of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in which intruders – including citizens of Pakistan – are rarely  welcome but where he was greeted with warmth,  possibly as a result of his travels in 1985 when he had visited at the invitation of President (General) Zia ul Haq and travelled throughout North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

While in the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP – observing the ‘quantum of forces’ in Kashmir) in 1981 there happened to be a particularly delightful and civilised bunch of people – and we became a family (see Margaret’s book).  The members of that year’s Mission hold annual reunions in Scandinavia. We’re the only ones to have such a get-together, in all sixty years of the Mission’s existence. And now we are joined by the children and grandchildren of Mission members.

Living conditions were somewhat basic in Srinagar and Rawalpindi (and even more so in the Field Stations along the Line of Control), and here are two of the children,  then in Srinagar and now in Denmark  . . .

And here is BWC in front of the flagpole, closing the 2009 gathering in Norway.

In 2010 the reunion will be 31 July – 2 August in Sweden, and the Cloughleys will drive there from France, visiting friends in Germany and Denmark en route, and taking as much wine as they can pack in the car.
 
In November 2001 he delivered the Fifth Dr LM Singhvi Lecture in Pluralism at the University of Leicester (UK), on ‘Creating a Climate of Confidence in Indo-Pakistan Relations’, and has spoken at other institutions in Britain, including Birmingham University’s Centre for Studies in Security in Diplomacy in 2004 and 2005, on the subject of Confidence-Building Measures.  In 2006 the Prime Minister of Pakistan introduced his Altaf Gauhar Memorial Lecture in Islamabad, and he spoke at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2006 and 2007, and the Royal United Service Institute in 2008.

On  22 July 2009 he was speaker at a meeting of the Pakistan Society in London on the subject of ‘Pakistan’s Army and National Security.’

In October 2009 he spoke at the Royal United Services Institute roundtable on Kashmir:

Ahmir Soofi, President of the Research Society of International Law; BWC;
Professor Richard Bonney, RUSI Fellow in South Asian Studies;
General Ehsan ul-Haq, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of Pakistan.

His book,  A History of the Pakistan Army (OUP), was described as having ‘well-sourced commentary’ concerning the most ill-advised attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in the Kargil Sector by Pakistan in 1999, and about the unintentional but widely-welcomed coup by General Musharraf (‘a first-rate officer’ as he was described by Cloughley in an official despatch in 1994). 

The History was revised and updated and published in a third edition in 2006, and, as indicated above, a new edition will appear in 2011 because much information has come to light about the 1965 and 1971 wars from many sources, and there is a great deal to add about more recent events : two chapters, indeed.  The reason that the book is not to appear as originally scheduled, at the end of 2010,  is that the Chief of the Army Staff is due to retire in November, and there could be interesting developments if he chooses to remain in the post – or if the officer forecast by Cloughley to take over is passed over . . .  

There will be a detailed description of how Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence conducted a honey-trap for India’s Naval Attaché, involving an attractive Pakistani Nursing Sister, and other anecdotes, such as one recorded in Cloughley’s Diary as:

Not amusing today. Arranged to give luncheon to Satish [Satish Jain; Indian air attaché; agreeable and civilised officer; later Air Marshal], so didn’t ask Altaf [driver] to drive.  [There had been instances, when a High Commission driver drove a diplomat to meet an Indian, that he would be interviewed later by a Pakistani intelligence operative to ask him what they had talked about in the car.  This could be upsetting for the drivers, so we preferred to drive ourselves in such circumstances.]  I pulled up opposite the Indian High Commission on Bank Road and Satish got in.  But a bit further down the road, just before getting on to Constitution Avenue, a spook car came out of the trees and followed me all the way to the turn up to the Blue Area. So I drove round the roundabout seven times, followed by the spooks until they gave up & parked on the side of the road.  I made a rude sign and drove on to the restaurant and later remonstrated with the ISI LO [Liaison Officer] who of course denied all knowledge of  me being followed.

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A noteworthy piece by Cloughley on Kashmir is his chapter in Nuclear Risk-Reduction in South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan) edited by Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre in Washington.  George Perkovich, Vice President of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote that  “This Stimson Center volume provides the most accessible, expert, and realistic guide to what can and should be done to stabilize the Indo-Pak nuclear relationship.”

Consultancy analyses include Indian Defence Procurement: Assessing Indian Defence Markets (London: SMi Publishing). This was a 58,000 word analysis of the potential for foreign investment in a major Indian growth industry that, although hampered by bureaucracy and corruption, is expanding enormously (see Jane’s Country Risk briefs). The paper is being updated in the light of competing international interests and contact with people involved in recent negotiations.  It might appear that US defence industries have sewn up Indian contracts, but this is not necessarily so, in spite of some strange machinations in 2009-2010, when two contracts with Europe were deemed to be inoperative, following some behind-scenes action involving people who may have benefitted from their activities.    

Doing Business in Pakistan was first produced in 2007 and has since been revised. Unfortunately, given recent unrest in Pakistan, his consultancy directed to creation of leisure centres in the country is on hold.  (An entrepreneur in the Gulf had intended to develop, among other places, the Swat Valley as a tourist attraction, and was seeking Pakistani partners, advisers and consultants.)

But in spite of Pakistan’s current domestic problems there are many good long-term investment opportunities in many fields, not least that of defence production.

His analysis, Pakistan’s Army and National Stability, was published by the Pakistan Security Research Unit of Bradford University (UK) in April 2009:  PSRU Brief 47. See http://spaces.brad.ac.uk:8080/display/ssispsru/Publications

Another piece appears in the blog of Professor Juan Cole at Informed Comment : http://www.juancole.com/2009/04/cloughley-pakistans-army-taliban-and.html, and an essay about the futility of sanctions,  titled,  with military originality,  “The Futility of Sanctions,” was published in two parts, in November and December 2009, by the Future of Freedom Foundation. (See http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0911f.asp, and http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/cloughley1.1.1.html.)

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Brian Cloughley edited the 2001-2008 Diaries of Lieutenant General (retd) Ali Aurakzai, an outstanding officer who was Corps Commander in Pakistan’s North West Province from 2001-2004 and then Governor of the Province from 2006 to 2008, but unfortunately publication has been forbidden on the grounds of national security.  The diaries were originally a handwritten 445,000 words (typed by Margaret Cloughley) and were edited down to 180,000. There are many hundreds of superb photographs.  In their final form the Diaries do not contain anything that would compromise the security of Pakistan, although they describe some military deficiencies and many social and political problems. In the opinion of the editor they would add to the credibility and standing of Pakistan’s army were they to be published.

He is editing for publication the 1882-85 and 1902 diaries and letters of Captain Reginald Hunter Blair of the Gordon Highlanders, at the request of his great-grandson, Alister HB, a former Royal Navy officer who keeps a houseboat on the Canal du Nivernais, near Voutenay.

These cover the British army’s campaign in Egypt and include descriptions of the battle of Tel el Kebir and the amazing journey up the Nile to the Sudan.  He has also received from an old friend now in Washington, a retired Australian general with a long and distinguished family tree,  the diaries and letters of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Coveny of the Black Watch, who was, as a Captain, a participant in the same events as Hunter Blair.  It should be an interesting book – at least for enthusiasts – when it eventually appears. It might also add something to the History of the Black Watch, which is being written by the brilliant author Victoria Schofield.  Excerpts from both officers’ diaries describing the Battle of Tel el Kebir in Egypt in 1882 are illuminating:

Here is Reginald:

Here our programme rather broke down – the noise of the rifles and guns of the enemy drowned every bugle that could be sounded.  However we raised a tremendous cheer and charged up the hill.  The noise of bullets was wonderful, just swishing over our heads – luckily as usual the fire was too high so we escaped without much loss up that hill, tho’ poor Brooks was shot in five places and killed on the spot.   

And Robert, over on the right flank:

Suddenly we saw some bright flashes about 100 yards in front of us.  Puff!  Puff! – we could just see, as it was now the break of dawn.  ‘Fix bayonets’, quietly went down our line now.  The bayonets had no sooner been fixed than the whole of the Egyptian line, about 100 yards in our front, seemed like a city suddenly lighted up with a continuous row of gas-jets;  a deafening rattle of musketry – and a shower of Remington bullets hailed around us.  Some of our men were hit;  but the Highland blood was up; in less than I have time to write from that last full stop we joined in the attacking lines, and, with one yell, we went at those fellows with the bayonet.  It was a regular company-officers’ and soldiers’ battle.  Just as we got to the first entrenchment, and as we were storming it, I got a bullet in my left shoulder;  but I simply despised it, and jumped down with lots of my brave chappies bayoneting right and left around me.

Reginald Hunter Blair’s diary for 1902 has been discovered and is now being edited. It describes his life in Kashmir, which is interesting even if almost the entire period is given over to polo, golf and bridge. One piece of history is an invitation to supper:

But one of the saddest things is the record that

1st May.  Srinagar.   We all went by boat to the Masim Bagh in Dahl Lake, about 1½ hours paddle.  Took lunch and had a jolly picnic under the splendid Chinar trees.  The Buists joined us.  E [his wife, Emily] and I rode home with them afterwards.  It was Alister’s birthday treat and a jolly day.  Lovely weather except for a bad squall of wind and rain just as we got near home . . .

because their son Alister was killed during the First World War, a week after his nineteenth birthday. His body was never found, but his memorial in France reads

In Memory of
Second Lieutenant ALISTER HUNTER BLAIR

1st Bn., Cameron Highlanders
who died age 19
on 09 May 1915
Son of Maj. and Mrs. Reginald Hunter Blair, of Broomhouse, Duns, Berwickshire.
Remembered with honour
LE TOURET MEMORIAL

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Which tends to make one think about the futility and disaster and grief of war.

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Brian Cloughley has written a chapter titled The Terrorist Challenge and the Army’s Capabilities for a book to be called  Pakistan's Quagmire; Security, Strategy and future of the Islamic-nuclear Nation, to be published in Fall 2010 by Continuum publishers, New York. 

His analysis Militancy and the Pakistan Army was published as Manekshaw Paper 17 by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi, in January 2010.  According to the description, it  “examines the Pakistan Army’s military operations in the FATA and NWFP since 2001 and discusses the internal and external constraints within which they operate. It argues that the Pakistan Army is serious about tackling militancy . . .  but that there are limits to what military force alone can achieve.  The key to long-term stability and security must come from the economic, political and social follow-up to military action, the responsibility for which lies with the civilian government of Pakistan.”

In December 2009 two beautiful Sopranos from the local Blivet School of Music gave a concert in the Music Room of a friend’s house in the village of Voutenay sur Cure, where Brian and Margaret Cloughley live,  and  were affectionate thereafter . . .   

And on an even more personal note,  here is a family snap, at the civil wedding ceremony of Margaret’s niece, Sarah, in the Mairie in Bordeaux on 27 February 2010 – a super occasion, when she married Marvellous Mathieu:

Amie, sister of Bride;  Susie, mother of Bride;  Darling Sarah; Margaret, the Bride’s Aunt;  and BWC.
The Church wedding will be in New Zealand next year.

More to follow, one hopes . . . .

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