A History of the Pakistan Army:
Wars and Insurrections

A fourth edition of A History of the Pakistan Army is to be published at the end of 2010. There will be extensive revision, and it will be brought up to date with much hitherto unpublished information.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.

About Brian Cloughley

Brian Cloughley has studied South Asian affairs since the late 1970s and is South Asia defence analyst for Jane's Sentinel, covering Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, updating the material monthly. A March 2009 study in Jane's Intelligence Review (JIR) described India's airfields and 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.

He also analyses aspects of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons' proliferation in the sub-continent 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.

He is interviewed by the Voice of America, the BBC, ABC (Australia), AP, Reuters, Pakistan television and radio stations, Al Jazeera, and by French and Scandinavian media.

In the New Yorker of 6 November 2009 he was quoted in a piece by Seymour Hersh about nuclear safety in Pakistan. Fame, at last, perhaps. See http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh.

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 and http://www.amazon.com/War-Coups-Terror-Pakistans-Turmoil/dp/1602396981.

His book Trumpeters, the 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 Brian 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.

He visits the sub-continent most years, and spent November and December 2003 in Pakistan, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and India and Indian-administered Kashmir. In that time he had discussions with President Pervez Musharraf and extensive exchanges with senior Indian figures in Delhi and Srinagar, the intriguing content of which will be detailed in the fourth edition of his book A History of the Pakistan Army, to be published at the end of 2010 (see below).

He also 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. 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 during the 1960s in what Indonesia called ‘Confrontation' with Malaysia. While 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 latter 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 42^nd 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 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 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. During that agreeable period there was hardly a region of Pakistan he did not visit, including some of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in which intruders - including citizens of Pakistan - are not welcome but where he was greeted with warmth, possibly as a result of his travels in 1985 when he had visited Pakistan at the invitation of President (General) Zia ul Haq and travelled throughout North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

In 1981 in the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) there was a particularly notable number of delightful people - we became a family (see Margaret's book) - and 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 the sixty years of the Mission's existence.

Here is Cloughley, in front of the flagpole, closing the 2009 gathering in Norway.

In 2010 the reunion will be in Sweden, in August.

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. 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.

Publications include A History of the Pakistan Army (OUP), with ‘well-sourced commentary' on the invasion of Indian-administered Kashmir in the Kargil Sector by Pakistan, and the unintentional but widely-welcomed coup by General Musharraf (‘a first-rate officer' as he was described as a major general by Cloughley in an official despatch in 1994). The book was revised and updated and published in a third edition in 2006, and, as indicated above, a new edition will appear in 2010, because much information has come to light about the 1965 and 1971 wars from many sources, and of course there is much to add about more recent events. There will be a 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 some other spicy scandal.

A notable pointer on Kashmir is included in Nuclear Risk-Reduction in South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan 2004) edited by Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre in Washington.

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. The paper is being updated in the light of competing international interests. It might appear that US defence industries have sewn up Indian contracts, but this is not necessarily so.

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

But in spite of Pakistan's current domestic problems there remain 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. http://www.beecluff.com/See%20http:/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 was published in two parts, in November and December 2009, by the Future of Freedom Foundation (http://www.fff.org/freedom/index.asp).

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Brian Cloughley edited the 2001-2008 Diaries of Lieutenant General (retd) Ali Aurakzai 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 445,000 words (all typed by Margaret Cloughley) and were edited down to 180,000. In their final form they did not contain anything that would compromise the security of Pakistan, although they do describe some military deficiencies and many social and political problems. In the opinion of the editor they would add to the credibility of Pakistan's army were they to be published.

In addition to revising and updating A History of the Pakistan Army he is now editing the 1882-85 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. 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 in Washington, a retired Australian general with a long and distinguished family tree, the diaries and letters of Lt Colonel 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.

He 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.

 

In December 2009 two beautiful Sopranos gave a concert in the Music Room of a friend's house in the village of Voutenay sur Cure, where Cloughley lives, and were affectionate thereafter...

More to come, one hopes...

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

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