Analysis of Army Promotions/Assessment-One

Dr Hamid Hussain by his analysis of army promotions has set a train of thoughts.This is primarily so , because much of what he says , in my opinion needs more analysis.

FIRST

Promotion in the army and here we mean pakistan army is deeply flawed,not wholly fair,in some cases most umfair etc.I start from the British times.At that time promotion was based on colonial reliability.How loyal is this man to the British Empire.The same was true for classes of soldiers.Thus the Ranghar Muslims and the Hindustani Muslims lost their credibility after rebelling in 1857.Thus the Punjabis , initially Sikhs in lead and later Punjabi Muslims ( from rain irrigated areas mostly) became the most reliable.The Pashtuns, and I mean the tribal Pashtuns lost credibility when the Wazirs,Mahsuds and Afridis rebelled and defected to Turkish and German lines.This happened in WW One.

THE ANNUAL REPORTThe annual report with the commanding officer or the initiating officer as the main man is also deeply flawed and based on personal likes and dislikes.There is no independent system to cross check and some details of these were discussed in my essays Intangible forces.....and .....Decision making posted on this blog.



Zia EraPromotions were based on the reliability factor.From a humble background Zia had many inferiority complexes.Alchohol was not the issue.Zia used religion as a hoax.He was not as religious as he pretended.But this was a psychological defence mechanism used to compensate for his poor personality and appearance and his other psychological hang ups.

More on this later.