Size Matters

Major General Shaukat Sultan, the DG ISPR, has an unenviable job as far as I am concerned. Not quite sure how to deal with “civilians”, and much less sure on how to deal with the press, the Army’s top PR man unwittingly says things which are mind boggling and can send the simple civilian mind into spasms. Talking to local journalists on the 16th of December, General Sultan defended the new GHQ complex which is going to be built in Islamabad. Obviously his objective was to clarify the rumors that ignorant civilians were spreading. Alas he has raised more questions than answering them.

Sectors E-10, D-11, and an area north of sector E-10 has been allotted for the Defense Services Complex. The total area comes up to 2,400 acres which include 870 acres which have been bought from the Capital Development Authority by the Armed Forces. General Sultan’s math leaves a lot to be desired when he tabulated the total. According to him the new GHQ would take up “only” 99 acres, 20 acres each would be allocated to Defense Ministry and the Joint Staff Headquarters, and the Naval and Air HQ’s would be allocated 30 and 40 acres each. While 350 acres in sectors E-10 and D-11 would remain unutilized drains, mountains, and other “drawbacks”. To quote the General from a local English language daily, “This leaves only 1,500 acres for the complex out of which offices for the Defence Ministry, Joint Services Headquarters and all Services Headquarters will be on 206 acres and the remaining will be used for allied facilities including 14,000 flats, houses, schools and hospitals for more than 17,000 employees of all grades who will be shifted from Rawalpindi to Islamabad.” Allied facilities? Schools? Hospitals? Hmm. Aren’t there enough allied facilities, schools, and hospitals in Islamabad? Besides what do allied facilities mean? Golf courses? Stables? Restaurants? I don’t know about the readers but I’m very confused.

Just to put everything in perspective I think there’s no argument about the fact that the United States’ has the largest and most powerful armed forces in the world with assets across the globe. Being the sole superpower in the world, the logistics of defending “freedom”,“democracy”, and oil must be rather complex, and at the heart of its’ military operations is the Pentagon. Completed in 1943, the Pentagon is the largest low rise office building in the world housing approximately 40,000 people. The funny thing is that the entire land area on which the Pentagon complex sits on is only 583 acres! What about schools? Hospitals? Allied facilities? I mean the richest country in the world surely must have allied facilities for its’ uber military headquarters? No apartments? Where do all these people live if the US military hasn’t constructed apartments for them? Surely they don’t rent homes from civilians in Virginia or DC? Or could it be that they have home mortgages like the rest of the population? My civilian mind is further boggled by the fact that the mightiest armed forces in the world has a military HQ which is smaller than the proposed Pakistani complex. Could it be that while we were all napping the balance of power in the world has changed? Could it be that the Pakistani Armed Forces have become far more sophisticated and complex than the Americans? All I know is that I’m terribly confused.

When someone asked General Sultan about the cost of the additional 870 acres which was purchased from the CDA, his reply was that it was at the same rate as Government offices have to pay and that was the end of that. As someone who doesn’t own any property I’m curious as to what that rate is as I might want to get an acre or two in D-11 or E-10, and whether it would be possible to get the same rate as the Army is. The CDA is going to get paid in installments for this 870 acres which also seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

And then there are the questions which my simple mind just cannot answer. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the Naval Headquarters in Karachi as opposed to landlocked Islamabad? The Pakistan Navy is hardly known for its successes in wartime so wouldn’t it make sense for them to practice in the sea as opposed to Mangla Dam? And while we’re on the topic of the Navy why is their a Naval facility in Lahore? Is the Ravi under some sort of threat we don’t know about? If this new HQ is being built in Islamabad, what will happen to the old GHQ facilities in Rawalpindi? Will it become a tourist attraction where people can get guided tours as they can at the Pentagon? Or will the well-appointed offices be auctioned to raise money to pay the CDA installments?

The more interesting questions will be as to who will get the contracts to construct the new military complex? Who will get the contracts for the interiors? How much money will be spent? Will the National Assembly and the general public get an itemized list of what was bought and how much it all cost? Will there be an open tender? If you go to the Pentagon website and other websites you can see all the costs associated with the construction of the building, but will we as the key ally in the “war on terror” follow Uncle Sam’s lead on disclosure when public funds are used? Shouldn’t the same amount of money be used to buy a fleet of helicopters for Army Aviation given that we were woefully short of the birds when the earthquake hit? In the meanwhile we can be content with the fact that we’ll soon be in the Guinness Book of World Records – if not for the largest military HQ complex then definitely for spending the most money on an expensive non-vital project which cannot be justified in light of the recent earthquake in Kashmir and the NWFP.