In film director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove, a US general initiates a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union on his own. The general’s reason to launch the attack is that he believes Soviet agents are using ‘water fluoridation’ that is “destroying the precious bodily fluids of the Americans.”

The film was a dark comedy, satirising Cold War politics. Through the general’s character, Kubrick was more-than-alluding to the fact that the rising tensions and the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union were pushing people towards the brink of sanity.

Propaganda against the enemy and myths about one’s own goodness came together to weave fantastical narratives, which were foremost embedded in the armed forces. 

Kubrick’s satire can also be understood as a warning against the manner in which the armed forces are indoctrinated. The idea is to root a single-minded purpose against the ‘evilness’ of the enemy. But there is every possibility that some serving or former officers may come to think that the purpose was not being fulfilled the way it should.

Swayed by emotions triggered by the indoctrination, the officers can end up taking matters in their own hands, even if this means going against their own institution.

The issue of the presence of extremist elements in militaries exists across the world. And it is sometimes the gatekeepers themselves who let them in

One important factor that can (and does) compound such a possibility is an external player that manages to infiltrate the forces and enhance the intensity of the indoctrination. These players do not challenge the indoctrinated narrative, but raise its temperature, enough for some officers to start believing that their institution is only providing lip-service or has become soft. 

These external players can either secretly sneak in or, in some cases, are invited by the institution itself to boost the morale of the forces. On December 7 this year, German authorities arrested at least 20 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the government in a coup. The planners included serving military personnel with links to far-right groups, driven by diabolical conspiracy theories. 

On February 9, 2022, the Guardian reported that one in five applicants to the white supremacist group Patriot Front claimed to hold current or former ties to the US military. 

Presence of far-right groups within the US armed forces is an old issue. But it began to get more attention when activists belonging to conspiratorial far-right outfits attacked the Capitol Building in Washington DC in January 2021.

Some concerned analysts feared that former president Donald Trump, who was overtly supported by the outfits, might have ended up cultivating power fantasies and military adventurism in members of the US armed forces with links to far-right groups. 

In May 2021, 50 retired army generals and at least 24,000 former and serving soldiers signed a letter addressed to France’s President Emmanuel Macron, lamenting that the government was not taking any meaningful steps against immigration.

The signatories were also angry at the way criticism against France’s colonial past was being tolerated. They warned that, if the situation worsened, their fellow soldiers on active duty may choose to intervene and take control. The letter was endorsed by the country’s largest far-right party, the Rassemblement National. 

These are but just a handful of examples of external players secretly sneaking in the armed forces to instigate coups. From the mid-20th century, most examples in this context are located in Africa, South America and Asia. A majority were of the right-wing variety. 

Nevertheless, some leftist groups too have succeeded in doing the same. For example, the 1978 coup in Afghanistan was engineered by communist cells active in the country’s armed forces. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular Arab nationalists managed to form groups within the armed forces of various Arab regions, such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Sudan.

As mentioned, sometimes the external players are uncannily invited by the armed forces to strengthen the indoctrination process of soldiers and officers. For example, when some governments shaped by Arab nationalist coups were toppled by another set of coups, new military leaders encouraged Islamist groups to come in as a way to eradicate any remaining sympathy for Arab nationalist ideas. 

However, ideologies that are purposely instilled in this regard, too, do not guarantee a coup-proof outcome. In the 1970s, the apparently left-leaning government of ZA Bhutto encouraged the ‘Islamisation’ of the armed forces. Islamist speakers were invited to speak to the soldiers and their writings were distributed among the officers. For some odd reason, Bhutto was of the view that this would neutralise the military’s ‘Bonapartist’ tendencies. 

What followed was a coup against Bhutto in 1977, engineered by a Machiavellian general who had led the Islamicisation process of the armed forces during the Bhutto regime. The general was Ziaul Haq. Despite the fact that the Islamicisation process intensified during the Zia dictatorship, groups emerged within the military who believed Zia was not doing enough to establish ‘Islamic’ rule in Pakistan.  

In 1980, a two-star general, Tajammul Hussain Malik, plotted a coup in which he planned to assassinate Zia during a parade. Malik wished to install a military junta which would replace Zia’s ‘fake Islamic regime’ with ‘a genuine one’. 

Due to Pakistan’s direct involvement in the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan (which was labelled as a ‘jihad’), the military provided access to Islamist ideologues to speak to officers and soldiers. The Islamist sentiment further intensified in the military. Therefore, this sentiment remained intact even after Zia’s demise. 

In 1995, Brig Zaheer Abbasi and Brig Mustansir Billa were arrested and accused of planning to overthrow the Benazir Bhutto government. The officers were allegedly planning to launch a coup against what they believed was a ‘liberal and corrupt regime’ that would roll back Pakistan’s nuclear program and abolish Zia’s ‘Islamisation’ project. After the coup, the plotters had planned to impose a strict Islamic regime, after dismissing the then military chief, Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar.

In 2011, five majors were arrested for plotting a coup. The plotters were alleged to have had links with the Hizbut Tahrir (HT) — an Islamist organisation which wants to enact a global caliphate through military coups in Muslim-majority countries, supported by middle-class elites.

In 2013, a famous TV anchor reported that, in 2011, he was ‘summoned’ by a now retired military officer. On the table of the officer was a book authored by a rabid conspiracy theorist. 

However, it is believed that, after 2014, the Pakistan military has become increasingly cautious about choosing which external players are to be given access to military personnel, and to what extent the indoctrination process can be stretched. A wise move, if true.

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 18th, 2022