Our Defence Cause: An Analysis of Pakistan Past and Future Military Role (1976) By M. Attiqur Rahman
 
 Lt General M. Attiqur Rahman (White Lion Publishers, London 1976) has drawn back the heavy curtain on defence in his latest book "Our Defence Cause", which provides an incisive analysis of Pakistan"s past and future military role. One would look in vain in these 260 pages for a complete answer to the question why the Indo-Pakistan conflict of 1965 ended in a sort of draw, or why the Pakistan armour was blunted in the 1971 war. But unlike General Fazal Muqueem"s book The Story of the Pakistan Army the present work is more solid and objective and offers a remarkably synoptical and highly specialised study of the defence organisation.
 
The tone of the book is neither chauvinistic nor apologetic. It is chiefly nationalistic. Its main virtue lies in demolishing several myths and bringing out some glaring discrepancies in the old military doctrine and the new situation.
 
In the opening chapter, the author traces the historical background of our armed forces up to 1965 and the "good and bad points" inherited from the British Indian Army, notably its class composition. This may not impress those who have handled Dr. Nagendra Singh"s "Organisation of Defence in Indian Constitutional History", which came out in 1969 tracing the development of soldiery in this region from the days of Mahabharata through the Curzon-Kitchener period, down to the time of Partition. But General Attiqur Rahman"s observation on the past showing of the Indian army in the First and Second World Wars against the Germans and the Japanese are refreshingly non-conformist.
 
Soft Cover
263 pages
In Poor Condition-Pages are coming away from spine