THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ROLE OF THE PAKISTANI

MILITARY
Pakistan’s armed forces are among the most modern, largest and well funded in the
world. Within them, the army is the largest unit and the most powerful institution in
the country. In the late 1950s, it became a key political force and increasingly
infiltrated the economy. Its penetration into crucial political decision‐ making became
entrenched in the ’80s, while the greatest penetration into the economy and society
took place in following decade, and has not been reversed to date. In the paper we
will see how the army turned into a key player on the political scene and came to
control a wide economic sector, what factors may have contributed to its “over‐
development” and what are its implications.

Introduction
Pakistan’s armed forces are among the most modern, largest and well-funded in the
world and the only ones in the Muslim world to be endowed with nuclear weapons.
As of 2010 the military had almost 500,000 men, without counting paramilitary
units1. Although the military component of Pakistan’s budget has decreased since the
end of the 1980s, military spending remains very high (3.1% of GDP)2. In addition to
using vast national resources for its defence, the country remains one of the main
beneficiaries of US military aid despite rocky and at times faltering bilateral relations

A history of military intervention in politics

After the birth of the country in 1947 the military gradually grew in
numbers and strength due to several factors, some of which go back to
colonial times. At the end of the nineteenth century, Punjab, for reasons
we will return to, had become the major centre of recruitment for the
Indian army. The British granted land to servicemen and retired military
personnel and to the pirs and maliks who procured recruits, thus turning
them into landowners4. This was a reward for their loyalty, a means of
forging or consolidating alliances with local power networks, and a way of
attracting new recruits. Moreover, the local bureaucracy was
strengthened in several ways, and a powerful nexus developed between
the bureaucracy, the military and the landed elite, which was to survive
following Partition, when Punjab became the economic and political heart
of the new state.
This colonial legacy, coupled with a lack of trained civil servants, contributed to the
progressive induction of the higher military echelons into the civil administration,
which paved the way for their increasing role in politics5. The higher bureaucracy
increasingly ruled with the armed forces, inviting them to run the state and making
concessions to them at the expense of “professional politicians”. In the meantime, the
communal killings and massive movements of people which accompanied Partition,
as well as the rise of ethnic nationalist movements and tensions with Afghanistan and
India over Kashmir and the Durand Line respectively, created in the country a sense
of deep vulnerability. A few months after Partition, the first war with India over
Kashmir broke out, while declarations by Indian politicians that Pakistan would not
survive long fed fears of national fragmentation. These factors moulded Pakistan’s
early security perceptions and justified high and increasing budgetary allocations to
the military6. According to many, a factor that greatly contributed to strengthening
the army and its political role was the underdevelopment of the political system, by
which is mostly meant inefficient and corrupt politicians7 who tried to maximize the
interests of their own groups rather than working for the common good. The frequent
dismissal of governments between 1947 and ‘58, the factionalism within the party
system and its aloofness from the general public (the first elections would be held in
1970) did not help to boost the image of politicians. The military, which projected an
image of corporate pride, contrasted starkly with them, appearing as a disciplined,
organized institution. Undoubtedly, however, the military’s increasing political role in
turn contributed to the weakness of civilian elites and further delegitimized them8, in
a mutually reinforcing process.

The Afghan “watershed”

In the 1980s Pakistan’s role in the jihad against Soviet forces in
Afghanistan was amply rewarded by the Reagan administration, which
provided Zia with sophisticated military equipment and funding as well as
substantial economic aid. Pakistan’s support of the mujaheddin on behalf
of “the free world” also justified higher allocations to the defence budget:
defence spending under Zia dramatically expanded, by ’87-’88 overtaking
development spending. In that context another event occurred which
would have deep consequences: the military high commands, together
with the ISI, a branch of the secret services, took control of Afghan policy
and the nuclear sector, and since then have been reluctant to let them go.
In that decade, as a consequence of Zia’s Islamisation policy and of his
alliance with religious groups linked to his Afghan policy, maulvis and
religious teaching were integrated into the armed forces, and senior posts
were increasingly covered by officers who, like Zia himself, came from the
lower urban middle class and were as a consequence more
religion-oriented than their predecessors. Thus the military, already
perceived as a bulwark against territorial fragmentation and India’s “evil”
designs, could also present itself as the guardian of Pakistan’s “ideological
borders”. The military-mullah nexus which took form under Zia can be
actually traced back to 1965 and the 1971 civil war, when the military
regime conveniently allowed the Jamaat-e-Islami to characterize the
Indians in 1965 and the Bengali rebels in 1971 as “infidels” against whom
good Muslims should conduct a jihad. It should be remembered here that
under the elected Bhutto government Afghan Islamist dissidents started
to be supported by Pakistan: Zia’s policy of supporting Afghan extremists
as a geopolitical tool was a continuation of his predecessor’s policy,
although thanks to considerable foreign support it gained unprecedented
depth.
When in the mid-1980s, under external and internal pressure, the
military regime was forced to restore some degree of democracy, Zia
devised a system that behind a civilian façade allowed the military to
control the decision–making process: in 1985 he amended the constitution
to empower the president, a position he then held, to dismiss parliament
and the prime minister. Zia used this clause when three years later he
dismissed Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejio, who had tried to
have a say on military promotions and attempted to reduce defence
expenditures.
“Democratic transitions” and the military
What happened in the following decade indicates that the military finds it
difficult to retreat to the barracks and give up its political role, and gives
us food for thought when we ponder on the “democratic transition”
following the 2008 national elections.
After Zia died in 1988, national elections were held producing an elected
government headed by Benazir Bhutto. However, the security forces
retained a final say on sensitive issues such as regional policies, defence
expenditures, and the nuclear sector, and refused any interference in
internal postings, transfers, promotions, service privileges and perks.
Both Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, as mentioned before, were dismissed
when they attempted to reassert control over these areas. Defence
spending remained very high, although the percentage of military
expenditure in GDP slightly dropped during the 1990s.
This brings us to an interesting point: both elected and unelected
governments have neglected the public health and education sector, while
spending considerable amounts of money on defence12. To be fair, the underfunding
of social welfare in democratic phases cannot be attributed
only to the military‘s strength and influence behind the scenes. A factor
which may explain the limited commitment by governments, whether
elected or unelected, to social welfare is the structure of Pakistani society,
where family/biraderi (kinship group) affiliations and crony networks
make politicians more interested in pleasing their limited constituencies,
and dominant classes belong to groups – mainly rural elites – which are
overrepresented in both the major political parties and the national
assembly13, and thus are, for ideological and self-serving interests,
uninterested in investing in the socio-economic empowerment of the poor.
The 1988 transition to democracy made no dramatic difference in terms of
approach to extremist forces and foreign policy policies, as the decision by
Benazir and Sharif to support the Taliban proves. This may well be a
product of the army’s interference, but it could be argued that elected
leaders share the outlook of the military on some issues including the
perceived need to control Afghanistan in order to counter India’s
preeminence in the region and its ‘machinations’, and to do so through
religious proxies. Civilian elites may be unwilling to cut military expenses
for the same reason: as the autobiographies of some politicians indicate,
they are imprisoned in a security paradigm based on the Indian threat
and the related the fear of fragmentation.

The military’s economic interests

Through the decades the Pakistan military has acquired a prominent economic role
which takes various forms: in addition to being given a wide range of benefits
including licenses and large plots of land, reflecting a British tradition in the
subcontinent15, retired and serving senior officers received key posts in the public
sector and in state-run corporations. The military also penetrated the economy
through the business ventures of its welfare foundations. Initially created mostly to
look after retired and disabled soldiers, these foundations today operate a wide array
of commercial activities, whereby economic and geostrategic interests often intersect,
and are among the largest business conglomerates in Pakistan. Pakistan’s “Milbus”
(Military business), as Siddiqa calls it, was rooted in pre-colonial times and promoted
by the military’s early link with post-Partition bureaucracy, but grew between ’54 and
’69, stagnated between ’69 and ’77, and expanded dramatically after ’77. In the 1980s
the army also benefitted from Zia’s privatization policies, which undid Bhutto’s
nationalization of wide sectors of the economy. The return to a civilian government in
1988 did not mark a reversal of the situation; in fact Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif
provided the military with even greater economic opportunities in order to appease it
while trying to reduce its political role. In this phase the military also entered new
areas of business such as broadcasting and energy, and opened military-run
educational institutions that mainly catered to the elites, while serving and retired
personnel were increasingly found also in public universities and think tanks. This
contributed among other things to entrenching a process begun through curricular
reforms in the previous decades that had promoted the image of the military as the
saviour of the country and the guardian of its integrity and ideology. The complex of
the military’s economic interests has turned the military, in Lieven’s words, into “a
giant kinship group, extracting patronage from the state and distributing it to its
members” and has further reduced the autonomy of the state. In particular, the
placement of military officials in key positions in the Ministry of Defence and in the
Ministry of Finance has made these institutions subservient to military interests, and
made it more unlikely that regional policies may evolveaway from the paradigm of
the Indian security threat.

The ethnic factor

Most military personnel (75%) come from three districts of Punjab, the
so-called “Salt Range”. Another 20% from the Khyber Paskhtunkwa19.
Punjab’s over-representation is even more pronounced within the army20.
The predominance of this ethnic group goes back to British policies, as
already mentioned: after the 1857 Mutiny and northward expansion of the
British, greater numbers of Punjabis were recruited. This pattern
intensified in the latter part of the century: from 1875 to 1914, Punjab
troops rose from a third of the total army to three-fifths. Part of this
development was due to the region’s history, which forced local people to
develop military prowess to resist invaders from the Frontier; the region
was also close to Afghanistan, which Britain repeatedly tried to occupy,
and it was therefore cheaper for the Indian army to recruit from here.
Thus pragmatic reasons reinforced the martial castes theory that gained
ground among British officials towards the end of the 19th century.

Conclusions
Several factors, internal and external, partly rooted in colonial policies,
have contributed to strengthening the Pakistan military and boosting its
image since the aftermath of Partition. After 1958, the army became a key
political force and increasingly infiltrated the economy. Its penetration
into crucial political decision-making became entrenched in the ’80s, while
the greatest penetration into the economy and society took place in
the ’90s, and has not been reversed to date.
The predominance of the military can be seen as part and parcel of
predatory politics and a patronage system that characterises all dominant
classes in Pakistan; as a consequence, any dilution of its power could only
be pursued through general, and necessarily long-term, processes aimed
at promoting public scrutiny though education and the media and at
redressing social and ethnic imbalances. The role of the national security
paradigm in justifying the military’s strength and its tentacular influence
in society also points to the need for a rapprochement with India,
primarily through solution of the Kashmir issue, while Western
decision-makers should be mindful of the consequences for civilian
institutions and democratic processes of their strategic imperatives and of
the military aid that is provided to further them.