In a country where it is still illegal to photograph a bridge or to be found hanging around the road that leads to the Bum factory, it is amazing that the young female academic Ayesha Siddiqa should have written a book laying bare the Pakistan Armys inner economy and providing the first documented account of the vast commercial empire it has built with public money. So secretive is Pakistans defence establishment that the National Assembly is not permitted even under civilian governments to debate its budget or question its spending. Nor is anyone authorised to look into the Armys enterprises. If anyone is looking for a state within a state, he need not look any further. All he has to do is to come to Pakistan.
Ayesha Siddiqas book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistans Military Economy had long needed to be written but wasnt because those who had the ability or the knowledge to write it considered discretion the better part of valour. How the Army will react to her findings, I am unable to predict. Since her facts are well supported, I suspect they will simply be ignored. However, I do hope a copy of the book will be available in every station library in every cantonment.
According to the author, the commercial empire of the Pakistan Army has a net worth of Rs 200 billion. The term she has coined for the Armys commercial and business activities is Milbus, which is shorthand for military business. She defines Milbus as military capital used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity, especially the officer cadre, which is not included as part of the defence budget or does not follow the normal accountability procedures of the state, making it an independent genre of capital. It is directly or indirectly controlled by the military. She writes that this unaccounted transfer of resources can take many forms. She lists them as: state land transferred to military personnel, resources spent on perks and privileges for retired personnel, business opportunities diverted to armed forces personnel by flouting the norms of a free market economy, and money lost on training personnel who seek early retirement to join the private sector.
Ayesha Siddiqa maintains that a study of Milbus is important because it causes the officer cadre to be interested in enhancing their influence in the states decison making and politics. This military capital also becomes the major driver for the armed forces stakes in political control. She writes, Pakistans military today runs a huge commercial empire. Although it is not possible to give a definitive value of the militarys internal economy because of a lack of transparency, the estimated worth runs into billions of dollars. The Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust are the largest business conglomerates in the country. Besides these, there are multiple channels through which the military acquires opportunities to monopolise national resources.
Ayesha Siddiqa makes three major points. First, that Milbus is military capital that perpetuates the militarys political predatory style. This capital is concealed, not being recorded as part of the defence budget and it involves unexplained and questionable transfers of resources from the public to the private sector, especially to individuals and groups that have the inside track. Second, the militarys economic predatoriness increases in totalitarian systems. The armed forces encourage policies and related environments that multiply their economic opportunities. Milbus becomes part of the tribute that the military extracts from providing services such as national security. Since the armed forces ensure territorial security, they believe that anything that contributes to their welfare is justified. At times, the military convinces the citizens to bear additional costs on the basis of a conceived or real threat to the state. Third, the militarys economic predatoriness is both a cause and an effect of a feudal, authoritarian and non-democratic political system. In the process of seeking benefits, those in power give a blank cheque to other elite groups to behave in a predatory manner.
The author argues that the elite groups in society have their own reasons to turn a blind eye to the militarys economic interests. In politics dominated by the military, other dominant groups often turn into cronies of the armed forces to establish a mutually beneficial relationship, as has happened in Pakistan every time the military has been in power. Monopolies, caused by illegal military capital result in market distortions, place a burden on the public sector because of the hidden flow of funds from the public to the private sector. Since the military claims Milbus activities to be legitimate, funds are often diverted from the public to the private sector, which can and does include the use of military equipment by military-controlled firms and the acquisition of state land for distribution to individual members of the military fraternity for profit making.
A friend of mine, Tariq Jazy, says that when he looked up the word army in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, he found it defined as an organised force armed for fighting on land. This definition, he added, he has modified in line with Pakistans requirements, and it now reads, an organised force armed to fight for land. Ayesha Siddiqa writes that the military is a significant stockholder in agricultural land. Out of the 11.58 million acres that is controlled by the armed forces, an estimated 6.9 million acres, or about 59 percent of the total land, lies in rural areas. The military is the only department of the government that has assumed the authority to redistribute land for the benefit of its officials, having distributed about 6.8 million acres among its cadres for their personal use. When a dispute arose over the Okara farms when the Army wanted to throw out the sharecroppers who had cultivated that land for generations, Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said, The needs of the Army will be decided by the Army itself and/or the government will decide this. Nobody has the right to say what the Army can do with 5,000 acres or 17,000 acres. The needs of the Army will be determined by the Army itself. So there, in a nutshell, you have it.
Ayesha Siddiqa concludes, An authoritarian system in which the military has a dominant position is hardly the panacea for Pakistans political problems, nor does it help the long-term interests of the countrys strategic external allies. A politically strong Pakistan will also be a stable Pakistan, which will not be detrimental to the South Asian region or the world at large. She also points out that the military has been central in nourishing the religious right without necessarily realising the strength of religious ideology as an alternative to itself.
But let me close this with another observation from my friend, Tariq Jazy. In Pakistan, the military has been civilianised and the civilians have been militarised. |
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