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CIVILIANS not allowed," read a sign on the window of a restaurant in Quetta, which defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa visited in 1996. "It was reminiscent," she records in her path-breaking new work on Pakistan's armed forces, "of the colonial regime, when native Indians were not allowed in certain places frequented by the British."
It is hard to think of a scholarly work that has provoked quite as much political furore as Ayesha Siddiqa's new book, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. Pakistan's government pulled copies off bookshelves, attempted to prevent a formal launch and is reported to be considering prosecuting the author. Among other things, officials have described her as a dangerous demagogue, an opposition agent provocateur and even an Indian agent - a curious characterisation of a person whose political stance is, judging by her work, that of an old-fashioned liberal nationalist.
No wonder, perhaps: the book treads ground few bar a handful of courageous Pakistani journalists and academics have dared traverse before. A startling exposé of the enormous wealth that the armed forces' control of the country has brought its personnel, the book lays out in stark detail just how much profit power has brought Pakistan's uniformed rulers.
Pakistan's generals, Ayesha Siddiqa shows, control empires that would put to shame those of many despots worldwide. On average, senior commanders of the Pakistan armed forces retire with legally acquired assets of between $2.5 and 6.9 million, depending on their rank. President Pervez Musharraf alone, she states, has eight properties, including a 2,000-square yard (1 sq yard = 0.836 sq metre) plot in Karachi, a 1,200-sq yard plot in Rawalpindi, a 12,000-sq yard plot in Gwadar, a 900-sq yard plot in Peshawar and a farmhouse in Islamabad.
According to Ayesha Siddiqa's research, this private wealth is a spin-off of a private military empire: five conglomerates, which are estimated to control one-third of all heavy manufacturing and run almost 100 subsidiaries with interests in everything from cement to cereal production. These enterprises have helped create massive networks of employment and patronage, which sustain the armed forces' control of civil society. While the armed forces claim that their operations are self-sustaining, just nine of the 96 major armed forces-owned businesses file public, audited accounts - and they have often received massive bailouts from the state, not to mention extensive subsidies.
Officer class
Behind Ayesha Siddiqa's startling facts lies a significant new argument on the structure of Pakistan's politics. She argues: "The spread of the military fraternity in all important segments of the state, society and economy represents more than just a belief in the greater capacity of the armed forces. The military as a group has visibly graduated to become a class, and its serving and retired members are benefiting themselves from the organisation's immense power in relation to other domestic players" [emphasis added].
Evidence for this proposition is laid out at length in the book. Ayesha Siddiqa notes that under General Musharraf retired officers have come to play a central role in institutions concerned with intellectual production, such as universities and officer-training institutions.
Approximately 12 per cent of the Pakistani state's total landholding of 93.67 million acres (1 acre = 0.405 hectares) is controlled by the armed forces. While other institutions such as the railways, Ayesha Siddiqa notes, also have significant lands, the armed forces are unique in having the power to put public holdings to private use. Thus, of the armed forces' 11.58 million acres, 6.8 million acres of rural land is held directly by individuals, retired and serving. Another 35,000 acres have been handed over to subsidiaries controlled by the armed forces, such as the Army Welfare Trust, the Fauji Foundation and the Bahria Foundation.
To peasants, the new masters of the countryside are familiar: the "behaviour of senior military officers towards landless peasants or ordinary soldiers, who are also given agricultural land, is like that of any big feudal landlord". Indeed, she argues, these land acquisitions have taken place "not just for capital accumulation but also to exhibit the military's authority and power in relation to other stakeholders such as the landed feudal class and the masses. In fact, the military's land acquisition, especially agricultural land, has transformed the military into one of the many land barons or feudal landlords."
Not surprisingly, the emergence of this neo-feudal class has provoked considerable resentment. Much of the land given to the new land barons is in areas from where soldiers are not traditionally recruited, such as Cholistan in south Punjab. For one, the "transfer of land to non-residents creates socio-political tensions with the indigenous population, who accuse the military of `invading' their land". More important, it has accentuated resource conflicts. "It is believed," Ayesha Siddiqa records, "that water for agriculture gets diverted to lands where the senior generals have their properties rather than being provided to Sindh and Baluchistan, which are lower-riparian provinces."
Defence Housing Authorities and cooperative housing schemes operated by the armed forces' subsidiaries are another mode of enrichment. In essence, the Pakistan Army acquires public land adjoining urban areas at no cost or at knocked-down rates. Its personnel are then free to sell their shares at market prices, with no restrictions. As an example of the military's stakes in the urban real estate market, Ayesha Siddiqa cites the case of the Army Welfare Trust project at Sanjiani in Punjab. Developed at a cost of $12.41 million, the project earned its members a profit conservatively estimated to be $413.49 million.
Musharraf, however, has been dismissive of criticism of this institutionalised theft, even criticism from within the ranks of the military fraternity. In a 2004 speech, he said: "Why are we jealous if somebody gets a piece of land, a kanal of land, cheap when it was initially [sic], and because of the good work done by the society, the price rises by 100 times and the man earns some money? Why are we jealous of this?"
As Ayesha Siddiqa points out, the military's curious role points to a larger "flaw in the character of the socio-political system and the particular nature and interplay of the dominant classes".
"The political players in Pakistan and other dominant classes or groups like the civil bureaucracy and the entrepreneurial class," Ayesha Siddiqa argues, "are bound together in partnership with the military fraternity." "Since the country's socio-political system is predominantly authoritarian and has a pre-capitalist structure," she continues, "the ruling classes are not averse to using military force to further their personal, political and economic interests. The elite therefore continue to strengthen the armed forces and contribute to the evolution of the military fraternity into a class."
None of this, of course, will surprise students of militarist states. After Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia in the 19th century, the French mandated that their defeated rivals maintain a standing army of no more than 42,000 men. Prussia responded by enrolling that number each year, dismissing them, and then recruiting afresh. In the course of a decade, Prussia thus had a reserve of almost half a million men with a year of military training. These men were bound to the officer class, a caste-like grouping drawn exclusively from the ranks of Prussian landed nobility. As such, the military served as an instrument for the perpetuation and defence of a class-based culture of deference and inequity. Regimes across the world have followed in its footsteps over the centuries.
Pakistan's democracy-averse elites have historically been well served by the military's jackboots. But the storm of protest that has swept the country in recent weeks suggests that Frankenstein has finally begun to take on his monster. Ayesha Siddiqa ends her work by pointing to the grim connection between the armed forces' search for legitimacy and their patronage of Islamists. "The strengthening of the religious Right," she points out, "served the purpose of consolidating the control of the military over the state and society." However, the alliance between the military and the mullahs threatens the traditional elites and middle class, who in the past backed the armed forces, and has now pushed them to fight for democracy.
Defeat for the democratisers could shatter Pakistan's hopes of a future as a modern, liberal state, but its generals appear willing to take that risk to protect their pocketbooks.
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