Taking another U-turn from his previous popular narrative of a US-sponsored regime change to oust him from power, ex-PM Imran Khan blamed the ex-Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa for masterminding the regime change operation. When he was in power, opposition parties criticized him for being selected by the military establishment – and not elected by the general masses. He is considered as one of the political leaders, nurtured and sponsored by the powerful quarters of the establishment.
With the sensational revelation, well-known Pakistani writer Ayesha Siddiqa in her 2007’s book The Military Inc. shows how much the deep-rooted military’s economic interests are in Pakistan. She showed that it’s the economic interests of the military – mainly the Pakistan Army – which is the main cause of the military’s involvement in national politics.
The above-given examples show how influential Pakistan’s military is. And its history goes back to the colonial past. During the British colonial era, a marshal race theory was adopted. It was based on the recruitment of men for the army from selective castes and regions. Punjabis were dominant in the Indian army and some 36% of the men were recruited from Punjab. This number decreased with time as the British era came nearer to its end, and till 1943, the Punjabi Muslims and Pathans we 25% of the annual intake into the army while Punjabi Hindu Jats and Sikhs were roughly 5 and 7 percent.
After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, most of the top Muslim League leadership including the first PM Liaqat Ali Khan and others were from UP districts of India. They did not have their native constituencies to fight and win elections against the conservative dynastic politics of the region. That’s why they hesitated to hold elections, which led to the weakness of the political process of the country. On the other side, another strong and influential force was the bureaucracy. Although Pakistan received a much smaller number of bureaucrats than India, those few still have the most power. Governor general Ghulam Muhammad, PM Khawaja Nizam Uddin, PM Mohammad Ali Bogra, and Iskandar Mirza the Governor General of East Pakistan and later the president of Pakistan were all bureaucrats.
Amid all the political games of thrones, the military still was not the most powerful player in these games. It was the few genuine and many perceived threats from India, external geo-political dynamics, and internal crises that made the military an exigent actor in Pakistan. India’s reluctance to share the due share assets as promised, the Kashmir war of 1948, and the water crises between the two countries were the main reasons which created suspicions among the Pakistanis.
The international geopolitics took a shift when Eisenhower became the new US president, finally, Pakistan’s efforts of persuading the Americans in their favor proved fruitful. Pakistan’s 1st prime minister made his first international visit to the USA in 1950. And then Pakistan got engaged in a number of defense and economic agreements and treaties. SEATO and CENTO are the two notable examples. After 1951, when American military aid started to come to Pakistan, the military became a powerful player and created a strong influence over matters of defense and foreign policy. The US engaged with the Pakistani military, considering it a strong and organized army and Pakistan as a frontline state to tackle the soviet influence in South Asia. After the U-2 spy plane incident, the world have come to know that Pakistan was providing its airfield facilities to the Americans to spy on the Soviets and Chinese. And that’s how the story of becoming a rentier state started.
After almost a decade of political turmoil and power struggle since the independence of the country, Gen Ayyub khan imposed nationwide martial law and the Americans did not mind much. The military – in fact, the Pakistan army – became the central player in Pakistan. Ayyub developed a new constitution in 1962, and although he was trying to keep this constitution secular and modernist, he had to bow down in front of Islamists. Under the 1st amendment, Pakistan’s name was changed from the Republic of Pakistan to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and family laws were included in the constitution. Ayyub’s economic reforms, funded by massive American aid helped to transform Pakistan from a rural backward country to a fast-developing industrial state. The Green revolution has helped Pakistan to meet its food requirements.
In 1965, a new boundary issue arose in the Run of Kutch in the southern coastal part of the country. Pakistan army using American Panton Tanks and weapons performed well against the Indian army, but it made them overconfident. This false sense of superiority led FM Zulfiqar Bhutto and a few other hawkish army generals to make a plan to attack and capture Indian Kashmir. This campaign brutally failed and India, in response to Pakistan’s adventure in Kashmir, started an all-out war. Although Pakistan failed to achieve its objectives, Pakistani propaganda machinery, working under Secretary of information Altaf Gohar, termed this defeat as a massive victory against coward Hindus.
In 1971, the Pakistan army, after facing a humiliating defeat in East Pakistan – later became Bangladesh – leaving some 90,000 thousand men as prisoners of war in India, went on the back foot. Leaving a weak, turbulent, and desperate country in the hands of an elected civilian, Bhutto. But the military never gave up its ambition of taking power again, and finally, in 1977 another military coup struck the country. This time, a new military dictator Gen. Zia ul Haq came to power. Zia holds extreme views about the role of religion in state and societal affairs. On the other side, Americans and Saudis funded and gave military equipment and ISI trained the Mujahedeen to fight against the Soviets. Zia’s extremist policies proved to be consequential and regressive for the state and society; a new generation having extreme views was created, sectarian riots increased, terrorism was born and the Afghan refugee problem became a nightmare for the upcoming governments. After his death in 1988, the successive civilian governments of Benazir and Nawaz Sharif came to power. But none of them completed their five-year term and remained largely powerless.
In 1999, a fourth military coup by Gen Musharraf betided the country. Once again, America’s war on terror after 9/11 came to rescue Musharraf’s fate. He remained in power till 2008, although earlier he promised to hold elections in a few months, restore democracy and leave. Finally, in 2008, the power transition from military to democratically elected civilian government happened.
Three different parties came to power since then. But, behind the scenes, only one force was dominant during all these three years, the military and the premier ISI. Amid all the accusations of sponsoring and funding long marches against the sitting governments and political parties accusing each other of being selected by the military establishment, the military still enjoys a status quo. Pakistan is considered a hybrid democracy, where politicians are being used by the military establishment. Whether these are the COAS’ visits to foreign countries requesting economic aid or the military acting as a conciliatory force for consensus among the political parties, It’s an open secret that the military enjoys veto power not only in matters of foreign policy and defense but also in national politics. Examples of the hype, created in Pakistan before the appointment of a grade 22 officer, the chief of army staff, are hard to find in any other country in the world. From real estate to transportation and from construction to agriculture and the banking sector, Milbus is vastly expanded in Pakistan. Just for example, Fauji Foundation is a conglomerate of many companies spreading in almost all of the business arenas of the country. Due to this substantial involvement in defining and influencing Pakistan’s political and economic landscape covertly, many experts and observers view the Pakistan Army as a “deep state.”
