The Fanonite

Five years back, I was part of a team of specialists bidding for a high profile government project in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, and we were eventually shortlisted as one of the top three contenders. After the final presentations, the National Project Director, who was deputed from the military, decided to scrap the whole process and hand the project to Askari, a military front.  That was the incident that finally convinced me to leave. Two years later when someone showed me what Askari had done with the project I couldn’t help shaking my head. One could not have put together a more revealing monument to its corruption and incompetence.

Despite the military’s excesses Pakistan until today remains a deeply militarized society. The media has assiduously cultivated a myth that at times takes almost divine proportions. (The mythmaking could turn amusing at times: for instance, the instructor at the aiforce academy told the recruits, ‘Pakistan Airforce is number one in the world, and number two in Asia’). Military symbolism dominates events even at schools (I used to be the parade commander at my own school). Soaps glamorize military life, and references to it abound in pop culture. Every kid aspires to a military career, and most parents want to see their children in uniform. While most of the non-commissioned personnel and junior officers are honest, committed individuals, the corruption and excesses of the higher echelons are legendary. Yet, the enduring myth of the military puts them beyond scrutiny. It appears however that the combination of Musharraf’s misrule, and the growing disparity between the rich and poor is finally eroding the myth. Christian Science Monitor reports:

As Pakistan’s most dominant institution, the military has long had an inordinate influence in civilian life. Pervez Musharraf, who is both Pakistan’s president and Army chief, is simply looking after his own, experts say.

But critics say that under Mr. Musharraf, the practice has become more widespread than ever, engorging an already powerful military on a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth and entwining it more deeply into civilian authority.

Musharraf’s regime “has been directly responsible for a military corporate empire,” says Kaiser Bengali, an independent economist in Karachi. “We don’t have a level playing field within the country because the military has a lot of privileges.”

Military officers – many retired, but some also active – hold key posts in Pakistan’s civil service academies, several of its most prestigious universities, and many of its most important agencies. Moreover, they control much of the country’s prime land, which they can buy at cut rates and sell at huge profits. In a 2003 survey, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that 1,027 active and retired military officers had been installed in civilian posts, ranging from ambassadors to the heads of the Post Office and National Highway Administration. A 2006 report by the Carnegie Endowment found that retired generals controlled 10 universities, five administrative training institutions, and the Education Ministry.

Since independence, Pakistan’s military leaders were seen as nonpolitical fix-it men, who launched coups to clean up the messes left by failed civilian governments. But “the military under Musharraf … has truly changed its character,” says Ayesha Siddiqa, an author and military critic whose book, “Military Inc.,” published in May, marks the first thorough investigation into the extent of the military’s penetration into Pakistan’s economy and civil society.

“The military has become a ruling class and has ceased to be an arbiter,” she says.

She alleges that the military runs 70 gas stations in Lahore, for example, and that it controls as much as 7 percent of the nation’s private-sector assets. Since the publishing of her book last month, Ms. Siddiqa has fled the country, saying she fears that she could be arrested.

The military itself refutes her assertions. “There are no serving generals in private enterprise,” says Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, a military spokesman. “Retired military, like any other country in the world – like the US – they’re involved in real estate and in anything they want.”

Yet other experts suggest that in real estate, in particular, the military is using its power to enrich its officers. As it turns over much of its property to real-estate development, the military is abiding by strict zoning laws and offering unique services like daily garbage removal. Though these measures might sound mundane, in Pakistan they are almost revolutionary – creating oases of order. It has made military cantonments the nation’s most desirable neighborhoods.

Yet officers can also buy land in these areas for well below market rates. “They are offered land for 1 million rupees and can sell it the next day for 8 million rupees,” says Shafqat Mahmood, a columnist for The News, a daily newspaper in Pakistan.

To military men, “this is merely as the advantage of being a military official,” says Mr. Mahmood. “But it is so obvious, and it has been made easier by the fact that the military keeps taking power.”

In a democracy, he says, the people can siphon off anger by voting a government out of office. Under a military regime, such anger can only kindle unrest, and these privileges are like a bellows for the public rage aflame in Pakistan.

On the surface, the daily demonstrations against Musharraf are about judicial independence, as Pakistanis demand that Musharraf reinstate the chief justice of the Supreme Court – whom he fired in March.

Yet at the events, anti-Army chants – which not long ago were unheard of – take aim at officer’s self-enrichment, too. In a country where two-thirds of the population works in agriculture, a common rallying cry at the protests has been: “O generals of the country, all the acres are for you,” says economist Bengali.

The scope of Pakistan’s military

According to a 2003 study published in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, retired and current Pakistani military personnel occupy, among others:

• 98 posts in the Ministry of Communications
• 113 in the Ministry of Defence,
• 52 in the Ministry of Defence Production
• 24 in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• 88 military posts in the Ministry of Interior
• 29 in the Ministry of Industries, Production, and Special Initiatives
• 58 in the Ministry of Information Technology
• 39 in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources
• 72 in the Ministry of Railways
• 37 in the Ministry of Water and Power