Adil Najam
As was expected - but much more so than expected becasue of its timing - Ayesha Siddiqa’s new book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy is causing waves in Pakistan and abroad.
True to form, the establishment has bothed up things even more than usual by trying to mess with the book’s launch in Islamabad. That only made the launch an even bigger news than it would have been. Here, for example, is the top of the page, front page news item from Dawn (June 1, 2007):
A book putting a critical spotlight on the military’s business nooks was launched from a virtual sanctuary on Thursday and some high-profile political reviewers seized upon it to denounce the army’s role in Pakistani politics.
The launching of the book, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, by Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst, was due to have taken place at the capital’s elitist Islamabad Club. But the author told a surprised audience that not only the club cancelled the booking of its auditorium, “all hotels in Islamabad were also told� by unspecified authorities not to allow the use of their halls for this, forcing the organisers to find a sanctuary at a third floor room provided by a non-governmental organisation.
PPP’s legal star Aitzaz Ahsan said the time had come to stand up against the military dominance while PML-N Information Secretary Ahsan Iqbal accused Pakistan army generals of not learning a lesson from other countries that said goodbye to military rule. But some other speakers had a dig also at politicians for doing little to keep the military in check while being in power and at times celebrating the ouster of their rivals. Mr Aitzaz Ahsan said the expose of Ayesha, who puts the net worth of the army’s commercial empire at Rs200 billion, had come at a “defining moment� in Pakistan’s history following President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial charge-sheeting and suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
He narrated what he called the military’s moves in the past to convert Pakistan into a national security state contrary to the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of a welfare state and to forge an alliance with mullahs in search of an ideological justification for this, but said he thought now “a watershed has come�. Mr Ashan, who heads Justice Iftikhar’s legal team, saw “a turning point� in the March 9 presidential action against the chief justice that plunged the country into a judicial crisis and said: “We must grasp it.� Cheers went up in the congested premises of the NGO Leadership for Environment and Development as Mr Ahsan referred to what he called an unexpected “no� by the chief justice to the president’s demand for his resignation and, in a reference to the nationwide protest movement by lawyers, opposition political activists and the civil society, said: “The spillway of the Tarbela Dam has opened now.� He said although the chief justice would not speak about the presidential reference pending before the five-judge Supreme Judicial Council or his challenge to the reference before a 13judge bench of the Supreme Court, it was out of compulsion that an affidavit was filed on his behalf on Tuesday about what happened to him during his March 9 meeting with the president and for some days afterwards. “We were compelled to file that affidavit,� Mr Ahsan said, citing comments made by President Musharraf about the case as the reason.
Mr Iqbal rejected as a myth usual accusations holding politicians responsible for four military coups in Pakistan’s history and put the blame on what he called ambitions of army chiefs who toppled civilian governments from General Mohammad Ayub Khan, who later became field marshal, to General Musharraf. Comparing the ills of military interventions in politics to what cancer does to human body, he said Ayub Khan struck in October 1958 to pre-empt scheduled elections next year, while General Yahya Khan snatched power from him in 1969 at “virtual gunpoint� to prevent a handover to a National Assembly Speaker from then East Pakistan in the midst of a national democratic movement.
General Mohammad Zia-ulHaq, he recalled, seized power on June 5, 1977 a day after then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the opposition Pakistan National Alliance had agreed to hold fresh elections. He said Pakistan faced no bankruptcy despite international sanctions for its 1998 nuclear tests and “everything was normal� when General Musharraf, after being sacked, toppled then prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Oct 12, 1999. Mr Zafar Abbas, resident editor of Dawn, Islamabad, and Dr Farrukh Saleem, also complimented the 292-page book published by the Oxford University Press.
It speaks about the role of the military power in transforming the Pakistani society, armed forces becoming an independent class entrenched in the corporate sector and their five giant welfare foundations, or conglomerates, running thousands of businesses ranging from petrol pumps to industrial plants.
I have not yet read the book myself, however, I have talked about it with Ayesha many times - most recently in Boston some weeks ago - and am generally familiar with the thesis of the book. But, then, so is most of Pakistan. It is that the Military’s economic footprint has become too large for teh military’s own good. From cereal to banks to airlines, what she calls ‘Military Inc.’ is now everywhere in Pakistan’s economic life. Her argument is that this is nietehr good for Pakistan nor the military.
I am looking forward to reading and reviewing the book, which Ayesha has promised to send me soon. Meanwhile, we will keep an eye out for substantive reviews of this undoubtedly important work.
Tonight the world-renowned and respected former cricketer, and the leader of a licensed political party, was arrested in a violent confrontation on the campus of Lahore University. Imran Khan was taken, incommunicado, to be flung into one of the dungeons of the fascist dictator now recognised and accepted by all the world’s democracies as a legitimate Head of State. It was enough that the dictator said he was fighting the War on Terror that the until-then sacred doctrine of democracy was trampled in the dust. The arrest of Imran Khan has done two things.
Firstly, it places before the whole world the political fact that now Imran Khan alone is the champion of that freedom which Jünger called rational discourse. The dictator has charged Imran Khan, who is a genuine democrat, under the anti-terrorist laws which have devastated the civic order of Pakistan.
Secondly, it lays bare that the system of political democracy, so traduced in Pakistan, in its failure to cover up its own essential flaw – that government governs but does not touch the money – has at last revealed the real crime in Pakistan against the Pakistani nation. Do not look at the failed politicians. Do not look at the floundering and disintegrating personality of Musharraf. His uneducated condition, his appalling Urdu, these are now the subject of mockery across the world wherever Pakistanis live.
Now let us look at the real issue in Pakistan. Let us make no mistake. The reason Imran Khan has been arrested is because while the political class floundered in this crisis, he alone saw the real issues. Firstly, the independent judiciary and its Supreme Judges must be re-instated. Secondly, the High Command of the Pakistani Army must be brought to the table of justice. The High Command of the Pakistani Army have betrayed their people, and honour itself. The military budget, that is the arms budget, has to be dismantled. That is far from being enough. An absolutely open and transparent report must be published for the Pakistani people to see, and the world. The wealth of the Chiefs of Staff, not only personal but in the astonishing spread of that wealth into corporate and land holdings must be exposed. The following list of commanders indicates an elite class who from all accounts in significant numbers have been inducted into masonic, atheist and anti-Islamic entities.
Collectively these men are responsible for a shameful tyranny over the greatest nation on earth today. Called upon from this website to rescue their country, they showed supreme indifference. The bitter irony, for them, of the present crisis, is that in the tragic event of it being resolved in terms of this army dictatorship, it would immediately lead to the next phase of Pakistani history. That phase would be that the nation would be treated as a colonial power occupied by its own security forces. At that moment the new masters of Pakistan would in the shortest possible time dismantle the Pakistani Army and replace it with a civic police system in the manner that the USA governs Costa Rica. Here is a recent list of Pakistan’s Guilty Men. For the in-depth scientific analysis of this matter concerning the corruption of the Pakistani military, it is important that the scholarly work of Ayesha Siddique, ‘Military Inc.’, is read and given the widest dissemination. In Miss Siddique’s analysis, she summarises a situation with an estimated £10bn of military wealth divided between £6bn in land and the rest in private assets.
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VERY INTRESTING BUT LET US LOOKINTO AS A BUSINESS MODEL IN THE CNTEXT OF LOGISTIC NETWORK ( MOST NEEDED )
Well its very sad that we, the people of Pakistan have the army which is the most crupt in the world and robing its own people and country. May Allah give them hadayat and show them the right path.
In my opinon the some parts of this book should be availabled on internet so that common people may allure to study this book in order to understand the real meanings of Author efforts.
I really do,nt know what purpose/good this book will achieve.What I gather from the reviews/comments on the book is as follows:
1.The auther wants to dramatize/exagerates various issues concerning Army in various businesses to exploite the pervailing environment in Pakistan to have cheap poularity and make money.
2.What is wrong if Army is running commercial ventures? It is positive activity as besides others it creats jobs.
3.For GOD,s sake you writers give this nation motivation confidance and support to face crises and move forward to make our beloved country prosperous.
4.Do,nt waste your talent and energies to damage your own nation and Armd Forces.
I finally finished reading the book. The argument as every Pakistan knows is exactly right. I must say there was nothing in there, apart from that this was now in a book, that was a surprise. I was hoping for real research and real analysis. It was more a set of stories we all know. I wish she had done the analysis deeper, better writing and better research because lack of it will be a criticism even though her argument is very right.
Not true. It is actualy availabel in bookstores. Actualy is in second printing and is selling very well. Buy and read.
I have not read this book as yet, as it is banned by the govt. and it is not available on open market. More over it is too costly to purchase.
Kindly release it on internet as free of cost, so that the common peaple be aware of what is gone by or with the Army.