Military, Inc.: The Political Economy of Militarization in Pakistan

Ayesha Siddiqa, Woodrow Wilson Center Pakistan Scholar; Itty Abraham, director, Global Security and Cooperation Program, Social Science Research Council; James C. Mulvenon, deputy director, Advanced Studies and Analysis, Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis

Milbus – military-run business operations – has fundamentally shaped Pakistan's political and economic development for most of the period since Pakistan achieved independence in 1947, according to Wilson Center Pakistan Scholar Ayesha Siddiqa. But the entrenchment of the armed forces in the economy has increased significantly since General Musharraf's military coup in 1999. In a June 21 event organized by the Center's Asia Program, Siddiqa shared with a Washington audience some of the research on Pakistan milbus she has carried out during her yearlong stay at the Center.

Milbus in Pakistan, Siddiqa asserted, has led to "predatory capitalism," which in turn has fostered "political predation." The net result, she continued, has been corrosive conflict between state and society in Pakistan. Nor has the military itself profited from its involvement in commercial activities, except perhaps in the narrow sense of enriching many of its senior officers and enabling the military high command to buy loyalty by offering retirement benefits to selected military personnel. But the price for these advantages, Siddiqa argued, has not only been a divide between the military and society, but also greater dependency by Pakistan's armed forces on foreign powers, including the United States. In short, the paradigm of the military as a modernizing force in the developing world does not hold up in the case of Pakistan.

Pakistan is hardly unique in having its military heavily involved in activities that are more customarily the preserve of the private sector or of state-run enterprises. China, Indonesia, Chile, Turkey, and Thailand – to name just a few – all find themselves with some version of milbus. Yet, according to Siddiqa, this phenomenon has been under-researched. The Pakistani case is significant in its own right, Siddiqa argued, but it also provides an important example of a far wider practice affecting and frequently skewing the development of dozens of countries around the world.

In his commentary, the SSRC's Itty Abraham commended Siddiqa for underscoring the centrality of civil-military relations in Pakistan, and for pulling together information that has never before been compiled in one place. Abraham emphasized the importance of the British colonial legacy as a way of understanding milbus in Pakistan, while noting that India, with a similar colonial legacy, has largely avoided the milbus temptation. He also criticized the Pakistani middle class for its complicity in permitting milbus to assume such a large presence in the country. The middle class, he complained, has come to value order and stability over democracy. Washington, by supporting the status quo in Pakistan over a period of many years, has also been a willing accomplice in this subordination and even suppression of Pakistan's democratic aspirations.

James C. Mulvenon, a specialist on the Chinese military, noted the similarities between Pakistani milbus and what had been until 1998 the heavy involvement of the PLA (the Chinese People's Liberation Army) in the Chinese economy. In China's case, Mulvenon observed, milbus clearly distorted the country's overall economic development, but in certain sectors, such as telecommunications, PLA commercial activities have also had a positive role in fostering development. Mulvenon noted that the widely touted divestiture that has taken place in China since 1998 has been applied only to commerce; the PLA continues to be heavily involved in production. Does even China's limited divestiture offer Pakistan an alternative model? Only if the Pakistani military comes to emulate the PLA's abhorrence of praetorianism and is prepared to withdraw from most political and economic decisionmaking (on non-military issues). Few either on the panel or in the audience thought such a development likely in the near term.

Robert M. Hathaway, Director, Asia Program
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