Business warriors: What stolen peacocks tell us about Pakistan’s Military Inc.

Business warriors: What stolen peacocks tell us about Pakistan’s Military Inc.

When the Lahore Corps Commander’s house was torched by a mob protesting the arrest of Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan two days ago, a protester sneaked in and came out with a peacock in his arms. The looter had the air of a medal winner. He explained to an interviewer that the peacock was actually bought by Lt. Gen. Salman Fayyaz Ghanni with the public’s money. The peacock snuggled in his arms, as if aware that it had finally got back to its rightful owner. Another protester held a frozen strawberry up for the camera. The trophy — it couldn’t be anything less for Pakistan’s poor who had been rioting over wheat flour — came from the General’s fridge.

Pakistan’s $100 billion Military Inc.

A peacock at an army general’s house would surprise anyone, for what’s normally expected at such a place is a ferocious dog. But that tells the story of Pakistan’s generals, admirals and air marshals who have enriched themselves by running a $100 billion business empire, the biggest conglomerate of Pakistan. Pakistan’s military runs close to a hundred different businesses. You can’t get out of a grocery store or a shopping mall without having bought a few items manufactured by a military company. From cornflakes to breads and biscuits and cement to fertiliser, the military makes and sells everything. From airlines to logistics companies and banks to insurance, the military runs everything. Think of Pakistan’s military as a holding company with several subsidiaries. The military runs six so-called foundations such as the Fauji Foundation and Army Welfare Trust, ostensibly for the welfare of the serving and retired army personnel. These foundations own businesses and companies which are run by serving and retired military personnel and often fronted by civilians. The profits are ploughed back into military welfare activities but in reality a substantial chunk goes to the top military brass who keep their hands firmly in the till. Fighting on the border and then in the boardrooms is all in a day’s work for the military. The phrase ‘boardroom battles’ would ring truer in Pakistan than anywhere else.

The military companies often have low transparency, and the tax and regulatory agencies prefer to look away. In a country that has been ruled half the time by military dictators and the other half mostly by “hybrid governments” that ceded actual power to the military, insist on looking at the balance sheet of a military company and you will find yourself looking down the barrel of a gun instead. The military enterprise dominates Pakistan’s economy so much that it does one-third of all manufacturing. You can rightly say, after Mao Tse-tung — the founder of a totalitarian economy — that Pakistan’s political-economy grows out of the barrel of a gun.

If the military business is so opaque, how did we get to know about it? In 2007, defence analyst and former navy bureaucrat Ayesha Siddiqa produced an intrepid work of scholarship, ‘Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’, piecing together random bits of information she painstakingly dug out and put together into an academic analysis of the military’s business empire. She put the value of the military business empire at $20.7 billion. More than 15 years later, it is expected to have grown to over $100 billion. Siddiqa called it “milbus”, the military-business complex.

There’s another way the military enriches itself — by granting expensive plots of land to its officers. Siddiqa estimated military officers owned seven per cent of all private land in Pakistan. That number must have more than doubled by now. To know how much a top army official can get rich and how soon, consider the case of Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan’s former army chief. Investigations by journalists revealed last year that Bajwa’s wife, who had zero declared assets in 2015, got to own assets worth $9.7 million. Bajwa’s daughter-in-law was luckier. In just one week before marrying into the Bajwa family, she had become a dollar-millionaire from owning zero assets. In six years, the Bajwa family amassed assets worth $55 million. And that amount is just as much as a rounding error on the balance sheet of the Military Inc.

The business of power
The reason why the chokehold of the military on Pakistan’s polity never loosens is its deep entrenchment in the country’s economy and business. To guard its business empire, the military must control government policy and regulation. That explains why the military must rule Pakistan directly, or indirectly in the form of “hybrid governments”.

The governments look away as the military companies leech on to the nation’s economy, building monopoly businesses; cornering subsidies, loans, land and resources at cheap rates; and getting bailed out with public money when drowning in losses. The military gets all the bang for its buck, and more. Private companies, of course, know better than bidding against the military. Pakistan’s optimum state is of instability because a stable government will challenge the military while political flux will keep the eyes off the military’s extractive empire.

The ‘strawberry revolution’
Events of the past few days may suggest that a ‘strawberry revolution’ is knocking at the doors of the mansions of the Military Inc. But this isn’t the first time people are defying the military, Pakistan has got a rich tradition of defiance, especially by its poets. Legendary Urdu poet Habib Jalib had signalled the rise of the Military Inc. when he mocked the ruling dictator, General Ayub Khan, thus: “Bees gharane hain abaad aur karodon hain nashaad, sadr Ayub zindabad! (twenty crony-capitalist families are flourishing/but crores of people are suffering/long live President Ayub)”. Beloved Punjabi poet Ustad Daman had mocked the coup by General Khan thus: “Mere mulk diyan maujan hi maujan/jiddhar dekho faujan hi faujan” (my country is having so much fun/wherever you look you see the military). Such poets were often put in jail but they remained unrepentant.

But the ‘strawberry revolution’ has scored a first. Never before have people turned on the military. Defying the military had so far been the job of poets and intellectuals. Now Imran Khan has democratised the dissent. The military built its business empire on an excuse that often resonates with the masses of a third-world country — the politicians are corrupt and cynical but the military is honest and efficient. When Pakistan teeters on the edge of default and common people riot over basic food items, the military’s argument doesn’t hold water. For long, Pakistanis have looked at the Military Inc’s enclaves of luxury in disbelief and awe, but now the contrast is sharper. Nothing much may change in the short run in Pakistan but the ‘strawberry revolution’ has made one thing certain — the preening peacocks of the Military Inc. are now fair game for the masses.

#Business #warriors #stolen #peacocks #Pakistans #Military

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