How The Pakistani Army Destroyed Its Country Inspite Of Higher Economic Growth: A Study of The Evolution of A Deformed Value System
– R.K.Upadhyay
As the popular Genral Raheel Shareef walks into the sunset of his military career of COAS on 30 th November ’16 , he has succeeded in de stablising and reducing the three times Prime Minister , who was popularly elected with absolute majority , to just an internationally perceived dummy or a figure head. The jubiliant Pakistani Army , celebrating this feat , does not realise that it has been the sole architect and the principal contributor in the current collapse of the Pakistani Economy and making its society so backward ,violent and perpetually strife and debt ridden .
The Army questions this premises by comparing the economic growth rate under the civilian and military rulers and draws solace from the graph given below in which all three army rulers ie General Ayub Khan , Zia Ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf were able to achieve higher economic growth rate than the civilian rulers . The Zardari phase , with a growth rate of just three percent immediately following the highly successful Musharraf era , according to Pakisatni army’s appologists , was possibly was the worst phase economically, thus proving the superiority of the Army rule .
This comparison is unfair to civilians because the Civilians never had a chance . The best Pakistani leader with a greatest vision ie Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged to death by the Army . Liaqat Ali Khan the only politician who could have kept the country together after early death of Jinnah was assasinated . Suhrabwardy whose call for direct action really created the Pakistan was allowed to be PM only for 13 months and was forced to resign by Gen Iskandar Mirza . Ayub banned him from public life and he died in Beirut from heart attack .Benazir Bhutto , another very popular Prime Minister , who fought the army rule in exile , was assasinated . Her husband was kept in jail for ten years as a collateral . Nawaz Sharief was not only removed from prime ministership but was also jailed by the army and saved by Clinton and Saudis. Therefore the Pakisatni civilian leaders were always kept under fear and in leash and not allowed to act freely and grow , by the rogue army . Consequently Pakistan too suffered and did not grow adequately under them .
Another aspect is that that all armies have a tunnel vision of their country’s needs in which its security and defence are the primary concern . But security is only a necessary condition like a passport for international travel but it is not a sufficient condition for economic growth. While a civilian leadership takes a holistic view of various human needs . Generals know wars and tend to act in their comfort zone and over emphasise the security aspect in allocating the scarce national resources . The guns always win over the bread under the army rule . Otherwise how Bangladesh is now rapidly marching to overtake Pakistan by 2020 .India after liberating it walked back to its boundaries . How is Pakistan threatened more than Bangladesh ?
But still how do we explain the rapid economic growth under all the three Genarals who ruled Pakistan? How can they be accused of destroying the nation when it prospered most under them ? Generals know wars well and Pakistani Generals made enormous gains from wars .
General Ayub Khan , whose era is often called the golden era of Pakistan , very skillfully exploited the cold war . He was able to get huge aid from USA by just giving them a listening post and spy base in Pakistan . CIA , the main beneficiary , ensured that all the Pakistani demands were met . Pakistan got $ 11 billion in US aid under Ayub era ( 1958-69 , inflation adjusted , Guardian ) which was largely spent in West Pakistan . Its value can be gauged by the fact that the only two big dams constructed in Pakistan ie Tarbela and Mangla costed only $ 1.5 billion each . The famous irrigation canal system could have costed another $ 250 million . By the time green revolution came , thanks to US aid, Pakistan was very well prepared to implement it and thus became even more prosperous . Flushed with the increased purchasing power of foreign aid money the free market economy too contributed to its rapid progress . Pakistan was cited as the role model for developing countries . Nehru’s non aligned socialist India , persuing self reliance slowly , was left far behind in this race .
But Pakistan did not learn the value of self reliance , social equality etc.and became totally dependent on foreign aid under Ayub Khan which became a permanent feature after him .
Ayub Khan unconciuously laid the foundation of several other weaknesses which became very critical after him . The foremost was the bias and discrimination against Bengalis whom Pakistani army considered coward , dark , ugly and not equal to the well built , fair and brave west Pakistanis whose chivalry was loved by the British .The bias against Bengalis became a permanent features as can be seen from the table below . It finally led to the separation of the Bangla Desh .
Year Expenditure Expenditure on % of East vs west
on west pakistan east pakistan expenditure
1950 – 55 11290 5240 46 %
1955 – 60 16540 5240 31 %
1960 – 65 33550 14040 41 %
1965 – 70 51950 21410 41 %
Total 113340 45930 40 %
In other matters too Ayub had no vision beyond seeking military parity with India ignoring Nehru’s drive on say technical education , industrialisation , aboolition of zamindari etc. Pakistan had received an army with 150000 soldiers out of a total 450000 soldiers in the army of united India . Pakistan got only 17% of the total revenue . Ayub Khan , instead of reducing the army ,further increased the military spending and in his time the already bloated Pakistani army became double in size .
When Ayub became unpopular in Pakistan due to rigging the election against Fatima Jinnah , he laid the foundation of the third fatal mistake . A born armyman , he could only think of regaining his popularity by winning a war against the ‘weak hindus ruling India’ . He almost lost the war but the army learnt nothing from it . This too became a repetitive feature . He laid the foundation of another disease which was to manifest itself in a much bigger form later. It was the of use of Islam to get acceptability of military rule .
Zia Ul Haq who was the next military ruler , had hanged the most popular and visionary leader of Pakistan , Zulfikar Ali Bhutto . Zia too , like Ayub Khan before , successfully exploited the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to get huge 
American aid . He too sought legitimacy by radicalising and Islamising the Pakistani society beyond recognition . He ensured rapid economic development of Pakistan but completely destroyed the civil society and the Jinnah’s dream of Pakistan being a liberal secular state . He too kept persuing the futile military parity with six times bigger India . He started the covert war of bleeding India with thousand cuts by supporting insurgency in Punjab . He reportedly climbed four stories in Ashoka Hotel after returning from Indira Gandhi’s funeral saying ‘ आज तो मैं पांच मंजिल भी चढ़ जाऊंगा ‘. He institutionalised the hatred for India and Hindus by incorporating ‘hate’ in the regular educational syllabus . Finally the ‘ hate ‘ spewing Madarsas producing terrorists by droves also became a permanent feature of Pakistani society .
General Parvez Musharraf who was the next militay ruler hated India even more to the extent that he refused to salute the Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee as COAS . Like all the ruling generals before him , he too tried to become popular by winning a war against India, in Kargil and learnt nothing from its loss and humiliation of Pakistan’s leadership with Clinton’s USA . He too , like Ayub and Zia got a war to exploit when after 9/11 ,America attacked Afghanistan . He supported America in its war against Taliban , who were created by the Pakistani army . He got such a huge amount in aid that Pakistan grew very fast economically, in that period . He was assisted by a very able PM Shaukat Aziz .But to his credit he was a fast learner . Having realised the futility of war he persued peace equally vigorously with India . He fought religious extremism too particularly by attacking Lal Masjid and removing terrorists from there .
But the economic growth in his tenure was also based on the US aid . Pakistat continued missing the bus of self reliance and industrial development .
General Raheel Shareef was very successful in combating terrorism and is very popular . He went beyond Pervez Musharraf . While Musharraf did not salute the Indian Prime Minister , Raheel stopped saluting the Pakstani prime minister publicly and calling cabinet meeting in his absence thus starting a new bad tradition that may endure . He enlarged the role of army in CPEC , a pure civil project and kept dangling the threat of marshal law indirectly through ISI supported TV channels . He allowed Indo Pak peace efforts to be derailed by Pathankot and Uri just as Zardari was derailed by Mumbai and Lahore by Kargil . Pakistan army is all set to now exploit the America – China rift for economic survival . It is now Raheel’s turn to let Pakistan not become a normal self reliant country . He damaged the cause of Pakistan by belittling the civilian government of Nawaz Sharief even with Chinese so much that today no country wants to talk to him on serious matters because like Bahadur Shah Zafar his writ too does not seem to run in Pakistan . A devalued Prime Minister only harms Pakistan in the long run.
Also when the Afghan President and foreign ambassadors present themselves in the army GHQ or British Prime Minister invites him to dinner at 10 Downing Street , it does not glorify Pakistan’s army . On the contrary it promotes international dislike for Pakistan and buttresses the argument that civilian leaders are just ‘ time pass ‘ in Pakistan and its army has the real power . But the governments in democracies hate to deal with unconstitutional army authorities and resultantly they just ignore and write off Pakistan. Similarly Pakistani army has taken away the nuclear control from civilians by keeping small tactical nuclear weapons exclusively under army command . The whole world is aghast at this perfidy of Brigadiers deciding on starting a nuclear war .The devaluation of Pakistani Prime Minister , by his own army has really devalued and badly hurt the nation’s credibility internationally .
Secondly today , almost forty five percent of the Pakistani budget goes to debt servicing . Out of the balance half goes to a million strong military and the two hundred million Pakistanis have to make do with just a quarter of its budget . Pakistani army , as given in Ayesha Siddiqui’s book , is the biggest land owner and runs every thing from Railways to beauty saloons . No civilian Prime Minister can dare to check it and no army chief will touch it .So there can be no respite for common people of Pakistan unless its army is defanged without hurting the nation.
Pakistan’s army is a threat to world peace and needs to be defanged urgently in the larger interest of Pakistan and world peace .
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