The ARMY and DEMOCRACY MILITARY POLITICS IN PAKISTAN

416 Pages·2016·2.24 MB·English

by  AQIL SHAH

The Army and Democracy

ARMY
The and
DEMOCRACY
MILITARY POLITICS IN PAKISTAN
AQIL SHAH
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, Eng land
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
library of congress cataloging- in-p ublication data
Shah, Aqil, 1973– author.
Th e army and democracy : military politics in Pakistan / Aqil Shah.
pages ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0-6 74- 72893- 6 (alkaline paper)
1. Pakistan. Army— Political activity. 2. Pakistan. Army— History.
3. Civil-m ilitary relations— Pakistan. 4 . Pakistan— Military policy.
5. Democracy— Pakistan. 6 . Pakistan— Politics and government. I. Title.
UA853.P18S53 2014
322'.5095491—dc23 2013037070
To my late father, S. M. Jan Shah,
poet and idealist

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1 Waging War, Building a Nation 31
2 Marching toward Martial Law 72
3 “Revolution” to Revolt 94
4 Recapturing the State 119
5 From Zia to Musharraf 150
6 Musharraf and Military Professionalism 186
7 Th e Military and Democracy 215
Conclusion 254
Notes 289
Ac know ledg ments 379
Index 381

PREFACE
O
n May 2, 2011, American Special Forces killed al- Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in
an early m orning raid when much of Pakistan, including apparently
its army and air force, were fast asleep. Th e raid also laid bare Paki-
stan’s perennial civil-m ilitary pathologies. For one, it shattered, once
again, the military’s carefully constructed myth of invincibility and
raised the hopes of many Pakistanis, including some members of
parliament, that the military would fi nally be held accountable be-
cause it was caught sleeping at the wheel. But as tensions between
the army and the government fl ared, there w ere also fears and ru-
mors of an impending coup. Th rough all this, the Pakistani army’s
putative civilian boss, Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar,
remained clueless. He later told a government inquiry commission
that he found out about the incident when his daughter called him
from New York the next day. Th is would be unimaginable in a
demo cratic state. In Pakistan, it is business as usual.
It would be tempting to blame it all on corrupt or self- serving
politicians. Th ey have not covered themselves in glory. But there is
an even more compelling reason: Pakistan is a garrison state, one of
ix