Pakistan: Wedged between bureaucracy and theocracy

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Neoliberal reforms forced on Pakistan by IMF and World Bank loans accelerate the process of wage suppression and privatization. 12 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2012 The modern history of the two extremisms in Paki­ stan, Islamic and neoliberal, is rooted in the interac­ tions between Pakistan and the United States. It was in 1979 that the relationship between the United States and Pakistan shifted dramatically; prior to that, Amer­ ican support to Pakistan was mostly based around countering Soviet influence in India, and later on, the Sino-Soviet split.

At the time, General Zia-ul-Haq had assumed control of the country after arresting and executing Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, supported by the military, right-wing Islamic parties such as Jemaat-e-Islami (JI), and a group of powerful landowning families from Punjab who had been the target of Bhutto’s politically motivated nationalization attempts. In return for their support, he immediately began to roll back Bhutto’s modest reforms, institutionalize Islamic laws, provide massive state sponsorship for religious groups and in­ stitutions, and repress secular-left groups.

In 1979, a coup by a group of officers in the Afghan Army assassinated the prime minister of Afghanistan, Daoud Khan, and placed a Stalinist party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in power in Kabul. The party had no mass basis, being based pri­ marily in the officer corps of the army, and began forc­ ibly instituting social reforms throughout the country, triggering a massive reaction from the more conserva­ tive majority of Afghans outside of Kabul. In addition, the PDPA regime had been plagued with factional in­ fighting since its origins, resulting in a government on the verge of collapse in a matter of months. To prevent this, the Soviet Union reluctantly decided to intervene militarily to prop it up.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser un­ der President Carter, famously conceived of this as a “bear trap;” the idea was to get the Soviet Union bogged down in Afghanistan, in much the same way the United States had become bogged down in Viet­ nam just four years earlier.

To that end, the U.S. began Operation Cyclone, the CIA program that funneled money and weapons through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Soviet mili­ tary. As a result, General Zia became the conduit for a massive quantity of arms and dollars flowing in from the United States and Saudi Arabia. This aid was chan­ neled mainly to reactionary Islamic groups with close ties to Zia and the military establishment.

The infrastructure in the areas in which Operation Cyclone was primarily occurring, namely FATA and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), was extremely undeveloped, with little access to schools, hospitals, and adequate nutrition. Flush with American and Saudi cash, Islamist groups like the JI provided edu­ cation, health care, food, and support, especially in refugee camps flooded with Afghans fleeing the con­ flict. They built madrassas (religious schools) and mosques, preaching reactionary ideology, and urging their members to participate in jihad in Afghanistan. Of course, with no other alternative, most parents seeking literacy for their children had no choice but to send them to one of these schools.

The wave of reactionary terror unleashed upon South Asia that the current U.S. intervention is sup­ posed to combat was actually deliberately created by U.S. intervention in the first place. The proliferation of guns and money translated into social and politi­ cal power that propelled political organizations of the clergy, the largest of which are Jemaat-e-Islami and Jemaat-e-Ulema Islami, into significance.

However, the military has remained the most power­ ful institution in Pakistan, largely because of the sup­ port and patronage of the U.S government. Various ad­ ministrations have consistently seen the restoration of military dictatorship as the best, most “stable” meth­ od to advance its goals in the region; thus, the dictator Pervez Musharraf was supported in 2001, because he was willing to play ball with the U.S. “war on terror,” and was only ousted as a result of a genuine popular movement after he had sacked the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The military also maintains close ties with militant groups operating within Pakistan, with whom they worked throughout the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and after the Soviet withdrawal. Many of the militants cultivated during the war were then encouraged by the military establishment to continue waging the ji­ had against India, ostensibly over Kashmir. As a result, the legitimate independence movement in Indiancontrolled Kashmir was subsumed by the semi-offi­ cial support for (and resulting Indian repression of) groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), responsible for (Above) Protest against Taliban shooting of young women’s rights advocate Malala Yusufzai.

(Left) U.S. and Pakistani antiwar activists join together on Sept. 20 march to Northwest Territories, which have been targeted by U.S. drone attacks.

the attacks in Mumbai in 2008, and Jaish-e-Muham­ mad, both of which were implicated in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi.

The Zia regime had pushed hard for policies of in­ dustrialization and privatization, heavily supported by U.S. investment, with special consideration given to military officers. Currently, the two largest business conglomerates in the country are the Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust. Both of these are private trusts that were designed, in principle, to provide a social safety net for veterans and retired officers. In practice, they act as massive corporate enterprises with little public accountability, with the main benefi­ ciaries being Pakistan’s most senior military officers.

The military foundations are the largest holders of both urban and agricultural land, in addition to large parts of nearly every industrial sector, including oil and gas, insurance, banking, schools, universities, ra­ dio, TV, cereals, and fertilizer. Although the net worth of each of the four military trusts (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Fauji) is not public, Ayesha Siddiqa, au­ thor of “Military, Inc.,” estimates their 2011 holdings to be around $15 billion to $20 billion, or fully 1% of the country’s 2011 GDP. This is in addition to the 26% of government expenditure that went to defense, the second highest percentage in the national budget after paying interest on IMF and World Bank loans.

The neoliberal reforms forced on Pakistan as con­ ditions of those loans accelerate the process of wage suppression and privatization that benefit large in­ dustrialists and landowners at the expense of working people.

This has placed the army, as the largest industrialist and landowner in the country, into direct conflict with workers and peasants, such as the events in Okara from 2001-2003; as a result of the local tenant farm­ ers’ refusal to sign a contract changing them from ten­ ants to lessees on military farms, they were subjected to a campaign of harassment, murder, imprisonment, (continued on page 9, in “Talk of Lib-Green alliance is not quite dead yet”)