PAKISTAN’S MILITARY ELITE
(A very well researched article on Pak Sr Offrs).
By Paul Staniland , Adnan Nassemullah
& Ahsan Butt
Published online: 07 Aug 2018
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2018.1497487?scroll=top&needAccess=true&
” The Pakistan Army is a
politically important organization, yet its opacity has hindered academic
research. We use open sources to construct unique new data on the backgrounds,
careers, and post-retirement activities of post-1971 corps commanders and directors-general
of Inter-Services Intelligence. We provide evidence of bureaucratic
predictability and professionalism while officers are in service. After
retirement, we show little involvement in electoral politics but extensive
involvement in military-linked corporations, state employment, and other
positions of influence. This combination provides Pakistan’s military with an
unusual blend of professional discipline
internally and political power externally – even when not directly ruling”.Pakistan's Army is central to questions of local, regional, and global stability. To better understand this pivotal organization’s inner workings, we analyze unique individual-level data on the corps commanders of the Pakistan Army and directors-general (DGs) of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 1971.11
This includes the nine standard corps, plus Army Air Defence (AAD) and Army Strategic Forces Command. This comes to 183 officers over 45 years. There have been 18 DGs ISI A number of these DGs were also corps commanders. The corps commanders are of enormous importance, working with the chief of army staff (COAS) to launch coups, withdraw from power, forge external and internal security policies, and shape the politics of Pakistan. We gathered data from open sources on the personal and career backgrounds of the corps commanders and ISI DGs, their trajectories within the military, and their post-retirement activities, both immediately after leaving service and later in retirement. These data provide systematic, detailed information on the military’s elite personnel and, crucially, how it has managed to keep them largely on board with a complex, politically demanding project. The data have numerous and important limitations, but they are also, to the best of our knowledge, unique in the Pakistani case, and among a small number of similar studies.22 For other similar studies, see Lee and Laksmana, ‘Why Do Retired Military Officers Enter Politics?’; Nakanishi, Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution; Poczter and Pepinsky, ‘Authoritarian Legacies in Post–New Order Indonesia’ and Kammen and Chandra, Tour of Duty.
We first show strong evidence of high levels of bureaucratic institutionalization and professionalism within the Pakistan Army. Despite its recurrent praetorianism and ongoing political influence, the rules within the organization seem to be generally followed, with limited factionalism and consistent promotion pathways. There is a stark contrast between this cohesive, rational–bureaucratic organization and other political militaries racked by internal fratricide, plagued by factional rivalries, or vulnerable to divide-and-rule strategies by ruling elites, like those in 1960s Nigeria, 1970s Bangladesh, or 1990s Indonesia.
We then examine what corps commanders do after they leave the military. We show a clearly institutionalized transmission belt that shifts retired elites into military-owned charitable foundations and affiliated corporations, posts in the civilian government, and other positions of real and/or symbolic authority. These positions of influence, in addition to generous pensions and other benefits provided to retired generals, provide powerful incentives to toe the organizational line while serving and to avoid directly participating in politics after retirement.33 Pensions are independent of what a retired officer earns as a salary in such positions. Importantly, these ‘off-ramps’ are centrally controlled by the high command: the COAS and senior officers at General Headquarters (GHQ), including especially the adjutant general and the DG of the Welfare and Rehabilitation Directorate.
We find that strikingly few retired corps commanders go into electoral politics, and most only join the private sector late in retirement (often working for multinationals). Over 60% of corps commanders in our data work for the government immediately after retiring. We further show that the placement of retired elites has not shifted much across periods of military and civilian rule since the late 1980s: even when back in the barracks, the army has deep reach into the economy and bureaucracy. As they move deeper into retirement, more tentative data suggests greater involvement in the private sector and civil society, but still little direct embrace of electoral politics. Similar patterns hold for the smaller number of ISI chiefs.
This fusion of internal bureaucratic discipline with placement of retired elites in positions of power helps us understand why the Army’s formal withdrawals from governance do not lead to growing civilian authority. The carefully managed flow of personnel inside and outside the organization has important implications for how we think about militaries and politics more broadly. First, the Pakistan Army challenges the dichotomy between politicized and professionalized militaries: the two can coexist within the same military.44 Huntington, The Soldier and the State; Finer, The Man on Horseback; Staniland, ‘Explaining Civil-Military Relations in Complex Political Environments’; Barany, The Soldier and the Changing State. The language of professionalism in this context tells us little: this is a highly ‘professional’ army in some respects, and remarkably ‘unprofessional’ in yet others. The very same individuals perform both its military–technical and political–interventionist activities.
Second, our evidence of deep continuities over time in the military’s management of its elite personnel shows that distinguishing between military and civilian rule can be very difficult: the end of formal army rule may not usher in civilian control of key areas of national policy.55 Major efforts to distinguish democracy and dictatorship, as well as variants of authoritarianism, include Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, ‘Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions’; Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule and Boix, Miller, and Rosato, ‘A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes’. Some militaries are able to, borrowing from Cook, rule without governing.66 Cook, Ruling but Not Governing. In Pakistan, Egypt, Myanmar, Turkey (until recently), Bangladesh, and Thailand, among others, we have seen militaries that continue to exert power even when technically withdrawn to the barracks. Pakistan has been coded as a democracy in the Polity IV data set since the end of the Musharraf regime in 2008 – but the military continues to exert remarkable power within its political system.
The army’s ability to manage its serving and retired personnel is central to this power. The overlapping infrastructure of military corporations, leverage over the media and political parties, a network of retired officers in prominent roles, and internal cohesion provides numerous resources – material, political, and symbolic – for Pakistan’s military to hold civilian authority at bay. While scholars have focused on military coups as the most dramatic instance of military intervention, there are other important mechanisms of influence, coercion, and insulation that militaries can use to protect their interests and target their enemies. These are especially important as the international community has come to increasingly frown on overt coups.77 Goemans and Marinov 2014. Carefully studying the circulation of Pakistani army officers during and after their service provides valuable new insights into how military influence is reproduced even after a formal withdrawal to the barracks.
New
evidence on Pakistan's Army
Our ‘micro-military politics’ approach
differs from the existing literature on the Pakistani security state in two
ways. First, extant work is dominated by macro-historical narratives.88
Cohen, The Pakistan Army; Fair, Fighting to the End; Shah, The
Army and Democracy, Wilkinson, Army and Nation, Siddiqa, Military,
Inc; Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army; Nawaz, Crossed
Swords; Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan.View all notes
These are excellent and important, but without further access to the military’s
archives, there are serious limitations to conducting research of this kind.
Adjudicating among existing narrative accounts is difficult without further
access to primary evidence. Some scholars and journalists have been able to
conduct interviews with current and former military officers, but access is
uneven and restricted, the results are often contradictory, and the data are
only helpful for certain research questions.99
For instance, Ahmed, The Pakistan Garrison State and Schofield, Inside
the Pakistan Army.View all notes Reliance on the military’s publications
has many of the same limitations. Though prior research has been fruitful, a
new approach can bring distinctive insights to bear.
Second, Pakistan is almost always
compared to India. India is the praetorian road not taken, the historically
similar matched pair that followed a more appropriately ‘objective control’
model of the military and politics.1010
See Mukherjee 2013, Staniland ‘Explaining Civil-Military Relations in Complex
Political Environments’, Wilkinson, Army and Nation.View all notes This
is a helpful comparison for the first decade of South Asia’s post-colonial
history. But after the 1958 coup, or even as early as the entry of General Ayub
Khan into the civilian cabinet in 1954, the comparison loses value. To
understand the origins of Pakistan’s military politics, comparative analysis
with India is essential; beyond that, it devolves into an apples-and-oranges
comparison. Instead, we argue that other praetorian militaries, such as in
contemporary Egypt and Myanmar, and their patterns of personnel management are
more informative comparisons.
Micro-data
on Pakistan’s military elite
We used open sources to gather data
on soldiers who became corps commanders from 1971 onward. We also gathered the
same data for the DGs of the ISI, some of whom never became corps commanders,
providing a small complementary data set; this is, to our knowledge, unique
data about elite military personnel in Pakistan.1111
Others have focused on the rank-and-file: Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing
Pakistan Army Officer Corps’ on district-level recruitment patterns and Fair,
‘Using Manpower Policies to Transform the Force and Society’, which combines
these data with household surveys.View all notes The top position in the Army,
COAS, presides over a tight pyramid of control. Technically, the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) is a higher position with
jurisdiction over all three services, but in reality CJCSC is fairly powerless,
and is mainly used as a way for worthy senior officers to achieve a fourth star
before retirement.1212
Of the seventeen chairmen, two were drawn from the Navy and one from the Air
Force; the remainder were army generals.View all notes Below the COAS are GHQ staff
positions, combat commands at corps and division levels, positions heading
military academies, and a variety of other postings, from running ordnance
factories to staffing UN peacekeeping missions. The corps commanders are the
collective elite who work with the COAS to manage this sprawling military
establishment: as Blom argues, ‘Although the COAS is all-powerful, he needs the
support of the CCC (Corps Commanders Conferences) for any major change in
foreign policy.’1313
Bloom, ‘The “Multi-Vocal State”’, p. 289.View all notes
We used internet resources,
journalistic coverage, government documents, and published secondary sources to
gather data on the corps commanders from 1972 through February 2017. These
ranged from newspaper articles to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press
releases to annual reports of military-affiliated corporations to Wikipedia
with cross-checking. We created individual documents for each officer, which
vary in quality and extent because of variation in the amount of data
available, with coding and sources to provide maximum transparency. In addition
to the data set, these materials will be made publicly available, which will
help improve their quality over time. We focused on the post-1971 period
because data was more readily available and this time frame allowed us to
examine three periods of civilian rule (1972–1977, 1988–1999, 2008–present) and
two periods of military rule (Zia, 1977–1988, and Musharraf, 1999–2008). The
data set and accompanying coding materials are available for public use. It
will be periodically updated as new corps commanders and DGs of ISI enter the
elite.
The unit of analysis is the individual
officer who became a corps commander or ISI DG after 1971. The definition of
corps commander we adopt is broader than just the nine ‘standard’ combat corps:
we include Army Air Defence Command and Army Strategic Forces Command. We
assigned each individual a unique ID, since some individuals had multiple
commands of a corps and/or the ISI, which would lead to replication of the same
individual data if the command was the unit of analysis. We ended up with a
corps commander data set of 183 officers and an ISI data set of 18 officers.
Eighteen of these officers were still serving as of February 2017 – when we
refer to ‘serving’ or ‘current’ officers we mean as of February 2017 – but the
vast majority are retired. Two former corps commanders died while serving, both
as COAS: Asif Nawaz in 1993 and Zia ul Haq in 1988. Two former ISI DGs died
while in service, Akhtar Abdur Rahman – in the same plane crash as Zia while
CJCSC – and Major General Riaz Hussain.
The main challenge we faced was data
availability and quality. As we discuss below, for some variables there is
extensive missing data. We transparently identify particularly problematic
variables and the conclusions we can credibly draw. By providing sourcing
information and transparently producing the data upon publication, we hope that
mistakes can be corrected and gaps filled in as part of a cumulative process
and that this effort can help to further advance the collection of systematic
qualitative and quantitative data on Pakistan’s military and its implications
for broader politics.1414
Excellent recent work in this vein includes Siddiqa, Military, Inc;
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army
Officer Corps’; Fair, Fighting to the End; Shah, The Army and Democracy;
Paul, The Warrior State and Wilkinson, Army and Nation.View all
notes We fully acknowledge the limitations of our data, but hope that our
efforts can lay the basis for improvement, expansion, and correction over time.
Becoming
a corps commander: Bureaucratic predictability
We first discuss pre-corps command
characteristics of the corps commanders in our sample, separating analysis of
the DGs of the ISI for a distinct section later in the paper. Our main finding
is that the Pakistan Army, consistent with extant accounts, is a highly
professionalized and bureaucratized organization, showing substantial
continuities along a range of outcomes. There are some exceptions, mainly
surrounding the top commanders in periods of military rule or extreme political
instability, but there is little evidence of the pervasive factionalism that
has plagued many other political militaries. While there is a baseline level of
friction within the organization on particular decisions, especially concerning
the wide latitude army chiefs have to choose corps commanders, by and large,
the Pakistan Army does not see splits either among top commanders or between
commanders and the ranks. This is not a given: as Geddes has argued, and cases
like Thailand highlight, political militaries often fracture among factions and
personalities.1515
Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about Democratisation after Twenty Years?’ On the Thai
military, see Chambers, Knights of the Realm.View all notes Thus,
Pakistan stands out for its praetorian cohesion in comparative perspective, in
line with militaries in Egypt, Myanmar, and pre-Erdogan Turkey.1616
Cook Ruling but Not Governing, Nakanishi, Strong Soldiers, Failed
Revolution.View all notes
Demographic
and education characteristics
Data on personal background was, by
far, the most difficult for us to gather. Our findings are therefore highly
caveated. Eighty-seven of 183 observations are missing, but of the sample, 55%
were born in Punjab and 21% in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). Only 3% of our sample
were born in Sindh, 3% in Azad Kashmir, and 2% in Balochistan. KPK is thus
moderately over-represented while Sindh is very heavily under-represented,
affecting both Muhajirs – Urdu-speaking migrants from India at Partition – and
Sindhis. Earlier generations of officers had substantial numbers born in
present-day India, but this cohort has obviously diminished dramatically. While
missing data is a massive problem, this basic finding aligns entirely with
other accounts of the demographics of the Army.1717
Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.View all notes Given
that we expect better data on more prominent officers, this further suggests
that these provinces contribute the bulk of the military elite.
Place of birth provides indirect
insight into ethnicity, a variable we badly struggled to code. Though not
everyone born in Punjab is Punjabi or in KPK is Pashtun, it is highly
suggestive. We also explore how these dynamics have shifted as the generation
of Urdu-speaking officers born in India before Partition, prominent in the
decades after independence, retire. Of officers whose first corps command came
after 2004, 61% are from Punjab, 18% from KPK, and 7% from Sindh. This suggests
a tilt toward Punjab and continued Sindhi under-representation at the highest
levels of the military, which aligns with the findings of Fair and Nawaz (2011)
that showed Sindhi under-representation and over-representation from KPK in
recruitment. They identify something of an increase over time from Sindh,
however, which may eventually translate into representation in the military
elite. Similarly, the military has made recent efforts to increase recruitment
from Balochistan; these recruits will reach senior ranks in a decade.
What is the distribution of taking
the first corps command over time? Figure
1 shows the incidence of first commands by year. There are some obvious
periods of instability that lead to reshuffling: when Musharraf tried to bring
the Army under tighter control in the face of American pressure in 2001–2002,
the late Zia years (1985–1988), and the last years of Musharraf’s rule
(2005–2007). All army chiefs have the discretion to form their own ‘management
team’ upon ascending to the position, though from a pool of two- and three-star
generals that is relatively fixed. In addition, the elevation to army chief of
a general who has officers senior to him will lead to their premature
retirement, thus opening three-star positions. The one spike fitting none of
these categories – around 2010 – is an idiosyncratic result driven by General
Kayani being granted an extension, which forced multiple retirements and a
reshuffling among the corps commanders.
Figure 1. Distribution of first
corps commands by year.
 |
| FIGURE 1 |
Fair and Nawaz identify an expansion
of Pakistan Military Academy-Kakul (PMA) intakes in the 1980s, resulting in a
general increase in the size of the candidate pool, thereby necessitating more
and quicker reshuffles.1818
Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.View all notes
Quicker reshuffles can also be a symptom of greater politicization and
favoritism at the very top of the pyramid. As we discuss in the second half of
the paper, experience as a corps commander – as a position of recognized
leadership – can serve as a boon to future career options, within and outside
the military. An army chief may thus seek to reward loyalists with this status,
however briefly. Consistent with this view of such positions as a leadership
credential, we find that the on average, the length of time spent in command of
a corps has reduced significantly over the last few decades (Figure
2). The typical officer beginning command of a corps in the 2010s spends
just over half of the time (19 vs. 33 months) in such a position relative
to their predecessors in the 1980s. Tellingly, of the nine officers who spent
less than a year commanding a corps, eight assumed command after 2001.
 |
| FIGURE 2 |
Figure 2. Time commanding corps over
time.
We have plausible evidence of the
beginning of military service for 133 of 183 corps commanders (Figure
3). Because of missing data, this may not be representative, particularly
of those who ascended before 1998. If correct, though, the spike in the sample
around 1971 is striking. Two explanations are possible for why these PMA
classes did so well. First, 1971 would have produced the lieutenants who
entered the military at its nadir after the loss of East Pakistan, uniquely
positioned to advance as a regenerative force. Second, they entered corps
command eligibility in the Musharraf years, when the COAS needed political
support. His ISI chief and future two-term COAS, Ashfaq Pervez Kayani,
graduated from the PMA in 1971. Handing out promotions to this cohort may have
been a way of maintaining internal support, especially in the tumultuous
2005–2007 period of insurgency and popular unrest. The prominent roles played
by the 1971 generation bely the expectation that military officers who have
experienced a heavy military defeat or crisis are less likely to seek political
power, as Peter White has recently argued.1919
White (2017).View all notes He contends that ‘major crises that end poorly
create both an initial professionalizing shock and long-lasting pressures for
professionalization and depoliticization’2020
White (2017): 576.View all notes for armies, but such a dynamic is not evident
here. This stems from an important implication of our argument: the dichotomy
between professional and politicized militaries is a false one, at least in the
Pakistan case: it is possible for a military to, at once, remain professional
in some domains and deeply politicized in others.
Figure 3. Year of entry into
military service.
 |
| FIGURE 3 |
How long does it take to become a
corps commander? We use the year of service beginning outlined above and the
year of the first corps command to estimate the amount of time in the military
before commanders reach a corps command. Of the 133 officers with data on this
variable in the sample, they average 33 years in service prior to first
corps command, meaning they take this command around 53–55 years old. As
we see in Figure
4, notwithstanding outliers in each direction, most corps commanders take
command around the same time in their lives and careers. The time to first
command in the sample is 31.3 years for corps commanders who left service
before 2000 and 33.7 for those who have retired since. If this is right, it may
mean that the growing number of officers over time competing for slots, as
shown in Fair and Nawaz, is delaying promotion, pushing careers backward
compared to the 1980s and 1990s.2121
Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.View all notes With
the average lieutenant-general retiring at 57–58, it is little surprise that
this is the last posting for the plurality of corps commanders. This is also
why a difference of a couple of years in time to first corps command is
potentially meaningful: taking command at 56 means an officer is likely to be
at retirement age upon its completion, while taking command at 54 opens the
possibility for one or more postings before retirement.
 |
| FIGURE 4 |
Figure 4. Time to first corps
command.
The general clustering of the
retirement age suggests an institutionalized organization. In personalized or
factionalized militaries, we would expect much higher variance, with favored
officers – the son-in-law of the dictator, members of the dominant faction –
being promoted early and often. The average time to first corps command of
those officers who became army chief was 31.5 years, with 28 being the
fastest (the ill-fated Khwaja Ziauddin) and 35 the oldest (the current COAS,
Qamar Javed Bajwa). The relative youth of even the highest commanders at
retirement puts a premium on what to do with these elites after they formally
leave military service.
Military
pathways to initial corps command
This section considers the military
characteristics of the corps commanders. As noted already, our lack of a
comparison pool of officers who were not selected for corps command limits
inferences we can draw, but the strict pyramidal structure of the military –
particularly the fact that key staff positions are fixed and can only be filled
by one person at a time – does at least somewhat mitigate these concerns.
Though similarly qualified with respect to skillset and talent, there are
likely to be very few individuals who are identically positioned with respect
to experience and specific postings at any given point in time.
The Pakistan Army is dominated by
the infantry. We have data on the sub-branch affiliation of the corps
commanders for 151 out of 183 cases. Within these cases, 66% are from the
infantry, 15% from armor, 14 % from artillery, and less than 5 % from
engineering or from air defense. This blend has not dramatically changed over
time. Table 1 shows the sub-branch composition, estimating the proportion of
officers departing service in four time periods by sub-branch. There is not
much of a trend, beyond an apparent decline in artillery representation at the
highest levels, and some variation in armor. Engineering and air defence are,
unsurprisingly, marginal among the elite. This is an infantry army, and eight
of ten army chiefs came up through the infantry according to our data. Such a
proportion of infantry men at the higher echelons reflects the composition of
the military as whole. Presently, the Army has 25 divisions, of which 21 are
infantry divisions, two are armored divisions, and 2 are artillery; there are
additionally 2 Army Air Defense divisions, and the Corps of Engineers, which is
integrated into combat divisions.
Table
1. Sub-branch percentages of corps commanders (periodized by service end).
 |
| TABLE 1 |
Our data on education suffer from
severe limitations. With this caveat, we find that 74 out of the 183 corps
commanders received some sort of foreign training, meaning that at least 40% of
the command elite have been exposed to international military experiences.
Every PMA graduate has a BA in Military Arts and Sciences, and at least 96 have
a Master’s degree; chances are that the real proportion is higher. This is
consistent with a professional military that educates its elite, especially in
the last two decades, a period which has seen a greater emphasis on senior
officers attaining post-graduate degrees.
We next examine the types of
positions held by officers just prior to their first corps command. Here, we
present the general categories, and then examine more specific positions. We
have data for 150 out of 183 officers. Table 2 presents the overall
distribution of posts held prior to the first command.
Table 2. Pre-first corps command posts.
 |
| TABLE 2 |
The primary category of posting
prior to the corps command is a staff position at GHQ. The second most common
is being a general officer commanding (GOC) of a combat unit – usually a
division such as those at Bahawalpur, Murree, Multan, Sialkot, Okara, or
Kharian – but also units like the commando Special Service Group (SSG), or
Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA). Following these two core pathways, we see
leading a military school (the PMA, the post-graduate Command and Staff College
Quetta, National Defence University [NDU]), having a position in ISI, and
serving with the Frontier Corps or Rangers, the main paramilitary forces. Corps
commanders are coming up through the pathways we would expect from a
professional military organization, after serving for a long period in various
capacities.
Specific jobs prior to a command are
numerous, and widely spread across responsibilities. Within the GHQ staff
positions, the most common jumping-off points to a command are adjutant general
(N = 10), military secretary (N = 7), vice
chief of general staff (VCGS; N = 7), and chief of general
staff (N = 6). Interestingly, leading PMA (N = 7),
NDU (N = 6), and Command and Staff College (N = 7)
are also common steps to becoming a corps commander: though none of these are
important operational/political positions, this suggests the importance of
education within the army. Other positions have become more important over
time: the DGs of the Rangers and inspectors-general (IGs) of the Frontier Corps
were once considered bureaucratic backwaters and represented the end of one’s
career, but today are considered important assignments after counter-insurgency
operations gained prominence in the 2000s.
There does appear, tentatively, to
be some shift in the composition of these pathways, with a greater reliance
over time on staff and educational assignments directly prior to corps command.
As Table 3 shows, of the 54 officers who left service in or prior to 2000 about
whom we have prior command data, 35% held a GHQ staff position, 33% held a
combat formation command, and 15% commanded an army school. By contrast, of the
96 retirees after 2000, GHQ positions accounted for 48% of pre-corps positions,
heads of army schools for 16%, and a combat formation command for only 11%. The
importance of attaining a GHQ position seems to have shifted over time fairly
dramatically since the mid-1980s. Of the 24 individuals who attained corps
command post prior to 1984 for whom we have data, only two had previously held
a GHQ position; by contrast, of the 130 individuals for whom we have data who
became a corps commander after 1984, 60 (46%) held a GHQ posting. Only
one-third as many officers were jumping directly from a combat unit into a
corps command after 2000. While missing data remains a major concern, we know
everyone who has commanded PMA, CSC Quetta, and NDU, which means we are at
least not missing military education commandants in the earlier period. Of the
command elite as of February 2017, there is a mixed picture in between these
extremes.
Table
3. Patterns in pre-corps command roles over time (percentages).
 |
| TABLE 3 |
If there is in fact a trend, this
suggests a more layered, bureaucratized promotion pathway over time, with
greater emphasis on staff and educational leadership experience. A growing,
increasingly complex military may require more of the skills that such
positions demand, rather than just battlefield experience. Many major generals
have experience in combat command; their ability to handle other types of tasks
may further differentiate them. Or this may also be a way to manage a growing
set of potential elites, due to an increase in officer intake in the 1980s,
while the number of senior corps commands remains fairly static. As noted
above, there is tentative evidence that officers have to wait longer to get a
corps command than previously, and cycling through staff and academy slots may
be one way they spend this time. This may have been a particular issue in the
late Musharraf years, when 1971 graduates received a striking number of
commands at a time of political tumult and escalating domestic insurgency. Time
at headquarters or at the academies also separates field commanders from
trusted subordinate officers, which is critical for internal coup-proofing.
Overall, our evidence suggests that
the Pakistan Army is a highly bureaucratic organization with quite routinized,
institutionalized, and professionally relevant career pathways. There does not
appear to be the wild factionalism, personalization, or weak
institutionalization of some other highly political militaries: the wars in the
streets among the 1980s Armed Forces of the Philippines and palace intrigues of
Royal Thai Army factions are missing.2222
See McCoy, Closer than Brothers on the AFP and Chambers, Knights of
the Realm on the RTA.View all notes The very top of the ladder, selection
to corps commander, relies almost entirely on the personal preferences of the
army chief, who enjoys latitude in appointing his leadership team, but even
here, public or explicit splits among senior generals, even those passed over,
are rare. Rungs below the corps commander follow a systematic and predictable
path. Employing such a routinized meritocratic system has the benefit of
minimizing internal disagreements and grievances, an important consideration
for an organization intensely conscious of its public image as unified and
cohesive. Indeed, combined with the evidence of post-retirement landing spots
we discuss below, the military aligns with Svolik’s description of how
single-party regimes can provide long time horizons for their members that
enhance cooperation.2323
Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule.View all notes The only
evidence of the academy year-based preference we can find involves the 1971
graduates, but even this has multiple possible interpretations. These data do
not radically change the conventional understanding of the Pakistan Army, but
they do provide greater detail and clearer insights about trends over time. We
now explore what happens to individuals once they have joined the elite.
After
the first corps command
For most of the Pakistani military
elite, their first corps command is their last major command (Figure
5). Of the 140 corps commanders for whom we have reliable end-of-service
dates, we find that 43% leave service the year that their first command ends,
11% the year after it ends, and 16% 2 years after the end of their first
corps command. The average is 1.67 years from the end of the first corps
command to the end of service. Only 15% make it to 3 years, and then only
a few beyond that. The three key outliers are Zia ul Haq (12 years, then
death in plane crash), Pervez Musharraf (9 years, ‘retired’ by being
pushed out of power), and Ashfaq Pervez Kayani (9 years, retired). The
first two were military dictators; the third was DG ISI from 2004 to 2007 under
Musharraf, then COAS during the volatile years of 2007–2013. That these are the
outliers is reassuring for data quality – we are not getting random individuals
being coded as being in service for a decade longer than average for unclear
reasons.
Figure 5. Time from end of first
corps to end of service.
 |
| FIGURE 5 |
We also have estimated ages at
retirement. In the cases where we lack a confirmed end of service date, we
assume that on average corps commanders retire 2 years after the end of
their first command and compare that to the date of service entry for the cases
in which we have that data. The mean of the 120 cases we can make this
calculation for is 57.8 years. Depending on the specifics of the rank and
the assignment, retirement age for corps commanders ranges from 57 to
60 years, not including individual extensions granted by the government. Figure
6 provides the distribution of end of service ages. Two of these are deaths
in service – Army Chief Asif Nawaz (57) and President/COAS Zia ul Haq (64); the
rest are actual retirements. The list of oldest leavers of service is topped by
Zia, Musharraf, and Kayani, who we will see again below as having the longest
gaps between end of first corps command and end of service.2424
If our age estimates are basically right, it is noticeable that of the ten
other elites who retired after 60 years of age, six took on their first
command between 2004 and 2011, during the chaos of the post-9/11 wars and
political transitions.View all notes
Figure 6. Estimated end-of-service
ages of corps commanders.
 |
| FIGURE 6 |
There is a minor difference in time
from end of first corps to command to end of service between those who ended
service in or before 2000 (1.9 years) and those who left service after
2000 (1.52 years). This is barely suggestive, but, along with the evidence
of a somewhat longer time to first corps command, it could indicate that the greater
crowding at the top is pushing people out a little bit more quickly. The
Pakistan Army looks like a bureaucratic organization in which retirement rules
usually bind. The exceptions that we identify are easily explicable.
Last
military post before retirement
We also tentatively coded the last
command held by a corps commander, or in the case of serving (as of February
2017) officers, the one currently held. To be clear, we lack systematic data on
full career trajectories, so officers may very well have had a position in
between their first corps command and their final command that we do not
identify. Of those who are not in service and for whom we have data, Figure
7 summarizes their post at end of service (N = 155).
Figure 7. Roles at end of service.
 |
| FIGURE 7 |
Of those corps commanders who do not
retire immediately after this posting, to which positions do they proceed?2525
We can only measure these transitions at the level of the year, so some may do
something for a few months after leaving their corps.View all notes Sixteen
corps commanders moved to another corps command, including one who is currently
serving, with Strategic Forces Command being the primary location (N = 4);
no other corps for which we have data gets more than two repeat commanders. Of
these, eight retired as a corps commander and one is still serving as commander
of Army Strategic Forces, four moved to a GHQ position, two to the CJCSC, and one
as head of the NDU.
That leaves 167 individuals who held
a single corps command. Data on final commands are missing for 11 officers,
while 15 single-corps commanders are currently serving. Of the one-time corps
commanders who have left service and about whom we have final command data (N = 141),
ten became COAS, three retired as DG of the ISI, seven ended service as CJCSC,
38 ended up in a GHQ staff position, eight took over an army school, four
became the head of a government agency, three became a martial law administrator,
two headed an army organization, and three held international roles: one
ambassador and two at the UN. Because we also gathered ISI data, we know that
two COASs and one CJCSC were DG of the ISI after their first corps command.
A near-majority (N = 63)
of one-time commanders, consistent with our data on time to end of service,
retired after their first corps command. Of the 38 who took a GHQ position,
there is a cluster of 11 top staff slots for post-corps command elites:
adjutant general (N = 5), chief of general staff (N = 4),
chief of logistics staff (N = 5), DG of the joint staff (N = 6),
the now-defunct deputy COAS (N = 2) and vice COAS (N = 2),
IG arms (N = 3), IG training and evaluation (N = 4),
military secretary (N = 2), and quartermaster general (N = 3).
Of the 17 current/former corps commanders serving when data collection ended,
one is on his second corps command appointment, one is DG ISI, ten are
currently serving in their first corps command, one is COAS, one is CJCSC, and
three are in GHQ (as IG training and evaluation, military secretary, and DG
joint staff).
There are some noteworthy, if
tentative, patterns in who makes it up the command chain. First, Punjabi and
Pashtun dominance continues. Only one of the ten COASs is not coded as one of
these ethnic groups (he is a Muhajir: Musharraf). Of the ten CJCSCs who came
from the Army, we believe that one was a Muhajir (Shamim Alam Khan), two were
Kashmiris, and the rest likely either Punjabi or Pashtun. Second, the infantry
continues to lead the way: nine out of ten of Army CJCSCs and eight out of ten
COASs come from the infantry. However, the other ranks at retirement are
roughly proportional to the overall balance of sub-branches within the army:
infantry is only dramatically over-represented at the very highest posts.
Third, there may be overrepresentation of these top ranks by people who were in
GHQ positions prior to their first corps command. Of the 20 top ranks, 11 had a
GHQ slot, three were in charge of an Army educational institution, and only two
had a GOC position as their jumping-off point into command. They almost all
held a combat command earlier in their career, but moved into corps command
from a staff position.
This pattern of early staff
positions is more pronounced than for the 45 officers who moved from a corps
command to a GHQ slot but did not advance further: 11 were a GOC, 13 had a GHQ
staff position, with a smattering of other commands. Yet the same pattern that
holds for the very top commands also holds for the commanders whose career
ended after a single corps command: 27 had a GHQ position, nine a divisional
command, and the rest a variety of other roles prior to their corps command,
missing data excepted. We end up with, if the data are right, a curious mix of staff-heavy
elites at the top and bottom of the distribution, with the intermediate layer
more broadly blending command and staff jumping-off points into corps command.
This analysis suggests several
things about the internal workings of the Pakistan Army. First, the plurality
of corps commanders end their careers after their first command. The age
profile of those who take on high commands and leave service is remarkably
consistent. Second, there is a clear set of high-prestige staff positions into
which elites move after a corps command. These data provide a way of
identifying the power nodes of the military based on where the upwardly-mobile
cluster after entering the elite. Third, the Army seems quite professionalized
– the pyramid narrows, and most fall by the wayside. Those who do not retire
move into an identifiable set of professionally demanding slots.
Managing
the elite after retirement
Data
on the military elite after service
Measuring the post-retirement fates
of the military elite has been the most interesting empirical challenge. We
coded the first post-retirement position (both specific posts and broad
categories). We also tried to identify post-retirement roles after the first,
though the number of observations drops and patterns become hazy.
It is very difficult to find
evidence of absence; there are a few cases in which sources explicitly say
officers retired entirely from activities, but in most cases of missing data we
are uncertain about what happened. We nevertheless have surprisingly substantial
data. English as Pakistan’s elite language and the military elites’ political
importance have made these officers more visible than would likely be the case
in many other contexts. Seventeen officers were still serving when data
collection was completed and we know that at least two died in office. This
leaves 164 possible retirement trajectories to measure. Twenty-five cases are
missing, and we have some kind of data on 141 corps commanders, or 85% of those
retired from service. Table 4 lists the professional categories into which the
non-currently-serving corps commanders moved (for whom we have data).
Table
4. Overall distribution of post-service outcomes.
 |
| TABLE 4 |
As we can see, the dominant
post-retirement slot is into a blend of foundations and associated corporations
we group together as ‘Fauji Companies.’ These are almost entirely senior
leadership positions, like board chairman and managing director. This builds on
Siddiqa’s excellent monograph on the importance of the military’s involvement
in Pakistan’s private sector economy.2626
Siddiqa, Military, Inc.View all notes
Preliminary analysis suggests that
at any given time, around seven former corps commanders serve as either the
managing directors of the Fauji Foundation or the Army Welfare Trust – who also
serve as chairmen of the board of affiliated companies – or as managing
directors of key enterprises, such as Mari Gas, Fauji Fertilizer, Fauji Cement,
Askari Cement and Askari Bank. Personnel in these positions seem to change
roughly every 3 years, providing opportunities for the newly retired. And
while serving as an executive director is a well-compensated position, it is
both term-limited and dependent on competence in providing value for
shareholders and stakeholders. This is not a path to independent oligarchic
wealth. These foundations and related companies are also fairly professional:
while many directorial and managerial positions are filled by retired officers
from major generals to captains, there are also many civilians in leadership
roles.
To be clear, there are also other
aspects of the Pakistani economy in which the military is involved, notably the
acquisition of land for the purposes of real estate, both to provide retiring
officers with residential property and to participate in the lucrative property
market in Pakistan. Retired officers often own more than one property; the
pyramidal structure of the Army is operative when it comes to land perks. After
15 years of service, officers are entitled to one residential plot, after
25 a second, after 28 a third, and after 32 a fourth. Thus, selling or renting
housing to civilians is a common practice, and military officers and civilians
commingle in most of the ostensibly military housing companies, which have
become some of the most elite locations in urban Pakistan. The participation of
senior military leadership in the political economy of real estate is an
important area of further research.
Aside from economic and commercial
positions, diplomatic appointments are also valued. A common practice in times
of military rule, retired military personnel are often appointed to
ambassadorships even under civilian governments. It is likely, however, that
ambassadorships have lost some of their previous appeal as Pakistan’s economy
has liberalized, with elites gaining access to consumer goods and opportunities
to travel abroad that had previously required official sanction through
overseas postings. Moreover, as the Pakistani military has established
mechanisms and practices of ‘defence diplomacy’ that ensure its interests
abroad, the military does not need to monopolize ambassadorial positions in
foreign capitals to maintain influence beyond Pakistan’s borders.2727
Alam, ‘The Pakistani Army’s Defence Diplomacy’; Syed, ‘Bajwa Briefs Commanders
on Military Diplomacy’.View all notes
Overall, the bulk of elites continue
to be employed by the state or extensions of military-affiliated civil society
(87/141; 62%) even after leaving formal military service. The foundations,
ambassadorships, the post of defence secretary (nominally the highest civilian
bureaucrat in defence affairs), provincial and federal agencies, provincial
governorships, and federal cabinet appointments before 2008 are all ways
retired elites have continued to be involved in governance. The military aims
to provide its senior officers comfort and influence even in retirement.
Interference in decision-making of current senior officers by retirees is
looked upon extremely unfavorably; former Army Chief Raheel Sharif, considered
quite popular during his tenure, was even told to cease his organizing of
social activities with serving generals after retirement.2828
Jamal, ‘Raheel Sharif: The Chief Who Could Be King’. We thank Hamid Hussain for
this point.View all notes Yet they remain bound to the broader institution.
Strikingly, almost no one goes
directly into politics after retirement. This is in stark contrast to, for
instance, Indonesia and its plethora of retired-military politicians in
mainstream electoral and party politics.2929
Lee and Laksmana ‘Why Do Retired Military Officers Enter Politics?’. The United
States, too, has seen significant veteran involvement in electoral politics,
both for national and state office. See Teigen (2018).View all notes The array
of state-affiliated, private sector and civil society destinations for retired
Pakistani military elites keeps them away from electoral politics – and also
extends the influence of the military into domains that are reserved for
civilians in other systems. There is, furthermore, a long-cultivated cultural
distaste for politicians among the military fraternity, and the geographic
concentration of the military and military officers in garrisons and
cantonments, with regular circulation, provides little opportunity to cultivate
a geographic constituency required for electoral mobilization in Pakistan’s
first-past-the-post system. For such a politically-involved military, its
command elite have remarkably little directly to do with electoral politics
after they retire.
The non-Fauji private sector is, at
least initially, also not a popular destination. Though this becomes a more
common pastime after the first retirement position (as we show below), the
initial post-military phase is dominated by state employment of some variety.
Other pursuits include running schools and NGOs, doing defense analysis,
writing, farming, and advising foreign governments and multilateral
organizations. Interestingly, none of the COAS or CJCSC have joined a Fauji
company and only one entered the private sector, suggesting these are fallback
or ‘safety’ options for the highest echelon.
Trends
by regime
We wanted to see how destinations
vary by the period in which officers left service (Table 5). We roughly group
service end periods into four, as above: the Zia era (1978–1988), the
‘democratic decade’ under Bhutto and Sharif (1989–1999), the Musharraf era
(1999–2007), and the contemporary democratic period (2008–2017). There is some
messiness around the end of the Zia and Musharraf eras, but almost all of these
officers retired cleanly under one of the regimes.
This data is striking: it is difficult
to differentiate the Musharraf era of military rule from the two democratic
decades around it. The military continues to put the same kinds of people in
the same kinds of positions both when in formal power and out of it. If
anything, there is evidence of new forms of military influence even after the
withdrawal from power in 2007–2008: there has been an increase in the number of
retired corps commanders who have become Defence Secretaries since 2008.3030
See Shah, The Army and Democracy, pp. 266–267 for discussion of military
influence over MOD, including the prominence of retired lieutenant-generals as
Defence Secretary.View all notes Why does this matter? The Defence Secretary is
supposed to be the top civilian bureaucrat in Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence.
Yet since 2008, only one actual civilian, Nargis Sethi, has held this post, for
about 7 months in 2012. The importance of this position lies not in its
policy implications, as foreign and defense policy is de facto planned and
executed at GHQ, not in the civilian bureaucracy. Rather, the position matters
because any removal or appointment of the army chief has to be approved by the
defence secretary. In turn, the military regularly advances its preferred
candidates for the post, leading at times to tension when the civilian
government is skeptical of the military’s candidate.3131
Syed, ‘Gen Zamir Made Defence Secretary as Govt Backs Military’s Nominee’.View
all notes More broadly, the defense secretary is a key node of communication
between the government and the military. Thus, even when not ruling, the
military is able to put its just-retired personnel into positions of high
civilian influence in defense. We do not see the same former military
involvement in other sections of the federal bureaucracy.
There is a stark difference between
the Zia era and the post-Zia era. Under Zia, it appears that the military was
used more directly to govern: federal ministers and provincial governors formed
a substantially higher percentage of the first retirement slots than after
1988. We cannot make general assumptions about how military regimes relate to
civilian governance: Zia offered a more overtly ‘khaki’ government than
Musharraf, with the latter appointing only a few veterans as ministers or
governors. The economic network surrounding the foundations really comes into
its own following 1988 and the liberalization of the overall economy; the
percentage of retired elites going into Fauji companies shoots up and stays
high across the three ensuing periods.3232
Siddiqa 2007 also notes that the rise of ‘Military Inc.’ occurred in the
1980s.View all notes
This analysis also suggests that we
should be careful making assumptions about obvious differences between civilian
and military rule, which would predict much clearer differences between the
Musharraf era and the democratic periods. Instead, while obviously much was
different in macro-politics, the management of military elites looks almost
identical across the post-1988 era. For those who do not go into government or
a military corporation, being a retired senior officer opens up opportunities
in the world of think tanks, overseas fellowships, or the higher echelons of
Pakistani civil society. One two-time corps commander and CJCSC founded the
Polo Club at the Lahore Garrison; another later reinvigorated and expanded it.
The military elite’s post-service life chances are largely unaffected by
whether the military is directly ruling.
Deeper
into retirement
We also have data (N = 89)
on the most recent activity we can find retired elites doing after their
first post-retirement post: this requires an individual moving into a new
category, or moving between specific posts within a category. We go from 141
observations of post-retirement to 89, reflecting elites not finding a second
job, dying, or simply fading away, i.e., the data being unavailable. This is
therefore a hazy, but still illuminating, representation of retired senior
officers several years out of service. Table 6 compares how the first
retirement activity differs from later retirement positions.
Table 5. First retirement roles by period/regime (percentages in parentheses).
 |
| TABLE 5 |
Table
6. First vs. most recent post-retirement role, percentages in parentheses.
CSVDisplay
Table-6
 |
| TABLE 6 |
We see a substantially larger move into the private sector – this suggests, in alignment with qualitative evidence, that there is a period in which elites find respectable things to first do before making money. The particular activities in the private sector are also worth noting. For those 13 corps commanders that have ‘head of a private company’ as a final occupation post-retirement, six were previously Fauji company executives, suggesting that these foundations are a gateway to broader opportunities in the private sector. The types of business they run are particular, however: largely either in similarly rent-rich public sector-adjacent activities, such as the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, Coastal Refinery or Alphagas, with foreign multinationals such as Philip Morris or Nissan, or in managing military-associated service businesses such as in private security. None of these are allied with any of the powerful domestic corporate groups in Pakistan and thus maintain a level of insulation from the civilian intersection between business and politics, even as they engage with the national economy.
There is a substantially smaller
share of elites who still hold government posts in their later retirement: 87
out of 141 (62%) work for the state in their first post-retirement position,
while only 30 out of 88 (34%) do so later in the retirement. No one in our
sample serves as secretary of defense in a later retirement position, making
apparent how tight and immediate the pipeline is from military into the larger
security bureaucracy. The recently retired are a power resource for the
military that likely decreases in effectiveness over time, as elites age, start
to lose their connections to those serving, or get interested in new
activities. Despite their connections to the state diminishing, they continue
to be part of a broader elite social milieu, living in housing developments
specifically intended for retired defense personnel, and frequenting elite
clubs and golf courses. The private sector and NGO world became far more
prominent in the later stages of retirement, while electoral politics rises a
little but still remains remarkably small.
A
‘state within a state’? Inter-Services Intelligence
Since 1971, there have been 18 DGs
of ISI, the infamous intelligence organization.3333
Kiessling, Faith, Unity, Discipline identifies 17, and then Naveed
Mukhtar, previously commander of 5 Corps, took over as the 18th in
late 2016.View all notes Though there have been a small number of accounts
dedicated to the ISI, systematic evidence on the organization is quite scarce.3434
Kiessling, Faith, Unity, Discipline.View all notes Our data can only
offer a limited perspective on this secretive organization, but does provide
some interesting insights. The ISI is often described in near-mystical terms as
a ‘state within a state,’3535
For instance, Walsh, ‘The ISI, Pakistan’s Notorious and Feared Spy Agency,
Comes in from the Cold’.View all notes even operating outside the control of
the Army. This is why we specifically gathered data on the DGs of the ISI since
1971, including those who never held a corps command (according to our data, 8
of the 18 DGs ISI).
The number of cases is small, and so
we proceed with great caution. It is also crucial to note that selection as DG
of the ISI is the prerogative of the Prime Minister in periods of civilian
rule. Thus, under civilian rule this is not a purely military selection
process, in contrast to most of the other positions discussed above. The
termination of a DG’s position can also be highly political as premiers come
and go, or as coups reshuffle the deck.
What can we say about the ISI
command elite? Like the broader set of military elites, this is primarily a
Pashtun–Punjabi demographic: ten were born in Punjab, two in KPK, two in
Kashmir and one contemporary India (we lack data on three). We know that at
least 9 of the 18 received foreign training. They are spread out more broadly
across the sub-branches than the corps commanders: 41% from the infantry, 23%
from artillery, 18% from armor, and 18% from engineering or signals.
Ten of the 18 DGs ISI held the ISI
directorship and a corps command at some point during their career, while eight
never held a corps command. Five of the 11 retired as DG ISI, two retired as
corps commanders, one as CJCSC, and three in GHQ positions (DG ordnance,
adjutant general, IG training and evaluation). Of the seven DGs ISI who took
the position after a corps command – particularly prevalent since the Musharraf
years – three retired as DG ISI, one as CJCS, and one is still serving. Two
retired as COAS. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is the only DG ISI to have become COAS
under normal circumstances; Khwaja Ziauddin was extremely briefly tapped to be
COAS by Nawaz Sharif in his effort to get rid of Pervez Musharraf, but he was
put under military detention once Musharraf seized power in the 1999 coup. This
is an important position, but one in which a plurality of DGs ISI retire from the
position, just like first corps commands.
Though obviously ultimately
determined by a political decision, the basic professional qualifications of
DGs ISI appear very similar to elevation to the other elite ranks of the
military, particularly in the more recent past. Of ten DGs ISI since 1995, all
but three either were appointed after corps command or left ISI for a corps
command. Of these exceptions, the first went from a divisional command to
ordnance chief at GHQ via ISI and became defense secretary upon retirement, the
second served as DG Military Operations before ISI, and the third, the
currently serving (as of February 2017) DG ISI, previously served as the DG
Sindh Rangers, responsible for the paramilitary response to urban violence in
Karachi.
The ISI seems to be deeply
integrated into the Army, a standard command for a variety of types of officers
despite its outsized political importance, though there is a clear bias toward
those with previous intelligence experience, with eight serving as the DG of
military intelligence or having previous ISI experience before appointment. The
non-intelligence specialists had similar professional backgrounds as the corps
commanders, ranging from commanding a division to managing logistics to
directing paramilitaries. While the ISI was the final post for just under half
of those we have data on, the rest moved into other senior posts in the
military once they finished their ISI posting, including corps commands, key
positions at GHQ, and CJCSC.
We see this relative normalcy in the
data on retirement as well: the ISI does not seem to generate a distinctive set
of post-retirement trajectories. One died in office and we lack data on four
others, so our N is only 13. Of these, two became defense secretary, one
became an ambassador, one became President of the NDU, one became head of a
military company, one became a federal minister and another head of a federal
agency, and the rest were an assorted mix of authors, executives, think
tankers, and the president of the Pakistan Golf Federation.
To the extent that we can draw
conclusions from this limited data, it seriously complicates claims of ISI
exceptionalism or ‘rogueness.’ The ISI leadership is part of a highly cohesive
military organization, staffed at the top by the same kind of senior officers
who command the rest of the Army. It is neither a clear stepping stone to the
top, nor an irrelevant dead end. While it is biased toward intelligence
specialists, it is not restricted to them. At least at its top the ISI can only
be considered an integrated part of the Pakistan Army and highly aligned with
the rest of the military elite. Even with prime ministerial discretion over
selecting and managing its DG, the ISI remains the Army.
Conclusion
This paper provides insights into
how the Pakistani Army maintains cohesion and influence amidst deep political
involvement. Using unique data, we show that the Pakistan Army has maintained
professional internal processes while using retired personnel to maintain
influence in the state and broader society. We have transparently identified
data limitations throughout and hope they can be rectified in future work.
Despite these limits, this empirical approach provides a foundation for new
ways of studying Pakistan’s military politics.
Future research can build on these
insights. First, more complete and extensive data will provide valuable detail
on the military elites’ backgrounds and career trajectories. This includes
forward-looking data on the current command elite. We are pursuing these tasks
in ongoing work.
Second, the puzzle emerges of why
the Pakistan Army has been able to build a cohesive and unitary ‘military
enclave,’3636
Cook, Ruling but Not Governing.View all notes even while many other
political militaries have fractured internally in the face of political
involvement.3737
Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about Democratisation after Twenty Years?’.View all
notes Cross-national comparisons with currently or historically praetorian
political militaries – such as Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Myanmar, and
Chile – will be essential for answering this question. The importance of the
‘Fauji companies’ as a post-retirement destination for Pakistan’s military
elites is intriguing, and suggests that military-linked corporations and
businesses may play a more important role in military politics than previously
appreciated.3838
On military business in Egypt, see Abul-Magd, Militarizing the Nation;
in Southeast Asia, Chambers and Waitoolkiot, Khaki Capital.View all
notes
Third, Pakistan provides an
opportunity to re-think the standard distinctions between military and civilian
rule so common in studies of political regimes. Pakistan’s military has not
given up control of key policy areas even when withdrawing from power, and this
has been accomplished through informal practices rather than formal pacts; Aqil
Shah has argued that the preservation of key "prerogatives," without
formal or overt control, is characteristic of Pakistan's praetorian politics.3939
Shah, “Constraining consolidation.” See also Adeney, “How to Understand
Pakistan’s Hybrid Regime.” Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics and Albertus and
Menaldo, Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy more broadly
explore the ways through which militaries can continue to protect their
prerogatives even after formal democratization.View all notes New theory and
data is needed to understand why some militaries – like Pakistan’s and
Myanmar’s – are able to successfully ‘rule without governing’4040
Cook, Ruling but Not Governing.View all notes in the wake of formal
democratization, while others are eventually brought under firm civilian
control. Managing, co-opting and/or coercing serving and retired military
elites is essential for civilian dominance. Pakistan’s experience shows how
difficult this project can be and the ways in which autonomous military elites
can complicate democratic transitions.
Acknowledgments
Michael Albertus, Jason Brownlee,
Christopher Clary, Hamid Hussain, Sana Jaffrey, Mashail Malik, Asfandyar Mir,
Vipin Narang, Dan Slater, seminar participants at the University of Texas at
Austin, and editors and reviewers at The Journal of Strategic Studies
have provided valuable advice and feedback. The project benefited from
financial support from the Center for Global Studies at George Mason
University. Extraordinary research assistance was provided by Yusuf al-Jarani,
Sunaina Kathpalia, and Eyal Hanfling.
Disclosure
statement
No potential conflict of interest
was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 This includes the nine standard
corps, plus Army Air Defence (AAD) and Army Strategic Forces Command. This
comes to 183 officers over 45 years. There have been 18 DGs ISI A number
of these DGs were also corps commanders.
2 For other similar studies, see Lee
and Laksmana, ‘Why Do Retired Military Officers Enter Politics?’; Nakanishi, Strong
Soldiers, Failed Revolution; Poczter and Pepinsky, ‘Authoritarian Legacies
in Post–New Order Indonesia’ and Kammen and Chandra, Tour of Duty.
3 Pensions are independent of what a
retired officer earns as a salary in such positions.
4 Huntington, The Soldier and the
State; Finer, The Man on Horseback; Staniland, ‘Explaining
Civil-Military Relations in Complex Political Environments’; Barany, The
Soldier and the Changing State.
5 Major efforts to distinguish
democracy and dictatorship, as well as variants of authoritarianism, include
Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, ‘Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions’;
Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule and Boix, Miller, and Rosato,
‘A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes’.
6 Cook, Ruling but Not Governing.
7 Goemans and Marinov 2014.
8 Cohen, The Pakistan Army;
Fair, Fighting to the End; Shah, The Army and Democracy,
Wilkinson, Army and Nation, Siddiqa, Military, Inc; Cloughley, A
History of the Pakistan Army; Nawaz, Crossed Swords; Rizvi, The
Military and Politics in Pakistan.
9 For instance, Ahmed, The
Pakistan Garrison State and Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army.
10 See Mukherjee 2013, Staniland
‘Explaining Civil-Military Relations in Complex Political Environments’,
Wilkinson, Army and Nation.
11 Others have focused on the
rank-and-file: Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’ on
district-level recruitment patterns and Fair, ‘Using Manpower Policies to
Transform the Force and Society’, which combines these data with household
surveys.
12 Of the seventeen chairmen, two
were drawn from the Navy and one from the Air Force; the remainder were army
generals.
13 Bloom, ‘The “Multi-Vocal State”’,
p. 289.
14 Excellent recent work in this
vein includes Siddiqa, Military, Inc; Nawaz, Crossed Swords, Fair
and Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’; Fair, Fighting to the
End; Shah, The Army and Democracy; Paul, The Warrior State and
Wilkinson, Army and Nation.
15 Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about
Democratisation after Twenty Years?’ On the Thai military, see Chambers, Knights
of the Realm.
16 Cook Ruling but Not Governing,
Nakanishi, Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution.
17 Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing
Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.
18 Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing
Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.
19 White (2017).
20 White (2017): 576.
21 Fair and Nawaz, ‘The Changing
Pakistan Army Officer Corps’.
22 See McCoy, Closer than
Brothers on the AFP and Chambers, Knights of the Realm on the RTA.
23 Svolik, The Politics of
Authoritarian Rule.
24 If our age estimates are
basically right, it is noticeable that of the ten other elites who retired
after 60 years of age, six took on their first command between 2004 and
2011, during the chaos of the post-9/11 wars and political transitions.
25 We can only measure these
transitions at the level of the year, so some may do something for a few months
after leaving their corps.
26 Siddiqa, Military, Inc.
27 Alam, ‘The Pakistani Army’s
Defence Diplomacy’; Syed, ‘Bajwa Briefs Commanders on Military Diplomacy’.
28 Jamal, ‘Raheel Sharif: The Chief
Who Could Be King’. We thank Hamid Hussain for this point.
29 Lee and Laksmana ‘Why Do Retired
Military Officers Enter Politics?’. The United States, too, has seen
significant veteran involvement in electoral politics, both for national and
state office. See Teigen (2018).
30 See Shah, The Army and
Democracy, pp. 266–267 for discussion of military influence over MOD,
including the prominence of retired lieutenant-generals as Defence Secretary.
31 Syed, ‘Gen Zamir Made Defence
Secretary as Govt Backs Military’s Nominee’.
32 Siddiqa 2007 also notes that the
rise of ‘Military Inc.’ occurred in the 1980s.
33 Kiessling, Faith, Unity,
Discipline identifies 17, and then Naveed Mukhtar, previously commander of
5 Corps, took over as the 18th in late 2016.
34 Kiessling, Faith, Unity,
Discipline.
35 For instance, Walsh, ‘The ISI,
Pakistan’s Notorious and Feared Spy Agency, Comes in from the Cold’.
36 Cook, Ruling but Not Governing.
37 Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about
Democratisation after Twenty Years?’.
38 On military business in Egypt,
see Abul-Magd, Militarizing the Nation; in Southeast Asia, Chambers and
Waitoolkiot, Khaki Capital.
39 Shah, “Constraining consolidation.”
See also Adeney, “How to Understand Pakistan’s Hybrid Regime.” Nordlinger,
Soldiers in Politics and Albertus and Menaldo, Authoritarianism and the Elite
Origins of Democracy more broadly explore the ways through which militaries can
continue to protect their prerogatives even after formal democratization.
40 Cook, Ruling but Not Governing.
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Additional
information
Author
information
Paul
Staniland
Paul Staniland is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of
the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. He is
the author of Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse
(Cornell, 2014), and of articles on political violence, insurgency, and
international security in South Asia.
Adnan
Naseemullah
Adnan Naseemullah is Lecturer in International Relations at King's College
London. He is the author of Development after Statism: Industrial Firms and the
Political Economy of South Asia (Cambridge, 2016), and of articles on political
economy, electoral politics, and colonial legacies in South Asia.
Ahsan
Butt
Ahsan Butt is Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and
Government at George Mason University and non-resident fellow at the Stimson
Center. He is the author of Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy
against Separatists (Cornell, 2017), and of articles on international relations
theory, political violence, and nationalism.
**************************************
Founder & Convener
Veteran's Web Portals.
http://signals-parivaar.blogspot.in
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