12
The Dominance of the Military Bureaucratic
Oligarchy
INTRODUCTION
The predominant position of the bureaucracy and the
army in the structure of state power in the newly-formed
country was due to the form of the freedom struggle on the one
hand and the nature of the Muslim League on the other. Since
the freedom struggle was essentially a constitutional one, the
state apparatus of the colonial regime remained largely intact at
the time of independence. The bureaucracy and the army, which
constituted the “steel frame” of the raj, continued after the
emergence of Pakistan to determine the parameters within which
political and economic changes were to occur. The
predominance of the bureaucracy and military in the exercise of
state power in Pakistan was also due to the fact that unlike the
Indian National Congress, the Muslim League was more a
movement than a political party. During the Pakistan movement
it had not been able to institutionalize Its popular support in
terms of a stable party structure, a manifesto based on mass
support for the solution of Pakistan’s economic and political
problems and a political culture which could ensure the primacy
of representative political government in the structure of state
power. The dominance of the Muslim League by retrogressive land- lords had further undermined the ability to create, in the
new country, a political framework within which popular
aspirations could be realized.
At the time of independence, the principal protagonists
in the exercise of state power were the bureaucracy, the military,
the big landlords and the nascent bourgeoisie. Hamza Alavi in
his pioneering work has argued that because of colonial
development the institutions of the army and bureaucracy are
“overdeveloped” relative to the ruling classes (the land lords, the
indigenous bourgeoisie and the metropolitan bourgeoisie).
Accordingly, the military bureaucratic oligarchy has ‘relative
autonomy’ within the state and is able to intervene and mediate
whenever the rivalry between the ruling classes becomes so
intense that it threatens the frame work within which rivalry is
conducted: “I have argued that this relatively autonomous
‘overdevelopment’ of the state in such peripheral societies as
Pakistan and its dominating presence in civil society is related to
the plurality of economically dominant classes in these societies,
namely metropolitan capital, the indigenous bourgeoisie, and
landowner classes, whose rival interests and competing demands
are mediated by the state. The post colonial state which thus sits in
judgment over them must enjoy a degree of freedom vis-a-vis each
of them individually, though collectively it must remain subject to
imperatives of the social order in which these rival classes are
together ensconced and the structural imperatives of peripheral
capitalism.”1 (Emphasis mine.)
The relative autonomy of the military bureaucratic
oligarchy and its ability to perform a mediating function has
been considerably undermined since the 197 0’s. The reason is
that important changes have occurred since the 1960’s within
the military bureaucratic oligarchy and in its relationship to
civil society.
The military-bureaucratic oligarchy in Pakistan was never a static monalith but an institution whose internal social
composition and relationship to society were subject to change
in the process of economic and social development. In the
immediate post independence period the officers were
predominantly from the landowning class with an ideology
derived essentially from the British military traditions Attitudes
of professionalism and the need to insulate the armed forces
from the daily conduct of civil affairs prevailed. However,
during the mid-sixties and seventies the social origin of the
officer corps shifted towards the petite bourgeoisie in the urban
areas and in the countryside. This shift in the class origins of
the officer corps was accompanied by increasing ideological
factionalism in terms of a fundamentalist religious ethos on the
one hand and a liberal left- wing ethos on the other. The
tendency towards the emergence of opposing political
perspectives within the officer crops was reinforced by two
important developments. First, the right- wing Jamaat-i-Islami
systematically sent its sympathizers and many of its cadres to
seek a commission in the armed forces; second, the radical
nationalist rhetoric of former Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto and
the rapid promotion of officers who appeared committed to his
regime also influenced the officer corps.
The most important consequence of the opposing
ideological trends within the military was its politicization as
an institution and thus the erosion of its ‘relative autonomy’.
To the extent that the military was politicized by opposing
political forces operating outside it, the ability of the ‘militarybureaucratic
oligarchy’ to ‘mediate’ between these opposing
political forces was undermined. Moreover, the task of
mediation was also made increasingly difficult as the regional
question gained iii in Pakistan, and the military began to be
seen as the representative of the interest of the ruling elite of
the Punjab by the people of other provinces of Pakistan.3I The Sociology of the Officer Corps
Indian officers in the British Indian Army were
recruited from the landowning class, though not necessarily
from the aristocracy. As Mac Munn suggests, “the staunch old
Indian yeoman who came into the Indian commissioned ranks
via the rank and file of the Indian landowner of lesser class
made the Indian officer as we know him.”
In the post-Partition period in Pakistan, two factors
have further Integrated the officer corps into the propertied
class:
1. Since the Ayub era, the policy of giving land grants
to senior army officers has created a landed elite
among even those’ officers who did not come from
large landowning families. This phenomenon has
continued to this date, with the addition that now
many officers are being granted land in urban
estates.
2. Many army officers have been provided with
opportunities of joining the trading or industrial
elite. A number of officers were given prestigious
places on boards of companies after retirement,
while for others contracts and credits were
arranged to help set up prosperous firms. Since
1977, this tendency has appreciably intensified.
The appoint ment of army officers as chairmen of
many public corporations in the nationalized sector
as well as WAPDA (Water and Power
Development Authority) and the NLC (National
Logistics Cell) has increased the military’s ability
to grant lucrative contracts to officers operating
private firms in trade and industry.
Thus, an influential section of the army establishment is now closely integrated with the landed and business classes of
Pakistan.
According to Stephen Phillips Cohen, there have been
three distinct generations in the Pakistan Officer Corps:
1. The ‘British’ generation: pre- 1947.
2. The ‘American’ generation: 1953-1965.
3. The Pakistani generation: 1965 to date.
It must be emphasized that each generation absorbed
some of the characteristics it inherited from the earlier
generation, through the culture embodied in the process of
training promotion and daily social life of the officer.
The British-trained officers who entered the Pakistan
Army at the time of Partition consisted of three distinct groups,
but all three had served during the 1939-45 war. Two of these
groups had entered the British Indian Army during peace time
and received their training either at Sandhurst (e.g., Ayub
Khan) or at Dehra Dun (e.g., Mohammad Musa). The third
group of officers (the Indian Emergency Commissioned
Officer) joined the British Army during the Second World War
(e.g., Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq) AU the pre-war officers have
now retired, and only a few who entered during the Second
World War remain in the Pakistan Army today. However, the
older officers left a permanent impact on the culture and
attitude of the officer corps for they had organized the main
training and educational establishments after Partition and
served as a model for the younger officers.
Officers who joined the British Indian Army m regular
commissions before World War II were carefully selected from
scions of prestigious families of the landed elite or from uppermiddle
class families. A few were included from the ranks and
were generally the sons of JCOs who had distinguished
themselves in service. However, the same rigorous criteria of selection did not ap to officers who had joined during the war
through the Emergency Commissioned Officer’s scheme. The
official British analysis regarding such officers was that they
were on the whole inferior to both regular Indian
Commissioned Officers and their British Emergency
Commissioned Officer equivalents.
Apart from the differing professional and attitudinal
characteristics of the officers who originated in the British
Indian Army, there was another important sociological
characteristic. About 12% of the Muslim officers in the British
Indian Army were not from areas that later constituted
Pakistan. Many Muslim Officers from Delhi, UP, Eastern
Punjab and Central Provinces, constituted an important section
of the senior ranks of the Pakistan army until recently. The
sons of these officers constitute an important faction of the
current officer corps. These officers exercised the option of
migrating from their home towns in India and are especially
charged with a sense of communal feeling against the Hindus
and a sense of mission about living in an Islamic state. For
example, one of the most senior officers of the Pakistan Army
stated in an interview with Cohen:
“I am a pure Rajput; my family has been Muslim for
only two or three generations. But I felt that India had
to be divided, and told Messervey (the first Commander
of the Pakistan Army) that I would rather live in a small
country as a free man than as a sweeper in a large
country . . . I did not want to see my children serve
under Hindus.”
Another senior officer who was a lieutenant-colonel in
1946, and who also chose to leave his home for Pakistan, saw
the new state as an opportunity to build a society according to
Islamic values
“I basically belong to India, Lucknow; all the people who belong to this part of the world (Pakistan), came
here automatically. We had the choice or option: but I
think more than anything else it was a desire to have a
homeland of your own where you could model it
according to your own ideology, your own genius.”
With the establishment of Pakistan’s military relation
ship with the United States in 1953, extensive changes took
place in the Pakistan military establishment at the level of
organization and training. But perhaps even more important
was the Americanization of the ethos of the officer corps. This
occurred essentially as the result of two aspects of the
American military aid program:
1. Hundreds of Pakistan Army officers were sent to
the United States for specialized training. The
mental attitudes that were inculcated during this
period and the ideological perspective adopted were
then diffused within the officer corps on their
return.
2. An extensive motivation program was mounted by
United States Army personnel in Pakistan. This was
done by creating a separate cell in the Interservices
Directorate and involved systematic
indoctrination of Pakistan officer corps.
Evidence of the extensive organizational changes and
of the Americanization of the Pakistan Army’s ethos is
provided by a close associate of former President Ayub Khan:
“The changes brought in the army— few other armies
went through such extensive tremendous changes. The
field formations, the schools, the centers and even
General Headquarters — everything was changed. The
Americans affected everything — the scales were
completely different, hundreds of our officers went to America, and we had new standards of comparison.”9
The profound effect which the training of Pakistan
army officers in the United States had on their minds can be
judged by the views of a young Pakistani colonel who was
trained with the United States Special Forces
“………We were friends. I made many friends in the
United States. Didn’t you know we were the best
friends and allies you had in the area, the only depend
able one? Why did you not realize that? Our two
countries are so much alike, we think alike, we like the
same things. . . . There could be a new alliance to hold
back the Russians.”
Perhaps the most effective penetration by United States
Army personnel at the ideological level was done by means of
the motivation program conducted by a special cell In the Interservices
Public Relations Directorate. Cohen writes
“The USIS extended its operations in Pakistan under
the so-called Motivation (later Troop Information)
Program. A separate cell was created in the (Pakistan)
Inter-services P. R. Directorate to handle the collection
and distribution of American journals, books ‘and films
throughout the Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force.
The so-called Motivation’ Program was an elevation of
normal P.R. to a higher sphere of intellectual education
and indoctrination. It formed an integral part of the
entire military aid program.”
This infiltration of the ideological and institutional
structure of the Pakistan military establishment by United
States military personnel reached a stage where the very
national Image of the armed forces was affected: “The American military presence somewhat compromised
the purely national image of the armed forces... It seemed
as if there were two military establishments in one
country: one national, the other foreign.”12
The foregoing analysis has indicated that close
orgarnzational and ideological links between the Pakistan and
United States military establishments developed during the
period 1953 to 1965. Thus, in the very period in which the
military- bureaucratic oligarchy could be regarded as being
‘relatively autonomous’ from the domestic ruling classes, we
find that it had close structural connections with the institutions
of metropolitan capital.
The important characteristics of officers who have
joined the Pakistan Army in the last fifteen years are as follows
1. They are drawn much more from the middle classes
than the landowning classes as in earlier years.
2. They have been subjected the least to direct foreign
professional influepce and are the products of a
purely domestic educational system.
Many such officers who joined in about 1971 are now
majors or colonels. As Eqbal Ahmed has suggested, this
generation of officers with petite bourgeois social origins and a
purely indigenous socialization is highly susceptible to the
fascist ideology of the Jamaat- i- Islami.’ This tendency may be
further reinforced by two factors:
1. The active attempt made by the Jammat-i-Islami to
penetrate the officer corps with its own trained cadres
on the one hand and to distribute its literature in the
military establishment on the other.
2. The new program of sending combat officers to
universities in Pakistan has subjected many officers to more systematic indoctrination by the Jama’at, which
dominates some of the important universities of the
country.
II Politicization of the Military
During the period after 1971 not only were the officer
corps subjected to the indoctrination of the Jama’at-i-Islami but
they were also exposed to the populist rhetoric of the Pakistan
People’s Party. Many young officers with a social conscience
who were worried about the economic deprivation of the
masses and the crisis of the state saw in Bhutto the harbinger of
a strong new Pakistan. The nationali2ation of some big
industries, the melodramatic handcuffing of some of the
biggest industrialists, and the radical rhetoric against feudalism
had an impact on not only the middle peasants and urban
professional classes but also the new generation of army
officers who originated from these classes. That the army top
brass itself is aware and concerned about the influence of the
Bhutto phenomenon o the minds of army officers is indicated
by a ‘prayer’ issued’ to all units by General Headquarters,
Military Intelligence Directorate, Rawalpindi in 1978-79: “God
will provide men to the army who have strong minds, great
hearts, true faith, and ready hands. . . “There is an implicit
reference to the just executed Prime Minister Bhutto: “men
who can stand’ before a demagogue and damn his treacherous
flatteries without winking.”
It appears that perhaps the fundamental feature of the
‘Pakistani generation’ of officers is that they were politicized
from both the left and the right wing of the political forces in
civil society. This suggests that underlying the strict discipline
there may be potential or actual factionalism among the
officers, which may manifest itself if the armed forces as an
institution are used to crush a popular political
movement in Pakistan. To the extent that politicization of the officer corps has
occurred, the military may have lost the ‘relative autonomy’
which could be regarded as the basis of its ability to mediate
between opposing political forces. In fact it can be argued that
the politicization of the army and the erosion of its ability to
mediate between opposing political forces are apparent from
the nature of Pakistan’s military regime. It has three
characteristics which provide evidence for our arguments:
1. The fact that the military regime is not using a
politically neutral ideology (as was the Ayub
regime) but is using a particular form of religious
ideology that is explicitly linked with the political
position of a particular political party (the Jama’at iIslami).
2. The thinly veiled support of the regime for the
Jama’at- i-Islami and, more importantly, the
provision of access to the political apparatus of the
Jama’at into various institutions of the govern ment.
3. The failure of the military regime to constitute a
convincing civilian facade behind which it can
retract. Thus, for example, the President General
Zia ul Haq continues to retain the office of Chief of
Army Staff, even after the formal withdrawal of
Martial Law.
The above three characteristics of the regime suggest
that this military regime is organically linked with particular
political forces. Therefore the military cannot now be regard ed
as having political ‘neutrality’ and relative autonomy on the
basis of which it is supposed to mediate opposing political
forces ok “sit in judgment over them”.
CONCLUSION The military and bureaucracy at the time of
independence acquired a predominant position in the structure
of state power. This was due to the fact that institutions in civil
society during the colonial period remained weak, and the
Muslim League being more a movement than a party could not
provide sufficient countervailing power to subordinate the state
apparatus to the political system. Gradually the army and
bureaucracy developed a symbiotic relationship. There was
also a shift over time in the social origins of the officer corps:
From the landowning class to the petit bourgeoisie. This shift
was accompanied by a “politicization” of the officer corps as
they were subjected to the ideological influences from the right
and left wings of the political spectrum. The result was an
undermining of the “relative autonomy” of the military
bureaucratic oligarchy, and its associated difficulty in
constituting a credible civilian facade.
References and Notes
1. Hanrza Alavi, Class and State in Pakistan, The Unstable State. ed,, H.
Gardezi and J. Rashid. First published by Vanguard Publishers, .Lahore
1983.
2. These ideological factions do not normally manifest themselves due to
the rigid chain of command in the military hierarchy and the stake of all
officers in the integrity of the armed forces as an institution.
Nevertheless, the successful attempt at a coup d’etat in 1977 by what
later emerged as a religious fundamentalist military regime, and the
unsuccessful attempt by younger officers against the regime in January
1984, are symptomatic of the differences in ideological perspectives
within the military.
3. In Pakistan, the military and the bureaucracy assumed control of state
power soon after independence. Such dominance of the military
bureaucratic oligarchy was derived from the structure of state power
itself; moreover, political institutions and the forms of mobilizing political power were not developed enough to ensure the dominance of
the popular will. In contrast to the political institutions, the militarybureaucratic
oligarchy which Pakistan inherited from the colonial state
was highly developed, and after independence it began to reign
supreme.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first Governor General of Pakistan, was a
man with a towering personality and a democratic vision. However, at
the dawn of independence he was too ill to wield effective control over
the state (he died in September 1948, a year after independence). He
was, therefore, unable to establish an institutional framework through
which the military and the bureaucracy could be subordinated to the
political process.
Prime Minister Liaqat Au Khan, Jinnah’s trusted assistant, lacked the
initiative and imagination to control the affairs of state effectively after
Jinnah’s death. The provincial assemblies were elected on the basis of a
limited franchise extending to only 15% of the populace. Consequently,
members of these assemblies and the cabinets which they elected were
aware of their isolation from the masses. They, therefore, willingly
became instruments of the military-bureaucratic oligarchy. This comes
out clearly in the events of 1963. In April 1953, the Governor General,
Ghulam Mohammad, who was an old bureaucrat, dismissed the
Nizamuddin Government even though the Constituent Assembly had
given it a vote of confidence. Soon after the dismissal of the
Nizamuddin Government by the Governor General, the Constituent
Assembly met again and passed another vote of confidence — this time
in favour of the new Prime Minister, Mohammad Ali Bogra, who had
been nominated to the office by the Governor General. Not only did the
Governor General appoint the new Prime Minister, but he also
nominated ministers and assigned them their respective portfolios.
Thus, state power effectively passed into the hands of the Governor
General. The function of the Constituent Assembly was reduced merely
to rubber-stamping the actions of the Governor General and the
military-bureaucratic oligarchy whom he represented. Over the years,.
there have been some shifts in the relative power exercised by each
partner, but what has remained is the complementarity between these
partners in the military-bureaucratic oligarchy. For a detailed
discussion on this period, see H. Alavi: The Military in the State of
Pakistan. Sussex, Mimeo 1974.
4. 4. Sir George MacMunn, The Martial Races of India, (n.d.) p. 233 in
US Department of State, Office of External Research, Security Decision-making in Pakistan, by Stephen P. Cohen, (Washington, D.C.
Government Printing Office, 1984).
5. 5. US Department of State, Security Decision-making in Pakistan,
chapter 4.
6. Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army (Berkeley University of
California, 1971), p. 145.
7. U.S. Department of State Security Decision-making in Pakistan, p. 61.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 72.
10. Ibid., p. 73.
11. Ibid.,p74.
12. Ibid, p. 75.
13. Eqbal Ahmad, ‘Pakistan Sign Posts to a Police State’, Outlook, 18,
May, 1974,
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