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The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy The Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy series seeks to trigger and attract new thinking in global political economy, with particular reference to the prospects of emerging markets and developing countries. Written by renowned scholars from different parts of the world, books in this series provide historical, analytical and empirical perspectives on national economic strategies and processes, the implications of global and regional economic integration, the changing nature of the development project, and the diverse global-to-local forces that drive change. Scholars featured in the series extend earlier economic insights to provide fresh interpretations that allow new understandings of contemporary economic processes. Series Editors Kevin Gallagher – Boston University, USA Jayati Ghosh – Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Editorial Board Stephanie Blankenburg – School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK Ha-Joon Chang – University of Cambridge, UK Wan-Wen Chu – RCHSS, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Léonce Ndikumana – University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA Alica Puyana Mutis – Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLASCO-México), Mexico Matías Vernengo – Banco Central de la República Argentina, Argentina Robert Wade – London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK Yu Yongding – Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab An Eroding Social Consensus Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Aasim Sajjad Akhtar with Sohaib Bodla Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2014 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA Copyright © 2014 Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Sohaib Bodla The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 289 6 (Hbk) ISBN-10: 1 78308 289 5 (Hbk) Cover image: Alexander Mak/Shutterstock.com and Iryna Rasko/Shutterstock.com This title is also available as an ebook. Dedicated to Eqbal Ahmad, inspiring activist and scholar CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Preface xiii Chapter One The Military and Economic Development in Pakistan 1 Chapter Two Punjab’s State–Society Consensus on the Military’s Dominance and Economic Role 23 Chapter Three Research Design, Method, Institutional Issues and Scope of the Military’s Land Acquisitions 43 Chapter Four The Military’s Agrarian Land Acquisitions: High Handedness and Social Resentment 65 Chapter Five From Social Resentment to Social Resistance 83 Chapter Six Bahria Town: A Military-Related Real Estate Venture 95 Chapter Seven The Military as Landlord in the Pakistani Punjab: Case Study of the Okara Farms 105 Chapter Eight Guardians No More? The Breakdown of the Consensus 129 Glossary 137 Index 141 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation for generously providing funds for field research. We have dedicated this book to Eqbal Ahmad, because not only was he an excellent speaker, he was an equally great listener. He had the gift of making people he listened to feel special, as he heard everything they said. In that spirit, we listened to many individuals who provided material for this book. The nature of this book precludes us from listing them here, but it is they who wrote the book via their individual interviews or participation in group discussions. We would also like to thank Zia Main, both as Vice President of the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation and for substantively and helpfully engaging with us. A fellowship from Amherst College, which facilitated the writing, and research grants from Mount Holyoke College are also gratefully acknowledged. It has been a pleasure working with Miranda Kitchener, whose efficiency we would like to acknowledge, as well as Suzanne Sherman Aboulfadl, who has worked with us on several books and has consistently done excellent work. Finally, thanks are due to Rudmila Salek for excellent and invaluable formatting assistance. ABBREVIATIONS BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BCGA British Cotton Growing Association BLCU Beijing Language and Culture University CDA Cholistan Development Authority CRBC Chashma Right Bank Canal DCO district coordination officer DDOR deputy director of revenue DG director general DHA Defense Housing Authority DOR director of revenue EDOR executive director of revenue FIR first information report GDP gross domestic product GHQ General Headquarters GTC Greater Thal Canal HQ headquarters IMF International Monetary Fund ISI Inter-Services Intelligence ISPR Inter-Services Public Relations JCO junior commissioned officer MI military intelligence MLR martial law regulations MNA member of National Assembly MQM Mutthahida Qaumi Movement NAB National Accountability Bureau NCO noncommissioned officer OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development PPP Pakistan People’s Party SHO station house officer TDA Thal Development Authority UNDP United Nations Development Programme WAPDA Water and Power Development Authority PREFACE1 My father was asked by a friend of his, Brigadier Ismael, if he would like to enter his name into a military General Headquarters (GHQ) lottery for a border-land distribution scheme, which was developed by Pakistan’s first military dictator, Field Marshal Ayub Khan. The idea, I was told, was to give land near the Indian border to military personnel who would have the capacity to be “first responders” – or fighting men familiar with weapons and likely to have them on hand near the border – in case of enemy military action. This allocation would include noncommissioned soldiers and officers with allocation varying by seniority. My father did not bother following up on his friend’s suggestion, but Brigadier Ismael entered his name on the list anyway. My father won the lottery; his friend did not. Brigadier Ismael was later allocated land in District Sialkot, another border region. Several years passed and my father was alerted several times by GHQ to take possession of the land, but he declined to do so. Finally, he was informed by General Yahya Khan, the then army chief of general staff (later Pakistan’s second military dictator with a brief tenure), to take possession or lose the land. My mother finally persuaded my father to do so, saying that his sons might one day benefit from the land. My father put half the land in my elder brother’s name and half in mine. This piece of land, roughly 60 acres, in Kasur near Mann village, three miles from the Indian border, became state property when Sikh refugees left for India. Much of the land in the area had belonged to Ranjit Singh Mann.2 When my father first visited it with Captain Sadiq, the assistant quarter master general, it was banjar (or wasteland), with sand dunes, reeds and shrubs that did not seem to offer any potential for agriculture. Worst still, the two squares (murabbas) that were allocated to him were in bits and pieces all over the place. My father decided to take on the challenge, and his brother-in-law, Khalid Iqbal, later to be one of Pakistan’s pre-eminent landscape artists, agreed to help him with the land consolidation. At that time, it took three changes of bus from Lahore to get to Mann village, from where one could walk to the land. Khalid Iqbal made the trip many times, working with the provincial land xiv THE MILITARY AND DENIED DEVELOPMENT officials (qanun go and patwaris) who had the land records. The consolidation process was in everyone’s interest, but difficult because of suspicions and difficulties in finding the relevant officials at the district level and different grades in the quality of land to be exchanged. With his congenial personality and persistence, and the clout of the military implicitly behind him, my uncle managed to have the land consolidated and made fit for agriculture. My father’s land was graded banjar qadeem, or waste. The 1965 war with India over Kashmir resulted in this becoming even more the case. India decided to cross the international border and start with a heavy bombardment. My father’s plot of land came in for a heavy share, and when he visited it after the war the craters he saw he imagined were what a moonscape might look like. While noncommissioned officers might generally settle on the farms as was intended, senior military officers for the most part opted for various absentee tenure relationships. My father opted for sharecropping, and a man named Kalu (literally means black) from the area became my father’s first tenant. Kalu, my father told me, was a master in giving my uncle the run-around, and he eventually joined a local gang – Mann having a historic penchant for such activities. Muhammad Rafiq, who spoke English, worked for the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) as a clerk. He appeared to have much spare time on his hands and took a curious interest in my uncle. He befriended my uncle and helped him in his tireless land consolidation task, and in exchange Rafiq took over from Kalu as a sharecropper. But neither Kalu nor Rafiq offered my father much of a share, so my father decided to take matters into his own hands. He had recently retired from the army and settled in Model Town, Lahore, about 40 miles from Kasur, where my uncle, grandmother and aunt resided.

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