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ABSTRACT
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.
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.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
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.