As Pervez Musharraf has just decreed the state of emergency in Pakistan, it is worthless to look at the particular role that the institution from which he came: the army. Ayesha Siddiqa’s book describes it not only as a “ State in the state “, But also like a” Company in the company “, And analysis by the menu the mechanisms of” Military Business ».
Ayesha Siddiqa’s work was expected – including by the Pakistani junta who prevented his launch in Islamabad – and he holds all his promises. There is a reconstruction of the rise in power of the Pakistani army over the entire period 1947-2005 and above all, from Chapter 4, a careful study of the springs of its economic power.
Regarding the first part, the author very judiciously distinguishes two periods. The first, from 1947 to 1977, was marked by the progressive initiation of the military to the exercise of power, before the reflux due to the electoral victory of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977. The second opens with the coup of General Zia – which will hang Bhutto in 1979 – and still lasts today. This division has the immense advantage of dispeling a myth, that of return to democracy in the years 1988-1999: during these eleven years, if civilians-through two Prime Ministers, Bénazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif-officially occupied power, the military did not in fact leave them any room for maneuver. The only regret that can be expressed with regard to this implementation of Pakistani praetorianism is due to the complete indifference of the author vis-à-vis external influences at the origin of the phenomenon. Because finally, none of this would have been possible without the complacency of the United States which closed their eyes to the authoritarianism of the Pakistani military regime to better make an ally, obsessed that they were by the need to contain theUSSR In the region, especially in Afghanistan.
The seven chapters devoted to the political economy of military power in Pakistan are models of the genre. They make it possible to grasp how the army was formed in “ A State in the State ” – even like” A company in society “, A reality that the author seeks to make by describing it as a” separate class ” Or “ independent ». It presents the foundations of the three weapons, real public enterprises using thousands of still active or retired soldiers ; It shows how privatizations benefited the army, and finally – but it is not the least – it dissects the control of the military on earth, estimating their properties at 12 million hectares where a local variant of feudalism reigns. From this analysis based on a field survey of several years, Ayesha Siddiqa concludes that the army has so many interests to defend that it will not make the power of soon and that democracy will undoubtedly remain a utopia in Pakistan for a long time.
This analysis is most convincing, but it nevertheless suffers from three imperfections. First of all, from the start of the work the comparison with the Turkish case arouses some discomfort. The idea according to which the Turkish army would serve as a model for its Pakistani counterpart in fact, indeed a decisive point: in Turkey, the army appears as a guarantor of secularism, while in Pakistan it did not hesitate to ally itself with Islamists, in particular to lead Jihad to the Indian cashmere. Second, the army’s relationship with secret services-in particular the famous inter-service agents Intelligence-would have deserved to be more detailed, especially since the way the army used them to destabilize Bénazir Bhutto in the years 1988-90 (only episode related to this subject in the book, p. 91) suggests that the two institutions work hand in hand. Finally, the characterization of the Pakistani army as a “ apart “Would have won even more the membership if the author had interested herself, not only in her ethnic composition-dominated by the Punjabis and the Pachtounes-but also in his ethos, because there is a particular culture, typical of a caste folded over on itself.
Despite these limits, Ayesha Siddiqa’s work is called upon to become a reference book whose courage is not the least of virtues. It was necessary to dare to write, for example, that since the coup d’etat of Musharraf, 48 journalists have been victims of violence and that seven of them have been murdered for having covered the sweeping of the Pachtounes and Baloutches zones after September 11-probably by the secret services if one judges by the weapons used.