Institutions and nation-building

Letter September 24, 2014
Along with the negative aspects of military rule in Pakistan, there have been a lot of positive impacts of army rule.

LAHORE: If we look at the history of Pakistan, it is vividly evident that the Pakistan Army has always had a stranglehold on the political affairs of the country. Of the 67 years of independence, military dictators have ruled Pakistan for about 32 years. It is believed that the army of a country should be strong enough to protect its national interests but in Pakistan, the army not only became the defender of identity and sovereignty of the country but also felt itself responsible for running the government. Most democratic governments in Pakistan over the years have failed to deliver on their promises and because of that, the army has felt the need to take bold steps in order to increase its presence in the affairs of the state. Due to the inefficiency of the political leaders and corruption at all levels, Pakistan has been repeatedly ranked among the most corrupt countries of the world.

The first martial law was imposed by General Ayub Khan in 1958, after that a series of them followed. In 1969, General Yahya Khan imposed the second martial law and as a result, Pakistan had to face the great loss of East Pakistan in 1971, which eventually became Bangladesh. The third martial law was imposed by Ziaul Haq who took over the charge of the country in the year 1977. The worst patch was the governance of General Pervez Musharraf. Various incidents like the Lal Masjid operation, Nawab Bugti’s murder and several inter-provincial problems were all offshoots of his policies, which had a negative impact on Pakistan.

Along with the negative aspects of military rule in Pakistan, there have been a lot of positive impacts of army rule. Our army is the seventh largest in the world in terms of number of active duty soldiers. The Pakistani Army has proved to be one of the best organised when it comes to protecting civilians.

It has done a tremendous amount of work for the disaster relief campaigns and programmes and manages one of the most advanced and reliable disaster management and control infrastructures. It was the armed forces of Pakistan that protected the sovereignty of the country during the wars of 1965, 1971 and the crises of 1999 and the war on terror that started in the later years.

Our army has taken many laudable steps like fighting the Balochistan insurgency, northern areas and Fata. Our military has always tried to produce a viable solution without getting into any strife and bringing all segments of the country together.

Faisal Shahzad

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2014.

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