Thread by @oolabmys

PAKISTAN’S PREOCCUPATION WITH SECURITY may have its roots in the fact that the #military was the only fully functional institution inherited by the country at the time of the country’s founding. The handicaps that #Pakistan started out with are well known and widely (1/10)

documented. Khalid Bin Sayeed points out: ‘ #Muslims lagged behind #Hindus in administrative services, in commerce and finance, and in political leadership.’

The All-India Muslim League was woefully unprepared for running a country and some of its choices around the (2/10)

time of Partition had added to Pakistan’s difficulties. Many of the new country’s politicians and civil servants had to start from scratch, dealing with issues such as finding residential and office space in #Karachi or #Lahore. But the army was already a going concern (3/10)

in at least West Pakistan as the #British Indian Army’s Northern Command Headquarters were in Rawalpindi, which easily became Pakistan’s General Headquarters.

The League’s leaders managed to get Pakistan on its feet with the help of what Lawrence Ziring described as (4/10)

‘the Civil–Military Complex’—the handful of British-trained Muslim #civil servants and army officers with at least some experience in government. Among these, the army officers belonging to geographic Pakistan had an advantage as they had not migrated to the country (5/10)

from India, had well-established family and clan ties, and controlled a well-disciplined institution. Thus, the army was well positioned to emerge as the arbiter of Pakistan’s destiny.

The Muslim League politicians made the original decision to turn Pakistan, in (6/10)

Suhrawardy’s words, into ‘ a state which will be founded on sentiments, namely that of Islam in danger or of Pakistan in danger, a state which will be held together by raising the bogey of attacks’.

Their decision not only led to maintaining ‘constant friction’ with (7/10)

India but also ended up conferring greater authority on the military. Once British officers handed over command to Muslim generals, squabbling politicians started turning to the army for advice and dispute resolution.

Eventually, the army directly assumed power for (8/10)

the first time within eleven years of Independence. This, Ziring points out, ‘ended the process of political bargaining in defining the direction of Pakistan’ as Pakistan’s first generation of primarily British-trained generals ‘deferred to the experts, minimized the (9/10)

role of the politicians and tried to isolate the clerics’.

Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State (10/10)