Ayesha Siddiqa had to shift the venue of the launch of her book titled Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy from a posh government-owned club to a small and innocuous hall of an NGO in the last minute after all the main hotels in the city declined to let her organise the function.
A military analyst and the scholar of Woodrow Wilson International Centre, Siddiqa said her book launch faced a virtual ban by the government as the Islamabad club, where she earlier booked to hold the function and all the hotels in the city declined to host it due to, what she alleged, threats from the officials.
Instead, she held the launch at a small hall of an NGO, where several hundreds journalist, diplomats, civil society personalities and opposition leaders attended the function.
The crux of the book brought out by the Oxford press was that even if a civilian government ruled Pakistan the roots of the country's military were spread so deep into the economy with over 10 billion dollars of investment in various industries and over six billion dollars of land holdings, it would continue to dominate the course of the governance.
Siddiqa argued that the military establishment operated its empire on the concept of "milbus" (meaning military and business) with investments in agricultural, manufacturing, services and real estate. Milbus' perpetuates the military's influence retaining its hold on state and society, Siddiqa said in the book, adding that the military capital is used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity, specially the retired officers and the investments do not figure in the defence budget or subjected to the accountability procedures of the state.
It is either directly controlled by the military or enjoys its implicit or explicit patronage, she claimed.
Milbus refers to military capital that is used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity especially the officer cadre but it is neither recorded nor is part of the defence budget. "In this respect, it is completely independent genre of capital," she said.
"Since this military capital is hidden from the public, it is also referred to as the military's internal economy," Siddiqa said.
Her allegations were vehemently denied by officials of Fauji Foundation, the trust of the retired military officers with billions of dollars of investments in fertiliser and various other industries.
They claimed the allegations were "preposterous" as all their activities were confined to only to retired military personnel and their families and have nothing to do with the government.
The State-run APP news agency termed her book a pack of lies and even accused her of having links with India.
"The writer of the book is a frequent visitor of India. Her resume on the net shows her in Nepal with Indians. She speaks at high official gatherings at the UK and US and involved in many backdoor negotiations," the news agency quoted an "analyst" as saying.
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