Pakistan Army has put the lid on Imran’s revolt & now wants million acres of land in Cholistan

Disintegration of Imran’s PTI shows sympathy still intact for Pakistan Army, which is threatening to invoke Army Act against protesters & giving a spin on Jai Jawan Jai Kisan.

Pakistan's ex-PM Imran Khan surrounded by security personnel at Islamabad HC on 12 May, 2023 | Reuters/Akhtar Soomro

Things are moving very rapidly in Pakistan. Some on predictable lines, some on not so predictable lines. We also have some very interesting takeaways from there, in fact, three important takeaways from there and that’s the reason I’m recording this episode of Cut The Clutter on Pakistan even though as you can see I am recording from Mumbai, from Marine Drive, no one can miss this sight and the people. This is the beauty of the spirit of Mumbai. So many people, they go about their business and they don’t interrupt you, they don’t come and pose for selfies etc. They know what it is to respect somebody who is doing something on camera. This is the capital of showbiz in India, not for no reason.

Now, three things in Pakistan. I told you. The third is the juiciest and the most interesting. It is also the least surprising but because it is the juiciest, people talk about it in slightly more detail than the other two and I keep it for the end. So here we go. The first one, as you have seen in your headlines, the meltdown of Imran Khan’s party has begun. Now, this meltdown I must admit had been more rapid than I would have thought, given the fact that he had so much street power and his people had risen in revolt, attacking top military installations, Corp Commander’s homes and Air Force Station, like that. I would have thought that it would rouse his support base again. 

But he is now proven to be a little bit cowardly. Because, his last long speech, about 20 minute-speech, I heard that. That was a speech not of defiance. That was a speech addressed to the army saying look, how can you even imagine that I can mean any harm to you. I am a supporter. I’ve been defending you across the world. I was a global citizen. Even though I was not in politics, I was defending the army, so on and so forth. 

So he’s since then been writing apology letters through his speeches  to the army. When did I mean any harm to you and saying that you catch anybody who attacked your installations because you now have face facial recognition, etc. You catch them, My people will never do it. 

The fact is, thousands of people have been arrested. Many of these are people from his party. Many of these are members of Provincial Assembly, members of National Assembly, that is Pakistan’s equivalent of MPs and MLAs. Many of them after a few days in the custody of the army have said look, I am taking retirement from politics. 

These include somebody we’ve known for a very long time, those of us on Pakistan beat and also the think tank beat — Shireen Mazari, for example.  She was a minister in Imran’s government. Mazari is also a well known scholar. All right. She can be quite vicious when it comes to India, but people are entitled to their views and we can respond. We Indians can respond to their views, as we wish but that apart, she’s an intellectual, she’s a politician. She’s not keeping very good health, but she was arrested and looked like even when she was released on court order, she was rearrested. 

So she said she is retiring from politics, as are many others, so I’m not running through them. Because one it will take too long and second, in India, we are not even familiar with many of these names. Now, this is kind of a meltdown that 30 odd already gone —  most of them MPs & MLAs. Now that tells you that Imran Khan’s party is breaking up, that his party leadership is not showing the guts. They’re not showing it that they have it in their gut to fight the army. It was one thing to talk about it the first day, get the mobs out. But once that is over, this  excitement is over, they are not willing to do it. That’s why a lot of them are leaving. They have no stomach for jail. 

GHQ’s threat to invoke Army Act

It tells us two things about Pakistani politics. That at a larger level, while mobs may get angry they say ‘ye jo dehshat-gardi hai, uske piche vardi hai’ but at a larger level, sympathy for the army remains intact. Imran Khan’s counter would have been the real, threat to Pakistan Army is that a lot of the rank and file in the Pakistan Army — young officers, many of the other Islamists, and there’s a lot of them now — they themselves may not be, in fact looks like, are not in agreement with the current Pakistani army leadership and what they’re doing. 

But is Imran Khan willing to rouse them? Because if he were to rouse them, he has to first hit the streets himself. And if his people create ruckus on the streets, they make a nuisance of themselves and when the army has to take action, then the dissenting views of the rank and file or the emotions or sentiments of the rank and file will be tested. 

That obviously he has decided not to do and that’s where I’d say he’s chickened out. After initially saying my fight is with the army chief, my fight is with such and such in ISPR, such and such in ISI, number two in ISI, the DDG (internal politics) or DDG (counter-intelligence) in ISI who he said has tried to assassinate him thrice, he has now pulled away. He’s now appealing to the army and because he has done that, his troops have also lost morale, or at least losing their morale.

The second interesting thing in Pakistan, the army has said that those who attacked its installation, they will be tried or some of them will be tried under the Army Act. Now the Army Act — India also has an Army Act — every country has an Army Act and Army Act usually or almost always applies only to soldiers or only to those who are in the army. 

Army Act in India does not apply to most of us, it doesn’t apply to me, it does not apply to most of you unless you’re a soldier in the army. In Pakistan, they are now saying that they will try these civilian protesters who they think have done damage to them or their installations under the Army Act. But if you look at the Army Act in Pakistan, the iteration of the Army Act, actually the Army Act does not give you any provision whereby you can try a Pakistani civilian under the Army Act. 

The only time it allows you to try a civilian under the Army Act or non-army personnel is one if the person, if the civilian Pakistani is seducing — now that’s a letter that the Pakistani lawmakers have decided to use — so, I’ll say it with a straight face — if they are seducing or attempting to seduce any persons’ subject to this act, that means any soldier subject to the Army Act. If somebody’s trying to talk or bribe or enlist or subvert anybody who’s currently covered by the Army Act into betraying Pakistan or their allegiance to the government or their allegiance to duty, then that person even if the person is a civilian, will be or can be tried under the Army Act. 

There is another provision where a civilian can be tried under the Army Act for crimes in relation to army, navy, air force installations, etc. It’s a very convoluted formulation so I’m not reading it out to you. I would say some of the writing of Pakistani laws, sometimes I find very confusing, and I think some of those who write these laws in the Pakistani bureaucracy, particularly the military bureaucracy, have to go to law school, fresh and learn the basic craft of writing a law but this says that civilians can be tried for offences to do with defence installations insofar as these are covered under the Official Secrets Act of 1923. 

Now, anybody leading a mob or any member of a mob, going into the Corp Commander’s house, burning some furniture is not violating the Official Secrets Act, but it is the fear now of being tried, under the Army Act in army courts, in military courts, that has put the fear of the almighty. In Pakistan’s case, I’m not using almighty with a capital ‘A’, that is only one Almighty but almighty in Pakistan’s case is the army. Almighty power in Pakistan’s politics in the minds of Imran Khan’s supporters as well, including his key political leaders, key political leaders of his party. Now, this is the second one. 

Million acres of land in Cholistan

What is the third element which I said is the juiciest. The third element, remember I also said it is the juiciest but it is the least surprising. So the story has now emerged and this is a case that’s been going on in Lahore High Court because it’s been challenged by some people and 29th of May is the next date of hearing of this case. The Pakistani army has asked, demanded (you can choose the expression you want). Pakistani army has demanded from Pakistan’s Punjab government to give it land. 

Now we all know, Pakistan’s army loves land, particularly land as in apni land. How much land have they asked for? One million acres, you can convert into hectares. One million acres is a lot of land. Now, if you look at all the land under cultivation in Haryana, for example, right, it could be about 10 million acres of land. So it’s about 1/10 of all the land under cultivation in Haryana. 

Why does the army want it? The army says, We want this land for corporate farming, because Pakistan has food shortage, Pakistan has energy shortage, somebody has to do something about it, so give us the land. We’ll set up joint ventures, the corporate sector, with the Punjab government, etc., and then we’ll do business. We will make money on this land. All that is earned from this agriculture of this land, 20% will go towards further agricultural research, rest of the profit will be divided 50/50 between the Punjab government of Pakistan, the state government and the army. 

Can you imagine? Can you imagine the army in any democracy going to go to a lawfully established government and say, hey tum mujhe zameen do main tumhe profit dunga, right? And in this case, it’s 1 million acres. Then they’ve said that while you finish the formalities of giving us 1 million acres, give us 45,000 acres to begin with elsewhere, right? In Punjab, so we can run some pilot projects. That allotment was made by the government of Usman Buzdar who was from Imran Khan’s party. Army asks you something — there is no bureaucracy, you bend over backwards to sign on the dotted line. He made that allotment when he was a caretaker chief minister, that’s how Lahore High Court had stayed it saying that your government did not have the power to because you’re a caretaker government. 

Now, it’s come up before the new government. That was a 45,000 acre land allocation, this demand is for a million acres. This demand is also in a very interesting area, this is desert area, hardly any fertility, very barren area. This is called the Cholistan region of Pakistan. 

Cholistan — the word choli does not come from anything corny. Choli in Turkish is like sand. So, these are vast expanses of desert bordering India. So the three districts that constitute the Cholistan region in Pakistan’s Punjab, the very deep south of Pakistan’s Punjab, three districts — Bahawalnagar, see on the map, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan — all three of these border India. In military terms, in what is described by the Indian armed forces as the southern sector of India-Pakistan border, and that is where Exercise Brasstacks etc. were held  because these are vast open desert spaces, so this is the ideal tank country, very little growth in this area on either side, on the Pakistani side, even less so, because that area becomes even drier, so Pakistani Army wants a million acres of land there. 

Now, Cholistan generally can be divided into two: Greater Cholistan, which is about 13,600 square km and lesser Cholistan, which is about 12,370 square km. Greater Cholistan is drier, has sand dunes that can go up to 100 metres. That is the area that borders India. And that’s the reason I said on both sides that it is the ideal tank country, because both sides also have very few water obstacles. 

Either they have to dig ditches or canals, etc. and that is why both sides have seen this as vulnerable. So when I see the Pakistani Army asking for a million acres there, and they say they will turn it into some kind of a green area by using modern technologies, etc. I also wonder if the effort is also not to bring in water for some place, maybe grow orchards there. It’d be a great idea if they can green this area up, but also to create some kind of, if not obstacles for future Indian move in that area but also to get it better inhabited, get some economic value out of it and then trees, agriculture, all of this and construction offers you protection as well because anything is better than a totally empty desert. I don’t know. I don’t see it anywhere in any statement of purpose that the Pakistani army has put out before the court but before the court they’ve said that look, there is nothing new about armies getting involved in national development.

‘Fauji’ enterprises

There is a quote from the press conference by Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of media wing at Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), who says look in Pakistan, food security is a challenge and this is a quote from him. He says, “In developing and developed countries, governments have used the military in some way or the other to improve their agriculture. So why can’t we do it?” 

And the Punjab government in Pakistan, under what pretext have cleared this  first 45,000 acres?  They cleared this under the pretext of a requirement under CPEC that is China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which seems to be the umbrella under which you can park almost anything there. Along with this 1 million acres, Pakistani army has also asked for an additional grant of 30,000 acres in the same Cholistan area to be given away to the families and widows of their martyrs or Shuhada, as they call them. 

This is a big demand, a big ask for land. As things stand, this has gone to the high court in Pakistan. We know how back and forth things happen between the court and the establishment in Pakistan. So this is another interesting test. But once again, think about it. 

An army in a country, which has a democratically elected government, makes demands to set up agricultural farms — joint venture agriculture, corporate farms on one million acres of land. Now that’s it.

Before I let you go away, I’ll point you also to Ayesha Siddiqa’s book – a must read ‘Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’, including a paper by Paul Staniland, Adnan Naseemullah and Ahsan Butt, a 2020 paper published in Journal of Strategic Studies at King’s College and this paper is titled ‘Pakistan’s Military Elite’. If you look at the paper, it tells you how well Pakistan’s Corp Commanders do even after retirement. 

23.4%, that is, almost one in four then becomes the head of an army-run – a fauji foundation or an Askari-run. They become the head of one of these fauji-run or army-run foundations or one of these army-run corporate organisations. The army has a special place in Pakistan’s economy and power structure. 

Once again, if you see Ayesha Siddiqa’s book and I’m sharing a screenshot, it tells you the companies that army-run or fauji-run foundations and organisations run. So there is Fauji Gas, Foundation Gas, Mari Gas, both army-run, Fauji corn complex where maybe they make cornflakes, Fauji sugar mills, Fauji fertiliser mills, there  is also a joint venture for importing potash from Morocco that goes into fertilisers. Fauji Foundation Experimental & Seed Multiplication Farm, Fauji Oil Distribution Company, Fauji Foundation University and then, Askari stud farms, right?

Bunch of stud farms, rice mills, sugar mills, fish farms, cement manufacturing plants, then a bunch of shopping plazas. The army runs shopping plazas as well. That is the army welfare trust. They have commercial plazas, then leasing insurance banking and aviation businesses. This is where the air force, with its foundation the Shaheen Foundation, also gets in. 

So when you look into all that, you should not be surprised that the Pakistani army is making a demand for land in Pakistan’s Punjab. Little bit of surprise that the demand is for a million acres of land. That’s the reason I said this is a juicy story that we are an army but we can also do agriculture. Jai Jawan Jai Kisan. That’s a little spin on Jai Jawan Jai Kisan that we will do your farming as well. 

But the fact that they have the cheek to ask for it is not a surprise. 

(This is a complete transcript of Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta’s Cut The Clutter Episode 1238)