Pakistan’s love for military now has Chinese money and will soon have legislative power
Sun Online Desk
11th December, 2020 11:57:27
An interesting new legislation has recently been passed in the Pakistan National Assembly. This law proposes to create a China Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority that would essentially take control of the billion dollar CPEC away from the civilian bureaucracy to the Pakistan Army. Most democracies would have a virtual army of bureaucrats and auditors to handle such a project. But not in Pakistan, where the creation of an army-run supranational authority is in line with other actions, which have put the country so close to army rule that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference.
Pakistani Democracy and Afghan Peace: Op-Ed
Starting with General Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law in the late 1970s, the anomaly of military control has become a permanent feature of Pakistan’s hybrid military-civilian system. Over the years it has also become a factor in tilting the balance in favor of the generals when it comes to calling the shots in framing the security and foreign policies of the state.
Pakistan’s Afghan policy has remained so completely in the control of the country’s military of the Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI) in particular for so long, that the political class, both in the government and in the opposition, seem to have been totally cut off from dealing with it.