Islamabad: Islamabad High Court’s Chief Justice Athar Minallah may not face the brutality which veteran journalist Ayaz Amir was subjected to for calling the Pakistani Generals “property dealers”.
Amir was pounced upon by hitmen sent by the army, beaten up and humiliated for calling a spade a spade. Justice Minallah committed the same sin by ruling that it was illegal on the part of the army to directly or indirectly engage in business ventures and claim ownership of public land. In April 2021, the Lahore High Court Chief Justice had been more forthright, calling the army “the biggest land grabbers” in the country.
Amir’s fault was that he was a civilian and had no constitutional protection for hitting the Generals where it hurt the most — owning and distributing land has been one of the most protected privileges among the Generals since Independence.
Noted defence expert, Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, had written in her classic work on the business side of Pakistan Army, Military Inc., that the army owned 12 per cent of arable land in Pakistan and a large part of it is either turned into businesses or gifted to themselves.
Writing in The Friday Times issue of February 3, 2017, Dr Siddiqa drew a shocking picture of an avaricious military: “For a long time, officers of the rank of major general and higher were given 240 or more acres, brigadiers and colonels 150 acres, lieutenant colonels 125 acres, majors and lieutenants 100 acres, JCOs 64 acres and NCOs 32 acres. The acreage was later revised to 50 acres for officers and 12.5 to lower ranks. Additional land is given with gallantry medals, which is why General (retd) Raheel Sharif received 90 acres of agricultural land in Lahore. There is no other government department that rewards its manpower in such a fashion.”
Using extensive archive materials, Dr Siddiqa discovered that till 2007, the army controlled 12 million acres, of which seven million acres were agricultural. Of these, 6.8 million acres were gifted or sold at exceedingly low prices to serving and retired personnel. In addition, 70,000 to 80,000 acres were handed over to the military’s welfare foundations, Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust, Shaheen Foundation, and Bahria Foundation.
More details of land grabbing could be found in the media archives. A former Senator of Pakistan disclosed in his article about facts that emerged during a questionnaire in the National Assembly of Pakistan. The parliamentarians were told that army officers were entitled to up to four plots: the first after 15 years of service, second after 25 years, third after 28 years and the fourth after 33 years of service. The entitlement of the fourth plot was withdrawn later. The Parliament was also informed that while retired army officers were entitled to plots in Defence Housing Authority, Islamabad but not retired Navy and PAF officers.
The scale of land grabbing can be estimated from the case decided by the Islamabad High Court. The matter involved the army’s claim on 8,068 acres of land in the Margalla Hills National Park along with a lease agreement signed with a private enterprise, Monal Restaurant. The army could lease out such a large part of a national park, home to leopards and other important animals, to a private enterprise exposes the predatory nature of unmitigated privilege, exactly the reason why Ayaz Amir called the Generals “property dealers”, the biggest of them all in Pakistan.
–IANS