Category: Newsline

A few years ago, I met some young boys from my village near Bahawalpur who were preparing to go on jihad. They smirked politely when I asked them to close their eyes and imagine their future. “We can tell you without closing our eyes that we don’t see anything.”

Punjabi jihadism has its distinctive features. Its leadership is trained in religious ideology, while its foot soldiers are divided between those that have received better schooling in government schools and those that are madrassa trained.

The Punjabi jihadis are different from their counterparts in FATA: the former are comparatively more educated. There are many, such as Maulana Masood Azhar, who were educated in the Banuri town madrassa in Karachi and completed their dars-e-nizami — an eight-year course in religious ideology that inculcates the significance of jihad in the pupil.

The Pakistan military is among several other armed forces in the world engaged in commercial ventures. Today, its financial empire has an approximate financial size of 200 billion rupees with military-controlled welfare foundations operating in areas ranging from banking, insurance, leasing and real estate to private security, education, airlines, cargo services, knitwear, and major agri-based industries.

Abdul Karim waited in the heat outside the Supreme Court for his case to be heard. Sitting miles away from his village in Bahawalpur, the poor peasant was contesting his right over three kanals (0.375 acres) of land that had already been awarded to him through an administrative decision. He had tilled the land for years and he was deemed to be the rightful owner.

According to an assessment based on the value of rural or urban plots, the worth of a general in the army in real estate terms is anything from a hefty 150 to 400 million rupees. And that is a conservative estimate.