Lust for land
IT’S become a cliché to say that all countries have armies, but in Pakistan, the army has a country.
But clichés have an element of truth. I was reminded of this while reading Dawn’s recent investigative report about the Karachi Defence Housing Authority’s land-grab in the squatter colony Qayyumabad. According to this detailed account, around 30 acres were set aside by the municipal authorities for amenities like power generation, water purification, a school and a playing field for the deprived people of this slum.
But DHA had its eyes on this land, and after a series of legal and administrative manoeuvring — to say nothing of muscle flexing — has managed to have the disputed land transferred. It has also been reported that a key player was a retired major who was selling commercial plots even before the paperwork had been completed.
It’s not only the military that has deprived the poor of land.
The military has long been expanding its footprint across Pakistan’s cities through its multiplying defence societies. Land is acquired at nominal rates from provincial governments, and developed with money taken as advance payments for residential and commercial plots from officers. Allotment letters are then sold to civilians at several multiples of the price they paid.
Thus, some of the richest families in the country live in some of the most garish houses in these housing colonies. We have become so accustomed to this unending land-grab that we don’t notice that Pakistan is probably unique in this respect.
As Dr Ayesha Siddiqa has noted in her book Military Inc, militaries in China, Egypt and Indonesia run large business enterprises. And while we are up there with our Fauji Foundation, to the best of my knowledge, our officers have done better than their counterparts in other countries with their defence societies. In addition, they have also benefited from vast tracts of agricultural land in Punjab and Sindh.
For over 15 years, military authorities have been locked in a conflict with peasant farmers in Okara over tenancy rights. The army has reportedly been running farms and dairy plants in the area for years, and is trying to force local farmers to sign new, disadvantageous tenancy agreements. Protests have been crushed with much violence.
But the military has not been alone in depriving the poor of their land and their rights. A few months ago, this newspaper ran another investigative report that focused on the breaches of laws and regulations by a project on the outskirts of Karachi. Here, a well-connected tycoon is alleged to have used his clout with the Sindh government to bulldoze huts and throw locals out to create the infrastructure for his giant housing project.
In Islamabad, poor Christians have been living in fear of eviction from their katchi abadi as the Capital Development Authority seeks the Supreme Court’s approval to level the slum. As reported, retired chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has recently written a (poorly drafted) letter to the current chief justice seeking his intervention to have a plot allotted to him.
In a country with a rapidly growing population, pressure on urban housing will obviously increase. But this alone doesn’t explain the insatiable lust for land that has afflicted so many wheeler-dealers. Speculation happens everywhere, but in Pakistan it has reached fever pitch as qabza groups use political connections and violence to grab land.
So when did it all start? Younger readers might be unaware of this, but the country’s birth was accompanied by our first land-grab. As refugees fled across the new border with just the clothes on their backs, many clutched documents proving ownership of property. To compensate them for their loss, the newly established Evacuee Property Trust handed them equivalent houses or agricultural land abandoned by Hindus and Sikhs fleeing in the opposite direction.
However, many Muslim claimants were desperate for cash and sold their claims to well-heeled businessmen who then proceeded to acquire choice properties for peanuts. Thus were many early fortunes made in Pakistan.
But these grabs pale into insignificance when compared to some of the army’s manoeuvres. For instance, under Ayub Khan, retired officers were allotted agricultural land in Punjab on the pretext that they would be able to defend the area against an Indian attack. In Sindh, land made available for farming with the building of dams and canals was also allotted to officers.
I can understand such generosity with state lands if the beneficiaries are the dependents of servicemen who have fallen in battle. But surely officers who retire after their normal time in uniform leave with a reasonable pension package. And officers who retire at an early age almost invariably find jobs
But since this has now become a service perk, surely it can be restricted to one plot per officer. When Musharraf seized power in 1999, he released his assets; these included several plots that were then estimated at many millions.
As long as this unseemly acquisition of land by the military continues, it might be seen as a colonising force.
Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016