In Pakistan, successive governments have deliberately fused obscurantist faith with state militarism. It has resulted in the country weakening by the day. Further, five successive Military Reichs have converted Pakistan into a beggarised, nuclear, frontline, failing, rogue state. Present-day Pakistan is floundering under the ‘Looters of the Fifth Reich’. Surprisingly, Pakistanis welcomed this Reich as they did with others. In all previous cases, the Reichmaster took it to great heights, grew bigger than himself and was then booted out in disgrace. The Looters of the Fifth Reich are smart. They have jockeyed into a position in which they own the nation of impoverished masses through governing puppets. The current Reichmaster is ensuring that Pakistan plumbs new depths each day
This is not from my imagination. Except for identifying the Reichs, I have heavily plagiarised from Pakistani writings. Two articles from Dawn put things in great perspective—“All Fall Down” and “Year End Yearnings”. Everything becomes clear. The story of each Reich becomes clearer when you see the caricatures/cartoons. They depict an undeniable reality. He has become an extra constitutional authority. The Pakistani Army now controls most major projects including CPEC.
Ashraf Jahangir Qazi was Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, India and China. These are his words: Few people in the world have been so consistently betrayed by their leaders, governments, political parties and security institutions as the people of Pakistan. They have been lied to; denied basic human rights, dignity and entitlements; robbed of essential human development resources to finance elite priorities and lifestyles; induced to look to the hereafter for justice, etc. Shows a sense of utter dismay and despondence. There is no doubt that the true state of a pauperised Pakistan is as depicted below.
The origin of Pakistan’s political corruption may be traced right back to the monumental events which took place between the 1940s to the 1990s.
The Panama Papers listed Mariam as the owner of Nielson Enterprises Limited and Nescoll Limited, firms located in the British Virgin Islands and established in 1994 and 1993 respectively. Mariam was also described as the “beneficial owner” of a Nielson Enterprises located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Papers also state that Mariam and Hussain’s signatures are present on a document outlining a loan of 13.8 million USD to Nescoll, Nielsen and one more company. The London properties of the family were set as collateral. These companies were transferred to another agent in 2014. The Papers described Hasan as the sole director of a business worth millions of dollars in the British Virgin Islands as well (Dsouza, 2017).
The final four years of PPP’s regime (from 2008 to 2012), were recognized largely by the country as being rife with political chaos. In fact, some analysts regarded these four years as the worst term served by any elected democratic government in the archives of Pakistani history. Several civilians of Pakistan regard the nation as being on the precipice of political and economic collapse due toterm after term of political unrest and a mismanaged corrupt government.
Nawaz Sharif and the political party he leads (PMLN) have been heartlessly looting the national exchequer and have misappropriated national wealth for private monetary gains. The notorious money laundering worth billions of dollars through illegitimate resources, also included presenting the motorway contract to an internationally black listed company, gigantic commissions in the denationalization of the Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB), surreptitious dealings in the UK and receiving hefty loans notwithstanding that he was defaulter, owning sugar mills in Kenya and four flats in the most lavish and exorbitant parts of London (Shah, 2013).
Khan listed various PMLN projects which had been mishandled and misappropriated for private gains, including the mismanagement of circular debt, Lahore Development Authority (LDA) plot distribution and the alleged “failures” of the Motorway project and the Sasti Roti scheme. These projects cost the nation huge sums, while the PMLN government essentially failed the country by wasting millions of dollars owing to their incompetent leadership and exceedingly corrupt practices during the completion of such mega projects. Nawaz Sharif has had numerous allegations of corruption filed against him during all his regimes since the beginning of his political career in Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif is notorious of expanding his personal business empire and wealth by misappropriating his authority as Chief Minister Punjab and Prime Minister of Pakistan. For the purposes of gaining maximum financial benefits through plunder and embezzlement, he has even manipulated laws and altered policies (Mohammad, 2009).
Finance Minister of Pakistan Ishaq Dar has wanted parliament’s post-facto consent for a Rs. 261 billion ‘additional budget’ to cover up immense governmental expense’s overruns in the departing financial year, approximately 28%elevatedas compared to the figure agreed last year. For instance, about Rs. 15 million was used up on the acquisition of vehicles by the Prime Minister’s Office. In the same way, Rs. 822m was spent by the Foreign Office on the purchase of 35 ‘high security vehicles’ and Rs. 107m was given to the Capital Development Authority for the construction of Kazakhstan’s embassy in Islamabad. An additional Rs109m was spent by the department of Foreign Affairs to buy an unnamed number of vehicles, regardless of a ban on the purchase of new vehicles (Hull, 2012).
It was estimated in 2012 by Transparency International (TI) that Pakistan suffered more than the US $94 billionin losses as a result of rampant corruption, poor governance and tax evasion thanks to the government being led by the PPP. For this reason, the PPP-led coalition government has been accused of being the most corrupt government in Pakistan’s history. Several cases of corruptioncarried out by members of the PPP government were exposed by the media in Pakistan, which involved cases of large-scale corruption and bribery occurring in projects such as the Pakistan Railways and Pakistan International Airlines (Olken and Pande, 2012).
In 2012, a court petition was filed against the then Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani by a man named Tariq Ahmed. The man claimed that Gillani’s wife had obtained millions of rupees in a “loan” from the Agriculture Development Bank Ltd (ADB) as well as the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) to fund two mega-corporations which were both under the Gillani family name. Yousuf Raza Gillani thus became the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to be convicted during his tenure, due to which he was later removed from the office. Gillani’s era is highly criticized for being endemic with corruption and mismanaged governance (Fair, 2013).
The leaders of PPP and PML-N have been regarded as the richest politicians from South Asia. Theacquisition of their extreme wealth serves as the greatest indication of corruption in the political ranks as all their wealth has illegally been acquired through their rule over Pakistan in the last 37 years.
Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, contacted Asiaciti, an Singapore-based offshore services provider, in 2016 about setting up a trust to invest the profits from a family land deal that had been financed by what the lender later claimed was an illegal loan. The bank told Pakistani authorities that the loan had been approved due to the influence of Elahi’s father, a former deputy prime minister.
Asiaciti records say that Elahi backed off from putting money into a trust in Singapore after the provider told him it would report the details to Pakistani tax authorities.
It is difficult for anyone living in a civilised democratic society in which the military is subject to the control of an elected government to understand the pernicious role that the military plays in Pakistan, or the perks and privileges that it claims more or less as a divine right. The army runs organisations like the ‘Fauji Foundation’ that own and control sugar mills, cereal production, corn complexes, natural gas supply, polypropylene products, fertiliser production, cement production, power production and oil terminals. The Army Welfare Trust (AWT) is also a similar diversified conglomerate that controls financial institutions like the Askari Commercial Bank, the largest commercial bank in Pakistan. The AWT runs stud farms, rice mills, sugar mills, fish farms, pharmaceutical companies and woollen mills. It has its own general insurance company, welfare savings scheme, power supply company, travel agencies and commercial plazas.
The Pakistani Army is today the largest investor in the Karachi Stock Exchange, controls the largest network of elite public schools, owns the largest construction company and the largest transportation company-the National Logistics Cell-that has the dubious distinction of transporting not only weapons for the ISI and the CIA, but also heroin from Peshawar for export from Karachi.
With cantonments spread across the country (Pakistanis describe their country as a “Garrison state”), cantonment lands are controlled and distributed by the army at nominal prices that bear no relation to market value. Virtually every military officer gets two plots of land in urban centres-one on a concessional rate and the other subsidised, along with a house built on it, on an installment basis. Military officers are also allotted agricultural land along the Indus Basin. Retiring Chiefs of Army Staff are allotted around 400 acres of agricultural land virtually free of cost.
General Musharraf is often criticised for being an adventurer and opportunist. But there is no reason to question his financial integrity. Yet, when he declared his assets in 1999, he acknowledged that he and his immediate family owned substantial properties in Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore and Gwadar, and agricultural lands Bahawalpur. The estimated market value of the properties he owns is anything between 50 and 80 million rupees. The army has acquired rights in Pakistan by which acquisition of such properties by its officers has been legitimised.
The question remains: how to save the country? Isn’t it high time that the Supreme Court, having harmed Pakistan’s political process so much, played its part to save Pakistan with the army’s backing? It’s better placed to do so. In fact, it is their duty since careerist-opportunistic judges have also wholeheartedly participated in taking Pakistan to the brink.
Intervention is easy but what to do the day after is very difficult. Most generals think that they know more than the “bloody civilians”. They certainly do in warfare, but not much else. They confuse discipline with knowledge and expertise in everything whereas discipline is only discipline so they unthinkingly become bulls in china shops. The worst damage that cleverer by half army governments do is lay rotten eggs that hatch into looting-fighter cocks and hens that grow into ‘leaders’ and ‘politicians’ who have plundered the country dry and taken it to ruin. For its part, the army also gets corrupted with prolonged, unquestioned power.
The army has three plans that I can think of. Plan A is being implemented already, but it is not going well. It is a hybrid system, child of an army father and political mother, a two-wheeled tandem bicycle, with the army the front wheel lead rider trying to provide power and direction, an elected government the back wheel rider that the world accepts as legitimate because it is ‘elected’ after a fashion. Unlike his father, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, chairman of the PPP, is a billionaire who owns about two dozen properties in and outside Pakistan as well as investments and bank accounts in Dubai and the UK.
Plan C is for Nawaz Sharif to save himself by following what my friend Fakir Ayaz calls the ‘Second Law of Machiavelli’: “Never back a loser; get behind a winner.” Ayaz would have Nawaz Sharif bid goodbye to Asif Zardari and start backing General Raheel Sharif. If the general were to intervene any further what better than a regular politician at the fore providing legitimacy in the world’s eyes. Nawaz Sharif should himself become that politician provided that he is ready to put selfishness and revenge aside and disband his mafia. He should remember he comes from Kashmir, not Sicily where vendetta is the norm. And he will retain some pomp and power.
The problem is that while the front army wheel is going in the right direction, its speed is slower than people would like because the back civilian wheel is awry, wobbling and often going in different directions. The tandem bicycle has become five-wheeled: parliament and judiciary the third and fourth riders, media the fifth with the American policeman showing the way, all with their own objectives and agendas. It’s not good for a country to live in uncertainty for so long. No wonder the bicycle is going all over the place. While parliament is riddled with bozos, the judiciary is saddled with wanting judges applying outdated and bad laws and the less said about national and international media and America’s grand designs the better.
Plan B would involve replacing the civilian wheel of elected politicians with specialists, not technocrats, who have a finger on the pulse of Allah in a self-proclaimed Islamic Republic and His vicegerents the people, not just on the pulse of the Army and America. ‘Technocrats’ are only technicians, not specialist designers. We have experienced technocrats before, who are good at tuning, denting and painting and little else. Designers have to redesign Pakistan, revamp its judiciary by cleansing it of questionably restored judges and empower it with up to date laws, bring in a competent and constitutionally protected bureaucracy, a modern unified curriculum, self-reliance in the economy, politics based on elected local governments, and human welfare the central purpose of the State’s existence.
Now let us come to the greatest looter Zardari. In what is ample testimony of the lavish lifestyle of the country’s politicians, Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P) chief Asif Ali Zardari uses six bulletproof luxury vehicles, owns thousands of acres of agricultural land and property in Dubai and has spent millions of rupees on his passion for arms, horses and livestock.
ZARDARI’S LOCAL ASSETS ARE:
Plot no. 121, Phase VIII, DHA Karachi.
Agricultural land situated in Deh Dali Wadi, Taluka, Tando Allah Yar.
Agricultural property located in Deh Tahooki Taluka, District Hyderabad measuring 65.15 acres.
Agricultural land falling in Deh 76-Nusrat, Taluka, District Nawabshah measuring 827.14 acres
Agricultural land situated in Deh 76-Nusrat, Taluka, District Nawabshah measuring 293.18 acres
Residential plot No 3 (Now House) Block No B-I, City Survey No 2268 Ward-A Nawabshah
Huma Heights (Asif Apartments) 133, Depot Lines, Commissariat Road, Karachi
Trade Tower Building 3/CL/V Abdullah Haroon Road, Karachi
House No 8, St 9, F-8/2, Islamabad
Agricultural land in Deh 42 Dad Taluka/ District Nawabshah
Agricultural land in Deh 51 Dad Taluka Distt Nawabshah
Plot No 3 & 4 Sikni (residential) Near Housing Society Ltd. Nawabshah
CafT Sheraz (C.S No.. 2231/2 & 2231/3) Nawabshah
Agricultural land in Deh 23-Deh Taluka & District Nawabshah
Agricultural property in Deh 72-A, Nusrat Taluka, Nawabshah
Agricultural land in Deh 76-Nusrat Taluka, Nawabshah
Plot No. A/136 Survey No 2346 Ward A Government Employee’s Cooperative Housing Society Ltd, Nawabshah
Agricultural land in Deh Jaryoon Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Aroro Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Nondani Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Lotko Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Jhol Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Kandari Taluka Tando Allah Yar, Distt. Hyderabad
Agricultural land in Deh Deghi Taluka Tando Mohammad Khan
Agricultural land in Deh Rahooki Taluka, Hyderabad
Property in Deh Charo Taluka, Badin
Agricultural property in Deh Dali Wadi Taluka, Hyderabad
Five acres prime land allotted by DG KDA in 1995/96
4,000 kanals on Simli Dam
80 acres of land at Hawkes Bay
13 acres of land at Maj Gulradi (KPT Land)
One acre plot, GCI, Clifton
One acre of land, State Life (International Center, Sadar)
FEBCs worth Rs. 4 millionSHARES IN SUGAR MILLS INCLUDE:
Sakrand Sugar Mills Nawabshah
Ansari Sugar
Mills Hyderabad
Mirza Sugar Mills Badin
Pangrio Sugar Mills Thatta
Bachani Sugar Mills SangharFRONT COMPANIES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES:
Bomer Fiannce Inc, British Virgin Islands
Mariston Securities Inc, British Virgin Islands
Marleton Business S A, British Virgin Islands
Capricorn Trading S A, British Virgin Islands
Fagarita Consulting INc, British Virgin Islands
Marvil Associated Inc, British Virgin Islands
Pawnbury Finance Ltd, British Virgin Islands
Oxton Trading Limited, British Virgin Islands
Brinslen Invest S A, British Virgin Islands
Chimitex Holding S A, British Virgin Islands
Elkins Holding S A, British Virgin Islands
Minister Invest Ltd, British Virgin Islands
Silvernut Investment Inc, British Virgin Islands
Tacolen Investment Ltd, British Virgin Islands
Marlcrdon Invest S A, British Virgin Islands
Dustan Trading Inc, British Virgin Islands
Reconstruction and Development Finance Inc, British Virgin Islands
Nassam Alexander Inc.
Westminster Securities Inc.
Laptworth Investment Inc 202, Saint Martin Drive, West Jacksonville
Intra Foods Inc. 3376, Lomrel Grove, Jacksonville, Florida
Dynatel Trading Co, Florida
A..S Realty Inc. Palm Beach Gardens Florida
Bon Voyage Travel Consultancy Inc, FloridaZARDARI’S PROPERTIES IN UK ARE:
355 acre Rockwood Estate, Surrey (Now stands admitted)
Flat 6, 11 Queensgate Terrace, London SW7
26 Palace Mansions, Hammersmith Road, London W14
27 Pont Street, London, SW1
20 Wilton Crescent, London SW1
23 Lord Chancellor Walk, Coombe Hill, Kingston, Surrey
The Mansion, Warren Lane, West Hampstead, London
A flat at Queensgate Terrace, London
Houses at Hammersmith Road, Wilton Crescent, Kingston and in Hampstead.ZARDARI’S PROPERTIES IN BELGIUM ARE:
12-3 Boulevard De-Nieuport, 1000, Brussels, (Building containing 4 shops and 2 large apartments)
Chausee De-Mons, 1670, BrusselsZARDARI’S PROPERTIES IN FRANCE ARE:
La Manoir De La Reine Blanche and property in CannesZARDARI’S PROPERTIES IN USA — in the name of Asif Zardari and managed by Shimmy Qureshi are:
Stud farm in Texas
Wellington Club East, West Palm Beach
12165 West Forest Hills, Florida
Escue Farm 13,524 India Mound, West Palm Beach
3,220 Santa Barbara Drive, Wellington Florida
13,254 Polo Club Road, West Palm Beach Florida
3,000 North Ocean Drive, Singer Islands, Florida
525 South Flager Driver, West Palm Beach, Florida
Holiday Inn Houston Owned by Asif Ali Zardari, Iqbal Memon and Sadar-ud-Din HashwaniZARDARI’S BANK ACCOUNTS IN FOREGN COMPANIES ARE:
Union Bank of Switzerland (Account No. 552.343, 257.556.60Q, 433.142.60V, 216.393.60T)
Citibank Private Limited (SWZ) (Account No. 342034)
Citibank N A Dubai (Account No. 818097)
Barclays Bank (Suisse) (Account No. 62290209)
Barclays Bank (Suisse) (Account No. 62274400)
Banque Centrade Ormard Burrus S A
Banque Pache S A
Banque Pictet & Cie
Banque La Henin, Paris (Account No. 00101953552)
Bank Natinede Paris in Geneva (Account NO.. 563.726.9)
Swiss Bank Corporation
Chase Manhattan Bank Switzerland
American Express Bank Switzerland
Societe De Banque Swissee
Barclays Bank (Knightsbridge Branch) (Account No. 90991473)
Barclays Bank, Kingston and Chelsea Branch, (Sort Code 20-47-34135)
National Westminster Bank, Alwych Branch (Account No. 9683230)
Habib Bank (Pall Mall Branch).
National Westminster Bank, Barking Branch, (Account No. 28558999).
Habib Bank AG, Moorgate, London EC2
National Westminster Bank, Edgware Road, London
Banque Financiei E Dela Citee, Credit Suisse
Habib Bank AG Zurich, Switzerland
Pictet Et Cie, Geneva
Credit Agricole, Paris
Credit Agridolf, Branch 11, Place Brevier, 76440, Forges Les Faux
Credit Agricole, Branch Haute – Normandie, 76230, Boise Chillaum(https://alaiwah.wordpress.com/asif-zardaris-assets-in-pakistan-abroad/)
Surprisingly this website has been blocked by this government and yu can see it by the use of a vpn.
(http://dev.thecitizen.in/en/NewsDetail/index/4/6231/Pakistan-Army-Of-Rotten-Eggs-and-Looting-Hens)
