The fact is that the military industrial undertakings such as the Fauji Foundation alone, with its annual turnover of reportedly over $500 million, provides as many as 10,000 plus jobs to both retired military personnel, but for the greater part civilian, albeit the
benefits might accrue to retired servicemen in the primary instance.

The provision of these jobs and the thousands of others in the foundation's subsidiaries is an unparalleled service to a country confronting an unemployment problem with other private and public sector industrial undertakings not coming up to the mark. Again, it
goes to the credit of the military's corporate sector that it spends as much as $18 million a year running a number of hospitals and schools which are also availed of by civil society. Equally creditable is that the foundation begun in 1947 with a $.3.6 million
grant from the departing British colonial administration has managed to build up these national assets "“ and they are national assets - to 20 companies worth US $ 2 billion.

Regarding the repeatedly criticized plot and house allocations to the officers and men of the armed forces, this at least provides associates of the institution an honest stake in the country and thereby the incentive to guard its integrity. That is something that
the elected representatives of the people might care to reflect on and look to implementing with regard to the other institutions of the state subsequent to the installation of the new government elected freely and fairly under the safety net provided by the Pakistan army.

In the light of the above, Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, the famed author of Military Inc. cataloging "the pervasive nature and predatory nature of Pakistan's military" in a recent interview is ill-timed and disquieting. Pakistan as a nation is undergoing a crisis of mammoth proportions mostly due to America's war on terror in Afghanistan and
Dr Siddiqa's elects to ignore this while pursuing what surfaces as a divisive course to buttress her populist thesis on Pakistan's military.

Inconclusive too, was her answer to the question of whether or not the election results were an anti-Musharraf vote. "It is an anti-Musharaff vote, but see, PPP and PML-N are part of the life there.

These are the alternative, patronage networks available to the common man to get some benefits", she replied. Then she floundered further in concluding "You have to look at the voting patterns: Punjab urban voted primarily for PML-N and the rural areas voted for PPP, where it's more popular. So, you can't just say it's an anti-Musharaff vote
itself". Her confusion showed worse confounded on answering the question "Was partition necessary" with "When I look at partition of 1947, well, we can look in hindsight now and argue maybe the partition shouldn't have happened" -- even as she found herself obligated to admit the living reality of Pakistan's existence.

In the wide-ranging interview Dr Ayesha Sidiqqa was pressed to hold forth on a number of related subjects by the interviewer Wajaht Ali, presented as "a Pakistani Muslim American playwright, essayist, and humorist", but at the end of the day one was left with the feeling that the `Pakistan Scholar' at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars had nothing to add to her "Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy" treatise which had caused such a storm