Army, Islam, and Business: Neoliberalism and Pakistani Politics

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Islam

Abstract

This paper traces the rising influence of Islamic fundamentalist groups in the the Pakistani political landscape in the context of neoliberal globalization. I discuss the consolidation of older elites and emergence of newly enriched and empowered groups that patronize fundamentalist groups directly or indirectly. I use ‘neoliberal globalization’ as shorthand for a range of political and economic policies aimed at reasserting the power of domestic elites at the national level and the United States at the global level. The intertwined political, economical, and ideological dimensions of neoliberalism were tailored to counter the groups and regimes deemed dangerous by the national and global elites, and benefited the Pakistani fundamentalist groups and their patrons. The political dimensions of neoliberalism were the forging of an anti-left alliance between the military and the fundamentalists, the Saudi-American support for the military regime to counter Iran and the Soviet Union, and the Pakistani-Saudi-American collaboration for the guerrilla war in Afghanistan. For ideological neoliberalization, the three allies generously patronized Islamic discourse and groups in the pursuit of their overlapping goals. The demographic and economic dimensions of neoliberalism were the oil boom and labor migration to the Middle East, rise of military bourgeoisie and agribusiness, and the globalizing impact of the Afghan War. Collectivly, these dynamics interacted with the military’s political engineering to decentralize Pakistani politics, and gave rise to new economic and political elites in Pubnjab, NWFP, Karachi, and the FATA regions that that are either allied with, or sympathetic to, Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Author

• Laila Bushra, Lahore University of Management Sciences