Latest news with #PersianGulfWar
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Afghanistan review could lead to change in promotions for NCOs, officers
The Pentagon's ongoing review into the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan could prompt the Defense Department to 'reform the way that we evaluate and promote young noncommissioned officers and young officers,' Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters recently. 'If you think back to my time in Afghanistan as a young commander, giving battle update briefs as a captain to my battalion commander, if I were constantly saying that my area of operations was a disaster, it didn't have the ammo or troops that I needed to accomplish the mission, the likelihood of me getting promoted was probably not great,' Parnell said Wednesday Pentagon news conference. 'So, how do we set the conditions in the [Defense] Department to create a sense of honesty where our officers are reporting what they believe to be accuracy — they're concerned about maybe their area of operations; they're concerned about the truth and, maybe, less about their careers.' Parnell added that his comments were not meant as an indictment of officers who served in Afghanistan. 'It's just the way that our system is constructed,' he said. In January 2020, John Sopko, then serving as special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told lawmakers that the U.S. government had 'created an incentive to almost require people to lie' about progress in Afghanistan. 'I'm not going to name names, but I think everybody has that incentive to give happy talk — to show success,' Sopko told Task & Purpose at the time. 'Maybe it's human nature to do that. I mean most of the lying is lying to ourselves. We want to show success.' More than a year later, the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, marking the start of a chaotic evacuation of American citizens and Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government. Over two weeks, U.S. troops rescued more than 124,000 people. Thirteen service members and about 170 Afghans were killed in an Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bomb attack at Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. On Wednesday, Parnell said the Defense Department review, which was announced on May 20. will look into key questions about the withdrawal, such as why U.S. forces withdrew from Bagram Airfield in July 2021. As a result, the evacuation the following month had to be conducted from the airport in Kabul, leaving the troops guarding Abbey Gate exposed, an investigation later found. Parnell also said that he believes the U.S. defeat in Vietnam during which Americans and Vietnamese were evacuated by helicopter from the U.S. embassy in Saigon, left an imprint on a generation of officers who later became generals. He noted that these leaders were in charge during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which the U.S. military had a clearly stated mission and American service members withdrew when the operation's goals had been accomplished. When those general officers retired, a lot of their institutional knowledge based on lessons from the pain of the Vietnam War was likely lost, Parnell said. 'Flash forward 10 years: 9/11 happens; 20 years of war in Iraq Afghanistan; and we find ourselves at the end of Afghan War in a remarkably similar situation that we were in in Vietnam,' Parnell said. 'So, the question that I have here, and that the department has, is what happened? How do we as a department make sure that something like in Vietnam and something there again that happened in Afghanistan never happens again?' The latest on Task & Purpose The Air Force fitness test may soon include 2-mile runs twice a year 'War Thunder' continues to live up to its reputation for OPSEC violations Guardsmen sent to LA are 130 miles east of the city doing drug busts Lightning Carriers: The Marines' secret weapon in the Pacific Pentagon releases details of 'Midnight Hammer' strikes against Iran Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
24-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Rod Nordland, 75, dies; war reporter who also wrote of his own struggle
With a toughness rooted in his wayward childhood and the brashness of a self-made man, Mr. Nordland was from an era before 'journalism became a prestige career for a bunch of Ivy Leaguers,' as he wrote in his memoir. Advertisement When he set out to become a reporter in the early 1970s, urban daily newspapers often had the money to support overseas bureaus, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, which sent him to Southeast Asia in 1979. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He did not move back to the United States for 40 years, until he was compelled to do so by his illness. His reporting gained reach and impact, and his life gained glamour, when he was poached by Newsweek in the mid-1980s. The perks of the job included an unlimited travel budget. He was on the scene and frequently running a news bureau during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Salvadoran Civil War, the Persian Gulf War, the war in Kosovo, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan, among other conflicts. Advertisement He initially joined the Times in its Baghdad bureau, and he took over responsibility for the Kabul bureau in 2013. His international reporting earned him multiple George Polk and Overseas Press Club awards. His specialties were recounting violence in unflinching prose; attending to the most vulnerable people in a conflict, often women and children; and narrating everyday dramas of war zones in epic terms. In 1999, he described for Newsweek what it was like for a 36-year-old mother to survive a mass murder surrounded by her children and relatives in a restaurant in a small town of southern Kosovo. In Afghanistan, he repeatedly wrote about the danger and brutality young couples faced when marrying without family approval. One of those stories -- about an 18-year-old young woman and 21-year-old man who had never been alone in a room together but nevertheless publicly proclaimed their love for each other, provoking death threats from relatives -- became a book called 'The Lovers: Afghanistan's Romeo and Juliet' (2016). A critical review in the Times called his efforts to help the couple with money and sanctuary while also making them into major media figures a form of dubious 'Western saviordom.' In a 2016 interview with The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Mr. Nordland responded, 'What is a savior complex?' he asked. 'The notion that it would be better for me not to get involved in their case so that they could be killed, and that would be the more ethically responsible course? I don't have a right to intervene and save their lives?' In 'Waiting for the Monsoon,' he reports that the couple moved to New Haven, where the man, Mohammad Ali, has worked as a handyman and driver. Advertisement Mr. Nordland (left) interviewed a martyr's relative, in Kobani cemetery, Syria, in 2018. MAURICIO LIMA/NYT Rodney Lee Nordland was born on July 17, 1949, in Philadelphia. His father, Ronald, he wrote in his memoir, was a mechanic who beat Rod, his five siblings, and his mother, Lorine Myers. Later in life, he learned that his father was 'repeatedly arrested and often convicted of sexual assaults on children, both boys and girls,' which he said explained why the family moved so frequently from one small Southern California town to another. Around 1960, his mother left his father and took the children to her family's home in Jenkintown, a suburb of Philadelphia. She worked a series of clerical jobs and relied on welfare to help feed her children, though they still sometimes went hungry. Beginning at age 13, Rod worked multiple jobs to support the family, including as a movie theater usher, newspaper delivery boy, dishwasher, country club caddie, semipro boxer, poker player, pool hustler, and occasional burglar. Around the age of 15, he and his best friend ran away to Miami, where they were caught shoplifting and spent two weeks in the county jail. He discovered a new, productive outlet for his inner turmoil as a senior in high school after his brother Gary got into an argument with a police officer, who subsequently beat him with a billy club. Rod wrote a furious letter about the episode to The Times-Chronicle, Jenkintown's local paper. Not long after, the police officer was suspended and apologized to Gary. The experience was a 'revelation,' Mr. Nordland wrote in his memoir. 'I could write my rage,' he wrote. 'Not only that, but doing so could result in some kind of change for the better. I could find the people who were like me, cowering from my father as a kid, or like my brother, smacked around by an irresponsible cop, or like my mother, abused by a violent husband and tormented by aggressive bill collectors.' Advertisement He attended Penn State on a full scholarship and graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He was immediately hired by The Inquirer. He had an important role on the team that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. After he became a foreign correspondent, wars came to so define his life that he associated each of his children with a different conflict, he wrote in his memoir: 'Lorine, a child of the Bosnian conflict, was born in 1992; Johanna, a child of the Iraq War, in 1995; and Jake, a child of the war in Afghanistan, in 1998.' Still, he credited his terminal illness with giving him a new perspective. Laid low in the hospital, 'I could see clearly, finally, all the mistakes I had made,' he wrote. A 'volatile temper, 'arrogance' and 'certitude that dominated my every action' had 'helped make me a successful foreign correspondent and bureau chief but denied me the opportunity of becoming so much more.' His first marriage ended in divorce. He met Segal in 2016, whom he leaves along with his three children. Segal said that Mr. Nordland had been given only 14 months to live when he received his diagnosis, but with experimental treatments, led by Dr. Eric T. Wong of the Life Cancer Institute at Rhode Island Hospital, he survived for six years. Advertisement In his memoir, he connected his sense of the purpose of journalism to his memories of growing up. 'That my father's treatment of all of us, especially Mommy, was hidden from public view, that he managed to continue his life of criminal abuse relatively unscathed, at least within our family, enraged me,' he wrote. 'What was the point of being a journalist if you didn't make hidden injustices visible?' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
MSNBC Host Cracks Up Over Trump Email About Parade: 'Sorry, That's A Funny Sentence'
MSNBC host Chris Hayes couldn't contain his laughter on air Friday while reading a fundraising email from President Donald Trump. The email asked for donations for his Saturday military parade, which, as it turns out, most Americans aren't that eager to fund. 'Donald Trump is holding a North Korean-style military parade, Soviet-style military parade through the nation's capital, something that we just don't do as a country,' said Hayes. 'The last one we did was after the first Persian Gulf War, which was celebrating the end of a war.' He continued, 'We don't have that here. It just so happens to fall on his 79th birthday. He's even fundraising from it, if you could believe it — well, you can, of course — sending out this email with the subject line, quote, 'Please help me before my military parade!'' Hayes broke into laughter reading that last line aloud, as a screenshot of the email was displayed onscreen. He quickly composed himself and continued his coverage on the impending Washington, D.C., event. 'I'm sorry, that's a funny sentence,' said Hayes. ''My military parade.'' Trump has never served in the armed forces and reportedly avoided the Vietnam War draft with a diagnosis of bone spurs in his feet. The daughter of the doctor who provided the diagnosis later said he had done so as a favor to his landlord — Trump's father, Fred Trump. The parade and surrounding festivities are meant to celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, though the event notably also falls on Trump's 79th birthday. It is set to feature nearly 7,000 troops, various ground vehicles and fighter jet flyovers in a display that could cost up to $45 million. It will coincide with expected protests across the country, which retired military officials believe could be a dangerous combination. 'Donald Trump has already promised, quote, 'very heavy force' against anyone who would choose to protest his special day,' Hayes said Friday. 'He didn't direct this at rioters or looters or people that broke the law, you know. He said protesters would be met with very heavy force.' The president issued that warning Tuesday from the Oval Office. Former U.S. Military Officials Fear 'Tiananmen Square Moment' At Trump Parade: Report 'Daily Show' Audience Erupts Over Desi Lydic's Trump Parade Realization New Poll Reveals How Most Americans — Including MAGA — Really Feel About Trump's Military Parade
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Real Costs of Trump's Parade
ON SATURDAY, NEARLY 6,600 SOLDIERS, 150 military vehicles, and a range of aircraft are scheduled to form a grand military parade, ostensibly to celebrate the United States Army's 250th anniversary, which also falls on President Donald Trump's 79th birthday. The entire event is estimated to cost between $25 million and $45 million—but the real costs are much greater. While both Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy showcased some military hardware during their inaugurations, there has not been a similar event since the 1991 Persian Gulf War victory parade. Festivities this weekend will include an Army physical fitness competition, a parade along Constitution Avenue, and fireworks. President Trump will be watching from a review stand south of the White House. Contrary to popular belief, the military does not usually conduct parades for the public. (The Navy's Fleet Week, the Marine Corps's small parades at its Washington Barracks, and other public events, such as air shows and static military equipment displays, are often designed to boost recruitment and are scrupulously nonpolitical.) When the troops do parade, it's usually—as in 1991 or 1946—to celebrate a victory in a major war and to honor those who fought and won it. Whatever this event is really for, there is no victory to celebrate. Commanders are loath to loan out their soldiers for such events because they're time-consuming and often rob active-duty service members of their free time, a precious commodity that members hold dear, especially as the military's operations tempo continues without slowing. Modern military equipment, like the M1 tanks and Stryker vehicles scheduled to roll down Constitution Avenue,1 require immense amounts of logistical support and maintenance, so for hundreds of soldiers, the parade is just an invitation to spend many, many extra hours working on a project that doesn't contribute at all to readiness. While some may consider Trump's parade prestigious, for many servicemembers, taking part in yet another dog-and-pony show will rob them of time with their families, which is consistently the top issue facing active duty servicemembers. For his part, President Trump, who has long boasted of his affection for authoritarians, is using this spectacle to boost his tough-guy image at home and abroad. While he stands in review in D.C., active-duty marines and National Guard will still be in Los Angeles, ostensibly keeping 'violent insurrectionists' from causing chaos. So as Trump celebrates the military, and attempts to merge his legitimacy with its, he will simultaneously be using it, possibly in violation of the law, against American citizens. The only way to rebuild a healthy democracy is together. Join our community. Trump's politicization of the military and militarization of politics poses a significant threat to the armed forces. While every president uses the military to boost their image to some degree, no president has used the military to legitimate harsh partisan rhetoric as Trump has, underscoring concerns that he is attempting to make the military loyal to him, rather than the Constitution. While Americans continue to view the U.S. military favorably, associating the military with President Trump and the Republican party threatens to jeopardize bipartisan support for one of the few remaining trusted institutions in American life. Trump's recent speech at Fort Bragg is likely a harbinger for this weekend's event. During his recent trip, he disparaged California Gov. Newsom and former President Joe Biden, eliciting boos from active-duty service members. Soldiers were also spotted buying partisan merchandise on base. Trump would like the country to believe that the military is populated entirely by MAGAs and is therefore implicitly loyal to him. This is not true, and the efforts the White House apparently made to ensure that the soldiers behind Trump his Fort Bragg speech were politically loyal (as well as appearing soldierly enough for the draft-dodger-in-chief) reveals that the military, like the society from which it's drawn, is a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and independents; liberals, conservatives, moderates, none-of-the-aboves, and every other flavor of political opinion. Share Trump's parade could also make frontline commanders' jobs harder. Even during non-election years, commanders and frontline supervisors have to keep a wary eye on active-duty personnel engaging in political rhetoric. While Trump's appointees crossed this threshold while on active duty, it remains a critical component not only of good order and discipline but also of the very idea that service members swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not to the president himself. For many first-time service members, President Trump's insistence on pushing political norms might obliterate, like so many other sacred norms, the tradition of nonpartisanship. Appearing in nakedly political events while in uniform, especially at the behest of the commander-in-chief, will further erode the military's nonpartisan posture and could embolden such rhetoric throughout the ranks. Join now AS WITH ALMOST EVERY ISSUE of civilian-military relations, the danger runs two ways. The risks of a politicized military for civilians are more obvious, but there are three major risks to the military. The first is the coherence of the force. Just as many members of the Trump administration can't accept that many Americans are not white, not Christian, and not straight—and the same is true of the armed forces. In combat, the trust in the chain of command and the unity of purpose must be immediate and unquestioning. As soon as a soldier wonders if they're really part of the team—if their chain of command is really looking out for them as much as for the person in another unit or even the person next to them—the efficacy of the force will suffer. That's related to the second problem, which is the future of the force. For years, the military has had trouble meeting its recruitment goals. It's become a crisis. If people begin to see the military as yet another MAGA institution—which is apparently Trump's goal—well, MAGA has never been a majority movement in America. Even in 2024, Trump failed to win an outright majority of the popular vote. If we have trouble staffing our military to meet our commitments now, imagine how bad the problem will be when more than half the country thinks the military is politically and culturally hostile to them. The final risk to the military is that it won't be taken seriously because service members are not viewed as public servants. At the lowest levels, this can look like the experience of Vietnam veterans, who weren't given the support they needed to reintegrate back into civilian life. All of society benefits when veterans bring their strengths back home with them—and all of society suffers when they're left to deal with their problems on their own. At the highest levels, senior military leaders have to be confident that their civilian bosses will consider their best professional advice. If those civilian bosses have reason to believe that advice has a partisan bias, the result could be bloody disaster. If Trump really supported the troops, he'd help them do their jobs and reintegrate back into civilian life when their service is over. But as his parade so obviously demonstrates, he's really only interested in the troops supporting him. Share 1 Perhaps the White House should have considered the imagery: Trump military parade rolls over Constitution?
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First Post
06-06-2025
- Politics
- First Post
How Pakistani military has metastasised like cancer inside society
The public plays along as the military intensifies its anti-India narrative and false propaganda and the Generals prosper at the expense of the economy read more 'Of all the countries I've dealt with, I consider Pakistan to be the most dangerous because of the radicalisation of its society and the availability of nuclear weapons.' —Jim Mattis, former US defence secretary and four-star Marine Corps General, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, 2019 General Mattis, who commanded forces in the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan War and Iraq War, realised three things: First, the Pakistani society is 'radicalised'. Second, Pakistan's political culture has 'an active self-destructive streak'. Third, US military interactions with Pakistan 'could only be transactional' as its military can't be trusted. The three factors are interwoven and describe the current state of Pakistan's mess. A nation born out of hatred and animosity, ruled directly or indirectly by its military, which sponsors terrorism and has radicalised its society, will keep on sinking into the abyss of self-destruction. Decades of hatred and enmity towards India—especially the dream of occupying J&K—systematically nurtured and propagated by the Pakistani military, have turned into a metastatic cancer which has spread deep inside its society. External affairs minister S Jaishankar rightly compared Pakistan to a cancer that has started affecting its society. 'Pakistan is an exception in our neighbourhood in view of its support for cross-border terrorism. That cancer is now consuming its body politic,' he said at the 19th Nani A Palkhivala Memorial Lecture in Mumbai in January. Military supremacy and hatred for India Hatred for India and the Pakistani military's creation of the mirage of a Hindu nation being an existential threat unite its society. Despite orchestrating four coups, ruling directly and indirectly, meddling in politics, robbing the nation of development, wasting funds and foreign loans on weapons and suppressing dissent and protests, the Pakistani military is respected by the population. The military has cemented its image as the saviour of Pakistan's borders and its people, 'threatened by a Hindu India' since its independence. In his book Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani journalist and former ambassador to the US, writes: 'Very soon after independence, 'Islamic Pakistan' was defining itself through the prism of resistance to 'Hindu India'.' The belief that India 'represented an existential threat to Pakistan led to maintaining a large military, which in turn helped the military assert its dominance in the life of the country'. Within weeks of independence, Haqqani writes, 'Editorials in the Muslim League newspaper, Dawn, called for 'guns rather than butter', urging a bigger and better-equipped army to defend 'the sacred soil' of Pakistan.' The national security apparatus was accorded a special status as protecting nationhood by military means 'took priority over all else'. 'It also meant that political ideas and actions that could be interpreted as diluting Pakistani nationhood were subversive. Demanding ethnic rights or provincial autonomy, seeking friendly ties with India, and advocating a secular Constitution fell under that category of subversion.' Haqqani explains how the military gained prominence. 'The Kashmir dispute as well as the ideological project fuelled rivalry with India, which in turn increased the new country's need for a strong military. The military and the bureaucracy, therefore, became even more crucial players in Pakistan's life than they would have been had the circumstances of the country's birth been different.' Historian Ayesha Jalal, in her book The State of Martial Rule, explains how internal threats to the government were conflated with a defence against India. Thus, the difference between internal and external threats was blurred to the military's advantage. 'So in Pakistan's case, defence against India was in part a defence against internal threats to central authority. This is why a preoccupation with affording the defence establishment—not unusual for a newly created state— assumed obsessive dimensions in the first few years of Pakistan's existence,' she writes. The Pakistani leadership found it 'convenient to perceive all internal political opposition as a threat to the security of the state'. Gradually, the Pakistani society also started perceiving India as a threat and the military as the protector from this imaginary danger. A February Gallup & Gilani Pakistan opinion poll found that only 41 per cent of Pakistanis think that Pakistan should maintain any relationship with India at any level before the Kashmir issue is resolved—35 per cent are against it. Military cons, coerces Pakistanis at the same time Operation Sindoor exposed Pakistani society's fickle-mindedness, the military's hero-worshipping and how the Generals con and coerce the public at the same time. The Pakistani military changed the Black Day in May 2023 to the Day of Righteous Battle in the same month this year in merely four days. The tactics were the same. Pakistani and local terrorists attack J&K, Indian retaliation portrayed as an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty and the military retaliates as the nation's saviour. The scene in Pakistan changed from the massive protests against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan's arrest, which engulfed major cities, public and private properties and military installations, to celebration and triumph around two years later. In May 2023, the public challenged the military's dominance and power. In May 2025, the public celebrated the military's fake propaganda of supremacy and winning against India as the Generals took advantage of Operation Sindoor and the decades-old Kashmir issue to boost their decreasing popularity. A May 7 Gallup Pakistan survey found 77 per cent of Pakistanis rejecting India's allegation that Pakistan was behind the Pahalgam attack with 55 per cent believing that India's intelligence or government may have orchestrated it. Despite India's no-first-use nuclear policy, 45 per cent of Pakistanis fear that India might launch a first nuclear strike. For Pakistanis, the country's foreign policy with India takes precedence over deep-rooted corruption, serious economic problems and the incapability of successive governments with 64 per cent of the public satisfied with the political leadership's unified stance on tensions with India. Sixty-five per cent express overall satisfaction with the Shehbaz Sharif government's India foreign policy. Another Gallup Pakistan survey, conducted on May 21, found how the military's lies, disinformation and fake propaganda had boosted its image with 96 per cent of the public believing that India was defeated and 97 per cent rating the performance of its armed forces as good or very good. An overwhelming 87 per cent held India responsible for initiating the conflict. Public opinion of the Army improved to 93 per cent compared to 73 per cent of the civilian government. Sharif's party, PML-N, received the highest positive performance rating (65 per cent), followed by PTI (60 per cent) and Pakistan Peoples Party (58 per cent). Around 30 per cent opposed normalisation of ties with India. Not even 50 per cent supported normalising relations with India with trade cooperation receiving the highest support (49 per cent), followed closely by sports (48 per cent), education (44 per cent) and cultural exchanges (40 per cent). Two incidents show how the military cons Pakistanis, who are willing to be conned, in the name of the non-existent Indian threat and increases its iron grip at the same time. First, the government revoked the ban on X, imposed in February 2024, a few hours after India targeted terrorist bases in Pakistan and PoK on May 7. The social media platform was banned on February 17, 2024, without notification on the pretext of threats to national security and Elon Musk's company's refusal to accede to requests and comply with the Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules 2021. The actual reason for the ban was the accounts of candidates and parties, especially PTI and the National Democratic Movement, posting about election irregularities. The government admitted after one month that X was banned. Internet and cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks said that X was banned after 'it was used to draw attention to instances of alleged election fraud'. According to Access Now, a nonprofit that focuses on digital civil rights and reports on global Internet censorship, Pakistan imposed 21 shutdowns in 2024. Once the ban on X was revoked, a deluge of disinformation, like Pakistan shooting down a Su-30MKI and a MiG-29, from Pakistani handles flooded the platform. Pakistanis were part of the disinformation campaign without realising that the ban was removed to whip up anti-India feelings and restore the military's image. The military managed to reunite the nation with hatred against India and false claims of victory as Pakistanis forgot how their economic woes increased, ethnic and political dissent was crushed, dissenters went missing and all these years. Even Khan, who had held Army chief General Syed Asim Munir responsible for his arrest, tweeted: 'The recent escalation between Pakistan and India has once again proven that Pakistanis are a brave, proud, and dignified nation.' Second, as Pakistanis celebrated the military's lies, the spineless Supreme Court, in a 5-2 verdict by the Constitutional Bench, allowed 105 civilians accused in the May 9, 2023, protests to be tried in military courts. The civilians had been convicted under the Pakistan Army Act (PAA), 1952, and the Official Secrets Act, 1923, for espionage, 'interfering with officers of the police or members of the armed forces' and unauthorised use of uniforms. The apex court overturned an earlier ruling against military trials of civilians. Section 2 of PAA permits trials of civilians before military courts when they are accused of 'seducing or attempting to seduce any person subject to this Act from his duty or allegiance to government' or having committed 'in relation to any work of defence…in relation to the military of Pakistan'. Section 59(4) provides for the trial of such civilians under the PAA. In a May report by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), 'Military Justice in Pakistan: A Glaring Surrender of Human Rights', found that trials of the 105 civilians violated Pakistan's legal obligations under international human rights. 'The ICJ recalls that the use of military courts to try civilians usurps the functions of the ordinary courts and is inconsistent with the principle of independence of the judiciary.' According to Principle 5 of the UN Human Rights Sub-Commission, 'military courts should, in principle, have no jurisdiction to try civilians… The jurisdiction of military courts should be limited to offences of a strictly military nature committed by military personnel. Military courts may try persons treated as military personnel for infractions strictly related to their military status'. Pakistani military's grip on economy The state of Pakistan's economy is as open as the military and the political leadership's sponsorship of terrorism. Since joining the IMF in 1950, Pakistan has been bailed out more than 20 times by the Fund to address fiscal deficits, balance of payments crises and structural reforms. One of the arrangements under which the IMF has bailed out Pakistan is the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), a longer-term arrangement involving reforms to address the economy's structural weaknesses. On May 9, a day before the ceasefire, the IMF granted $1 billion to Pakistan as part of its $7-billion EFF and another $1.3 billion under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. The amount was a carrot dangled by the US-led IMF before Pakistan to end hostilities, and was vociferously opposed by India. Pakistan's economy was in negative territory twice in the last five years—2020, -0.9 per cent; 2021, 5.8 per cent; 2022, 6.2 per cent; 2023, -0.2 per cent; and 2024, 2.5 per cent In April, the IMF revised Pakistan's GDP growth in 2025 downward to 2.6 per cent from 3 per cent in January and 3.6 per cent in 2026 from 4 per cent citing the 29 per cent tariffs imposed by the Donald Trump administration. Inflation has been a constant problem with higher prices of fruits, vegetables, flour, rice, meat and chicken. According to IMF data, inflation has been in double digits in the last five years except once—2020 (10.7 per cent), 2021 (8.2 per cent), 2022 (12.2 per cent), 2023 (29.2 per cent) and 2024 (23.4 per cent). Per IMF projections, inflation in 2025 will be 5.1 per cent and 7.7 per cent in 2026. The unemployment rate in the last five years was 6.6 per cent in 2020, 6.3 per cent in 2021, 6.2 per cent in 2022, 8.5 per cent in 2023 and 8.3 per cent in 20204. According to the IMF, the unemployment rate in 2025 is projected at 8 per cent and in 2026 at 7.5 per cent. Pakistan's forex reserves are abysmally low compared to India's. In December 2020, it was $20.5 million; December 2021, $23.9 million; December 2022, $10.8 million; December 2023, $12.7 million; and December 2024, $15.9 million. Forex reserves in May were $16.6 million, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan. The Pakistani currency has been severely hit by economic mismanagement, ineffective fiscal policies, a massive trade deficit, the lack of structural reforms and investment, low growth rates, high inflation, rising unemployment and political instability. The PKR tanked to an all-time low of 307.10 against the dollar in the first week of September 2023. The currency has been trading above 280. According to a Fitch Ratings projection in April, Pakistan will gradually devalue its currency to avoid likely pressure on the current account. Bloomberg, quoting Krisjanis Krustins, director, Asia Pacific Sovereign Ratings, Fitch, reported, 'The ratings company sees the rupee falling to 285 against the dollar by the end of June and weakening further to 295 by the end of the next fiscal year in 2026.' Pakistan's poverty rate is estimated at 42.4 per cent in the 2025 fiscal year, higher than 40.5 per cent in 2024, according to the World Bank. With a two per cent annual population growth, 1.9 million more people will fall into poverty this year. Even in 2026 and 2027, the rate will be around 40 per cent and 40.8 per cent, respectively. Amid the economic disaster and financial ruin with a national debt of $130 billion, $7.64 billion was allocated for defence in the 2024-25 defence budget. The Generals have been thriving for decades at the expense of Pakistanis by controlling industry, agriculture and the private sector. Under the Defence Housing Authority, the Army owns 12 per cent of the country's land at nominal rates, including urban and agricultural. The military has a massive stake in the government's industrial and commercial policies due to its immense influence on industry, commerce and business. In her book Military Inc. – Inside Pakistan's Military Economy, Pakistani political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa terms the military's 'internal economy' Milbus, military capital used for the personal benefit of its personnel, especially officers. 'Pakistan's military runs a huge commercial empire with an estimated value of billions of dollars.' This capital is 'neither recorded nor a part of the defence budget. Its most significant component is entrepreneurial activities that are not subject to state accountability procedures'. The military is the sole driver of Milbus— and is 'an example of the type of Milbus that intensifies military interest in remaining in power or direct/indirect control of governance'. According to her, Milbus involves: the varied business ventures of four welfare foundations (small businesses such as farms, schools and private security firms and corporate enterprises such as commercial banks and insurance companies, radio and television channels and manufacturing plants) direct institutional military involvement in enterprises such as toll collecting, shopping centres and petrol stations and benefits given to retired personnel, such as state land or business openings. Siddiqa explains how Milbus hurts Pakistan economically, politically and socially. The system 'nurtures' the military's political ambitions by creating deep-rooted vested interests in military dominance. 'The military has nourished the religious right to consolidate military control over the State and society.' Socially, it 'increases inter-ethnic tensions (due to skewed military recruitment policies), reduces the acceptability of the military as an arbiter among political interests and increases the alienation of the underprivileged'. Moreover, building and sustaining the military's influence in power politics come at a cost. 'Evidence shows that military businesses are not run more efficiently than others. Some of the military's larger businesses and subsidiaries have required financial bailout from the government.' Meanwhile, the Army continues with its anti-India narrative despite losing four wars to India—and the public plays along. Anti-India rhetoric, sponsorship of terrorism in J&K and the portrayal of India as an existential threat to Pakistan sustain the military while development has come to a standstill. According to Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the father of modern linguistics, 'Pakistan just cannot survive' if it continues the confrontation with India. In an interview with the Dawn in May 2013, he said, 'Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on society.' The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. He tweets as @FightTheBigots. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
