Pakistan’s military has developed an extensive economic presence that reaches far beyond its formal defence role, with interests spanning land, housing, agriculture, logistics, banking, manufacturing and other commercial sectors. Much of this activity operates through laws, government procedures, welfare foundations and military-linked enterprises, creating a system in which senior officers can gain access to land, housing and post-retirement positions while military institutions maintain significant commercial interests.
One example is the allocation of 90 acres of agricultural land near Lahore to former army chief General Raheel Sharif after his retirement. Pakistan’s military media wing confirmed the allotment in January 2017, saying it had been made under constitutional provisions and established procedures and that similar allocations were available to army chiefs on retirement.
The arrangement reflects a wider system whose roots predate Pakistan itself. During British rule, large parts of Punjab were transformed through irrigation and canal-colony projects, with land distributed to soldiers and officers according to rank. After independence, Pakistan inherited much of that land and administrative structure, including cantonment estates and regulations governing military land.
Scholar Ayesha Siddiqa described the resulting system as “Milbus” in her 2007 book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. The term refers to military-controlled capital and commercial activity associated with serving and retired officers, particularly where such interests operate outside ordinary defence-budget structures and conventional government accountability.
Over the decades, the military’s economic network has expanded through organisations such as the Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust, Shaheen Foundation and Bahria Foundation. Their activities extend across sectors including fertiliser, cement, energy, banking, agriculture, transport and real estate. The institutions generally present their commercial operations as a means of financing welfare programmes for veterans, serving personnel and the families of soldiers killed or disabled in service.
Real estate has become one of the most visible components of this network. Defence Housing Authorities operate in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala and Quetta, developing large residential and commercial schemes. Land is acquired and subsequently developed into housing projects, while plots are allocated under military housing arrangements.
The system has also generated questions about transparency and the distribution of benefits. Provisions in the Islamabad DHA framework, for example, reserve a share of plots for the families of martyrs, war-wounded soldiers and junior ranks. Without comprehensive publicly available audits, however, it is difficult to independently assess how such provisions are implemented or how allocations are distributed across ranks.
Agriculture has become another expanding area of military involvement. The Green Pakistan Initiative has placed the armed forces at the centre of plans for large-scale corporate farming on state land. The project has a stated potential reach of up to 4.8 million acres across Punjab and Sindh, with more than 52,000 acres in Sindh earmarked for military-linked corporate entities on long-term leases.
The expansion has produced legal and political disputes over the use of state land and the role of the military in civilian economic activity. The military’s position is that food security forms part of national security, providing a justification for its participation in agricultural development.
Earlier disputes over military-controlled agricultural land took place in Okara, where tenant families had cultivated around 17,000 acres of state land for generations. Around 2000, attempts to replace traditional crop-sharing arrangements with short-term cash leases triggered resistance from tenant organisations and led to arrests and blockades. The army later acknowledged before the National Commission for Human Rights that the land belonged to the Punjab government and that it was being used by the military for fodder cultivation rather than being military property.
The military’s commercial presence also extends into logistics. The National Logistics Corporation was established in 1978 to address a port crisis in Karachi but continued operating after the immediate crisis had ended. It subsequently developed into a large freight, construction and logistics organisation. A Senate committee recommended in 2014 that military freight be shifted back to Pakistan Railways, but the recommendation was not implemented.
The wealth of senior officers and their families has also attracted scrutiny. In 2022, Fact Focus published tax records concerning the family of former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and reported substantial growth in family assets during his tenure. The military disputed the reporting as misleading, and the allegations have not been established by a court.
Another investigation by Fact Focus examined business interests associated with relatives of Lieutenant General Asim Saleem Bajwa, who served as chairman of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority. The report identified stakes in companies across several countries. Bajwa denied wrongdoing and offered to provide his financial records to an appropriate forum.
These cases illustrate the difficulty of separating documented financial records from allegations that have not been independently adjudicated. They also highlight a broader issue surrounding transparency in a system where military-linked institutions operate across both welfare and commercial spheres.
Retirement does not necessarily mark the end of an officer’s access to state institutions. Former senior officers have been appointed to government ministries, state-owned companies, regulatory bodies and diplomatic positions. Individual appointments are publicly notified, but the absence of a consolidated register makes it difficult to determine the overall scale of former military officers’ presence in civilian institutions.
The welfare foundations remain an important justification for the military’s commercial activities. The Fauji Foundation, established in 1954, operates across several major industries and says a substantial portion of its profits supports veterans, serving personnel and military families. At the same time, its legal structure differs from that of publicly listed companies, raising questions about the level of financial disclosure available to the public.
Pakistan’s military economy is therefore not based solely on commercial companies. It combines land allocations, housing authorities, welfare foundations, state-linked enterprises, agricultural projects and post-retirement appointments. Much of the structure operates through formal laws and administrative procedures, but the level of independent scrutiny varies across institutions.
The central question is how much of this economic network can be independently assessed by the public. Greater transparency over military landholdings, land allocations, welfare-foundation accounts and post-retirement appointments would make it easier to distinguish legitimate institutional welfare arrangements from benefits that may otherwise remain difficult to scrutinise.
The military’s economic role has become deeply embedded in Pakistan’s institutional structure. Its origins lie in a land and cantonment system inherited from the colonial period, while successive governments and military administrations have expanded the network into housing, industry, agriculture and logistics. The result is a powerful military-commercial structure whose full scale remains difficult to measure without comprehensive public disclosure.
