There is no denying the fact that the Military Dictator-ships we frequently take to task and demonise with ruthless intensity were after all products of a well-nourished, well-developed and well-organized system. No General who seized power in this country was son of an aristocrat or an oligarch or a businessman or a professional politician. They all joined the Pak Army as young officers and over the years and decades rose from one position of authority to another. The more capable or more fortunate among them became the Army Chiefs. Four amongst them, i.e General Ayub Khan, General Yahya Khan, General Zia ul Haque and General Pervez Musharraf seized political power for right or for wrong reasons. But they being products of a system did not treat the civil bureaucrats as their henchmen, cronies orderlies, slaves or servants, like the so-called democratic rulers did.
I have good reasons to claim that the character of our civil bureaucracy was totally destroyed by the ruling oligarch who got elected to power in the name of democracy. The Bureaucrats virtually became ‘front-men’ or ‘cronies’ of the Chief Ministers, Prime Ministers and their families.
When Imran Khan talks nostalgically about the quality of the bureaucrats of the Ayub era, he has excellent reasons to do so.
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