September 29th, 2010 by Jason

The recent catastrophic flooding in Pakistan has caused tensions to rise between that country’s civilian government and it’s military. Jane Perlez writes in The New York Times that the seeming incompetence of President Asif Ali Zardari’s government has brought the question of a return to military rule back into play: “In a meeting on Monday[…]the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, confronted the president and his prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, over incompetence and corruption in the government[…]the meeting was widely interpreted by the Pakistani news media[…]as a rebuke to the civilian politicians and as having pushed the government to the brink.”

Economic factors have also played a role in the row between the military and civilian leaders in Pakistan. Perlez reports that in a recent meeting, finance minister Hafiz Shaikh told a group of civilians and military officers that the Pakistani government had “enough money to pay only two months’ salaries,” due in part to the country’s inability to collect enough taxes. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed this very issue yesterday at a gathering in Washington. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s The Cable quotes Sec. Clinton: “‘Pakistan cannot have a tax rate of 9 percent of GDP when land owners and all of the other elites do not pay anything or pay so little it’s laughable, and then when there’s a problem everybody expects the United States and others to come in and help.’”

Posted in Military, Pakistan, Public Opinion, US foreign policy |