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Free or subsidized healthcare (CMHs)
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Free or subsidized education
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Subsidized consumer goods via CSD
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Guaranteed pensions
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State land allocations and housing plots
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Preferential access to post-retirement wealth generation
No one disputes the physical and psychological costs of military service. What is disputed—and rightly so—is the claim to moral immunity.
Doctors do not study medicine purely for “dukhi insaniyat ki khidmat”. Engineers do not build bridges out of altruism alone. Professional hazard exists everywhere. Why is it considered blasphemy when applied to the military?
Atrocities, Amnesia, and Selective Patriotism
Acknowledging sacrifice does not require erasing history.
From Field Marshal Ayub Khan, under whose regime Fatima Jinnah was politically crushed, to General Pervez Musharraf, whose Kargil misadventure nearly derailed a genuine peace trajectory with India, Pakistan’s military leadership has repeatedly placed institutional survival above national interest.
Peace does not pay dividends to garrison states.
Asghar Khan and the Garrison State Diagnosis
The late Asghar Khan, Pakistan’s first native Chief of Air Staff, dismantled the mythology of existential threat in a 2009 interview with Dawn. His conclusions remain explosive—and unresolved:
