ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to fill that gap by studying the linkages between the military and ethnic politics in Pakistan and assessing the impact of such linkages on the processes of political change. It examines the various dimensions of military-ethnic relations within a theoretical framework, followed by an overview of the military and of ethnicity in Pakistan. An examination of Pakistan’s political history reveals two constant and closely interlinked factors; the role of the military in politics and the salience of ethnicity as a tool of political, economic, and social mobilization. The military’s recruitment pattern and organizational structure clearly reflect its ethnic bias and its ethnic state security maps. The nature and directions of the military’s intervention in ethnic politics are determined by a desire to protect and promote its corporate interests. The political dominance of the civil-military bureaucracies was bound to lead to ethnic tensions in Sindh because of their ethnic composition.
