Pakistan’s Military State: Follow the Money
A new US State Department report has raised an uncomfortable question about Pakistan. If the country is a parliamentary democracy, why are its elected representatives unable to properly scrutinise military and intelligence spending?
The State Department’s 2026 Fiscal Transparency Report says Pakistan’s military and intelligence budgets lack adequate parliamentary and civilian oversight. It recommends bringing them under greater scrutiny.
Pakistan’s defence allocation for 2026-27 is around PKR 3 trillion, up 17.6 percent from the previous year’s initial allocation. Even this does not capture the entire cost of the military establishment. Military pensions and some other defence-related expenditure sit elsewhere in the budget.
The issue is not whether Pakistan should spend heavily on defence. It faces terrorism, insurgency and genuine security threats. Nor is anyone suggesting that classified military operations or intelligence activities should be made public.
The issue is who controls the money.
Pakistan has a National Assembly, Senate, parliamentary committees, a finance ministry and an auditor general. Yet the institution that has ruled the country directly for almost half its existence remains remarkably insulated from civilian scrutiny.
This matters even more because Pakistan is once again dependent on the IMF. Ordinary Pakistanis are being asked to accept higher electricity tariffs, new taxes, subsidy cuts and other painful measures to repair the country’s finances. The IMF scrutinises Pakistan’s economy minutely. Pakistani taxpayers are asked to account for every rupee.
The military should not be an exception.
The State Department report also points to inadequate disclosure of government debt, including liabilities linked to state-owned enterprises, and delays in publishing budget information. These are serious weaknesses for a country repeatedly dependent on international financial assistance.
There is some irony in Washington making this argument. For decades, the United States helped reinforce the system it now questions. Whenever Pakistan became strategically useful, from the Cold War and the Afghan jihad to the post-9/11 war on terror, Washington invariably found Rawalpindi more convenient than Islamabad.
American administrations spoke of strengthening Pakistani democracy while treating successive army chiefs as indispensable political interlocutors. The message was difficult to miss. The military’s political power made it valuable internationally, and its international importance strengthened its position at home.
Budgetary oversight therefore goes well beyond accounting. Control of public money is one of the most basic expressions of political power.
Pakistan’s own Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gilani recently made the point while discussing parliamentary budgetary oversight: public resources belong to the people, not to rulers.
They do not belong to generals either.
Pakistan does not have to reveal military secrets. It merely has to accept a principle fundamental to parliamentary government: those who spend public money must ultimately answer to those elected by the public.
For decades, observers have asked whether Pakistan is governed from Islamabad or Rawalpindi.
The State Department report offers a simpler test.
Follow the money.