Book Review of “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military” by Husain Haqqani
| AUTHOR | Agastya Anand |
| DATE | September 11, 2026 |
| CATEGORIES | Pakistan |
Husain Haqqani’s Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military was published in 2005, at the height of the War on Terror, in which Pakistan played an important role as a US partner as well as a hotbed of Islamist militancy. At the time of writing, Pakistan was still under the semi-military government of Pakistan Army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Strains between Pakistan and the US emerged over the discovery in 2003 of the A.Q Khan network, a Pakistan-based network that had been allegedly selling bomb designs to anti-Western governments, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, the North Korean government, and the Libyan Arab Jamahariya of President Muammar al-Gaddafi.
Pakistan is often described as an “army with a state” by political commentators. This is somewhat of an oversimplification, but it would be fair for a commentator to describe the military as perhaps the most effective of Pakistan’s governing institutions, as Lieven (2010) has. Even under a civilian government, Pakistan’s military retains a level of ideological hegemony in the country through its involvement in framing the educational curriculum. Subjects such as ‘Pakistan Studies’ and ‘Islamiyat’, first drawn up by the administration of Ayub Khan and made mandatory under the Zia-ul-Haq regime, cement the military’s ideology in the minds of young Pakistanis, in stark comparison to the motley crew of civilian governments in the country, which have largely failed to conform to and establish a single ‘ideological’ vision.
Haqqani’s roughly 300-page book outlines, beginning in 1947, how Pakistan’s military gained this level of influence over the country. Pointing out that Pakistan’s origins were far from ideologically secure or uniform, Haqqani argues that this created a need among politicians, civil servants and the military high command to antagonise India and emphasise Islam as a core part of the state’s identity, while also weakening those very same politicians and strengthening the army’s hand; and traces the proliferation of Islamism, Pakistan’s heavy dependency on the USA, and its fierce antagonism with India to a single source - the military; with Ayub Khan in the 1950s who outlined these three in specific as the basis for his authoritarian rule. This continued under successive military rulers.
Haqqani argues that for Pakistan to evolve, it must move beyond what it is currently - an “ideological state” dominated by the military - and develop into a functional democracy. He believes that Pakistan’s military has constantly worked to sabotage genuine democratic expression - whether through its usage of Islamic clergy to combat Fatima Jinnah’s 1965 presidential campaign, its patronage of the anti- Z.A Bhutto Pakistan National Alliance in the 1970s, and its formation of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad to undermine former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s popularity - and undermine civilian government - through its funding of anti-Indian insurgencies in Kashmir under Bhutto or its involvement in Kargil under former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif - which has in turn weakened Pakistan institutionally. In addition, he points out that the state’s heavy expenditure on the military has prevented Pakistan from achieving progress in social development.
21 years after Haqqani published his book, many of the problems he identified remain the case in Pakistan. Although Pakistan is today ruled by a civilian government, the level of power held by Pakistan Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is more than that of his civilian counterparts, with some observers describing the current state of affairs as a “post-hybrid” system in which the military has not formally taken power but where the balance of power between the civilian government and the military is heavily tilted towards the latter. The new “27th amendment” to Pakistan’s constitution, for example, will grant sweeping new powers to the chief of army staff, such as lifetime immunity. Defence spending continues to be prioritised over social spending, with the 2026 budget raising it by 18% (which would make it about 16% of the budget) in spite of the country’s debt, difficulty to meet revenue goals, and even as social spending remained low at only 5.32% of the budget. The military’s relationship with Islamist groups, which Haqqani has described in detail, is weaker than it was at the time - with the military having even supported a crackdown on the far-right religious group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) in 2025.
It is possible that some parts of the book are coloured by Haqqani’s own biases. His coverage of Benazir Bhutto - whom he served as an advisor to - and her premiership
purportedly betrays the weaknesses of interpreting him as a neutral observer. Many of Bhutto’s seeming personal and political failings - for example, her corruption - are brushed away as being features of Pakistani politics, and her presentation as an anti-”establishment” politician by Haqqani is particularly hard to believe given that she and her party, the PPP, were as much members of the “establishment” - deriving their support from regional elites rather than being a pure mass party.
While Haqqani’s overall assessment of Pakistan’s military and its political role is well-synthesised and provides key insights, it does at times appear that he has something of a narrow focus. While it’s expected for him to focus on the two subjects of the title, it leads to him largely omitting mention of the many other elements that might contribute to Islamic radicalism, for example, persistent inequalities which have contributed to the rise of groups such as the Jama’at-ud-Dawa, SSP, LeJ, and now the TLP.