In the early sixties, under praetorian guards, Pakistan was pursuing a process of capitalist modernization in alliance with the US. There existed a deep political–ideological symbiosis between the policies of the Pakistani military-bureaucratic regime and the US policymakers and influential academics connected with the political establishment. The military-bureaucratic regime of Pakistan constituted a critical component of the US’ Cold War imperialism and was regarded as an experimental ground for ‘modernization’ theory. With massive aid from Western donors and encouragement from US administration and Harvard-based American advisors, military rulers adopted a growth-oriented economic policy between 1958 and 1969. During this decade, Pakistan witnessed an expansion in its industrial base concomitant with the rise of a large working class. Yet such growth-oriented strategies were not accompanied by an attention to social equity. As a consequence, despite growth, economic and social inequalities between the two wings, as well as different social classes, deepened. The experiment with Basic Democracy, a brainchild of Ayub Khan, turned out to be a coalition of economically powerful rural and urban social classes under the patronage of a ruling military-bureaucratic axis. This ruling social coalition incorporated the large industrial and banking houses and landed magnates of West Pakistan combined with the rich peasants in the countryside of East Pakistan under the institutional hegemony of the military-bureaucratic edifice. In the process, approximately 40 business houses exercised significant stranglehold over the economy of Pakistan. More importantly, Ayub Khan initiated an economic policy through Fauji Foundation that allowed the transfer of ownership of state land to the army, retraining of military personnel who sought jobs in the private sector at state expense and the unhindered circulation of military officers from the army to private industry. This established the foundation of military control over the economy and the new form of capitalistic development in Pakistan that could be termed as praetorian capitalism. It was similar to the Latin American trajectory of development of praetorian capitalism under the patronage of the US and US-based corporate houses in the Cold War era, and the consequent violence stemming from it in both contexts was also identical .