Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, along with C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor in the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, produced a paper titled “The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps.”

The paper can be viewed here. It is also set to appear in a later issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

The Pakistan army elicits many concerns about terrorism, nuclear proliferation and the coherence of the state. However, very little is actually known about this institution. This essay mobilizes unique data to address one important facet: the army’s geographical recruitment base. The authors find that the Pakistan army has been successful at expanding the geographical recruitment base while some groups (namely those who are native to Sindh) remain highly under-represented. They also find that the officer corps is increasingly coming from urban areas. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these important shifts subject to the limitations of our data.