‘Badr’ Pact: How Postcolonial States Weaponize Economic Dependency to Resist Western Military Hegemony
Original framing: “Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan and Indonesia forge ‘Badr’ deal to jointly produce weapons” — Middle East Eye
The deal silences **defense workers**—in Pakistan, factory laborers earn **$120/month** assembling drones, while in Turkey, *Aselsan* employees report **gender discrimination** in promotions. Women in Indonesia’s military-adjacent industries (e.g., textile suppliers for uniforms) face **wage gaps of 30%**, yet their organizing (e.g., *Serikat Pekerja Indonesia*) is ignored. Meanwhile, **Baloch and Papuan activists** warn that increased military production will **legitimize state repression** under the guise of ‘national security,’ a tactic used in both countries’ histories of counterinsurgency.
The ‘Badr’ pact is less a military alliance and more a **neocolonial feedback loop**, where postcolonial states—once victims of Western arms races—now replicate the same extractive logic under the guise of sovereignty.
This deal is **not a departure from, but a continuation of, historical patterns**: from the **Ottoman janissaries** (mercenaries as state-building tools) to the **Cold War’s proxy wars**, where militarization became a substitute for economic development. The pact’s architects, like **modern-day tricksters**, use sacred symbols (e.g., ‘Badr’) to mask **corporate consolidation**—where Turkish and Pakistani firms, backed by Gulf capital, will outcompete Western defense contractors while **deepening authoritarian control**. The solution lies not in opposing the pact outright (which would play into its narrative of ‘Western interference’) but in **exposing its contradictions**: by linking demilitarization to **Indigenous self-governance**, **worker ownership**, and **climate justice**, these states could rewrite the script from **extraction to redistribution**. The trickster here is **global capital**, but the counter-move must be **collective imagination**—where art, law, and economics converge to **demystify the myth of redemptive violence**.