We treat our politicians like criminals, and some of them become criminals. In an age-old tradition, many working criminals also turn to politics to protect and multiply their assets. Former President Asif Ali Zardari spent 11 years in prison on charges of corruption without ever being sentenced in a single case. Nobody knows how he came to own a country estate in England and a chateau in France.

There is no public debate about the army’s financial affairs because we treat our generals like conquering heroes. But conquering heroes take what they think is theirs, and even while fighting very long wars inside and outside Pakistan’s borders, the armed forces have managed to deal in real estate, make fertilizers, run bakeries and sell breakfast cereals. All of these activities are legal, because at one point a military dictator or a weak civilian leader sanctioned them.

Pakistan’s history is so intertwined with plunder that some older Pakistanis who lived through the partition of India in 1947 don’t call it partition or freedom: They refer to it as the time of lut, Punjabi for loot. The migrations and massacres of the day were accompanied by mass plundering of the evacuees’ properties, and many fortunes were made through false claims.

Take Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. It’s not the first capital of a country to be built on plunder, but it must be one of the prettiest that was built entirely on plunder. Half a century ago, our generals, politicians and bureaucrats picked a scenic spot, allotted lands to one another, built on them and then sold the properties to the next generation. One of the poshest areas in Islamabad was meant for working farmers. Today, it’s nothing but swanky mansions with acres of manicured lawns. Many of those who lecture us about corruption live there.

Politicians, generals and bureaucrats aren’t the only ones who think the state owes them a mansion and a manicured lawn. In many cities journalists have been promised, and in some cases given, subsidized plots in housing colonies to build homes on.

I asked a fellow journalist who is lobbying to get one of those, “If it’s wrong for politicians and generals to get free plots, how is it right for journalists?”

“It’s people like you who are holding us back,” he told me. No surprise, then, that it’s rare to read an article or see a news report about the millions of Pakistanis who live in slums or are struggling for land rights.

I am a proud member of Karachi’s Arts Council, an organization of artists of all varieties, mostly poets. Before every annual election, the candidates for the council’s executive body promise us that the council will continue its efforts to get us residential plots somewhere. Even those of us who look at the stars keep one eye on mother’s purse.