Peasant dispossession and ‘withdrawal of the state’ are seen as key features defining neoliberal forms of governance in the South. My ethnographic research disrupts this conventional picture by exploring DHA’s (Defense Housing Authority) expansion into the rural hinterlands, making it the largest commercial and residential housing enclave in Lahore, managed by the military. How do we understand military-led urban development? My dissertation traces multifaceted linkages between military, bureaucrats, peasants, real-estate agents, and politicians to reveal the dense web of connections through which development proceeds with the financialization of land and the fusion of state and capital.