A state of evolution

The ‘failed state’ mantra has faded into the background, and may have finally been laid to rest with the recent announcement of massive investment in Pakistan by the Chinese. There is a palpable improvement in the security environment across the country. Despite the horrific and tragic recent attack on the Ismaili community, and some continued instances of target killings, violence in Karachi has come down to an extent, with some analysts seeing a 50 per cent decrease in incidents that have fatal outcomes since late 2013. In the north, there is a trickle of returnees displaced by Operation Zarb-e-Azb. The temperature at the Line of Control (LoC) which separates Pakistan and India fluctuates between tepid and something below boiling point. The ongoing power crisis is far from being resolved, but the pieces are on the board which suggests that total collapse is not on the horizon.

On the downside there has been minimal improvement in the national statistics for education, and the promise of the PML-N government to increase education spending to four per cent of GDP — roughly double where it stands today — looks increasingly unlikely to be fulfilled. The Millennium Development Goals are all going to be missed. In numerical terms, the negatives outweigh the positives, but there is a sense that Pakistan is no longer ‘bumping along the bottom’ and although it is uneven and patchy, there is an improvement in the general health of the state. It is, in short, evolving.

Several evolutionary threads, the DNAs of change, are currently in play. Pakistan needs friends and no inter-state relationship is always either happy or forever. Our foreign relations are currently having their compass re-swung. The Arab world is still getting to grips with the reality of Pakistan being a parliamentary democracy and with a mind of its own, and there will be further adjustments as our energy needs and solutions are met via a basket of technologies and sources — which in the long term are not going to be Arab.

China is going to be the major investor in our future, but America has begun to reshape its relationship with Pakistan. The Chinese takeover of the port of Gwadar has unsettled the Americans and the Indians and America sees its influence waning, in part because it itself is ‘pivoting towards the Pacific’. Thus the Americans, rather than matching the Chinese dollar for dollar, have decided to invest in infrastructure construction, providing technical expertise and assistance. This will work to Pakistan’s advantage, but only if the capacity can be developed to reap the benefits of the various skeins of development and investment, and looking over a 20-year time frame and the parlous state of the education system, there is much catching-up to do.

In the short term, unemployment and poverty are feeding the dragons of terrorism and militancy as hungry jobless people may be swayed by ideological extremes. Give them jobs and food, say the economists, and they are less likely to tread dark paths. The prevalent extremism in society is the one monster that has the potential of undoing much of the good that has been achieved in recent years. The powers that be need to realise this sooner rather than later and need to work towards dismantling the ideologies and the infrastructure that extremist forces of all hues have developed over the years. This will be a hard task, which will require much political will, but this is one area that needs to be worked upon for the long-term health of the nation.

The nature of governance is also evolving. Although no longer directly involved in the processes associated with running the country, the military is still the lead player across a range of interests. What has emerged is probably a transitional model, a pale khaki government that is beginning to offer some stability. Pakistan is not a failed state, nor in reality is it anywhere near failure. The colour of any future government is going to depend on whether a cohort of mediocre politicians can be prevented from making a bigger mess than that which they have made for all of us.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2015.

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