Making decisions in Pakistan

Having placed the name of a journalist on Exit Control List (ECL) the government according to the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had saved itself from earning the blame of setting the shooter free. Could there be anything more absurd? Not having recovered from the initial shock of seeing the name of a journalist on ECL this jolt exposing the thinking heads going weird in decision-making poses the question on the quality of leadership we have at the helm.

Since its publication, layers of questions have been added to the Cyril Almeida’s story exposing the fragility of civil-military relations. The story puts the blame on the military, for allowing the good terrorists, in the garbs of Jaish-e-Muhammad and Jamaat-ul-Dawa, roam fearlessly. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, according to the story, had grilled the ISI chief for setting the terrorist free. The story goes on to build the narrative of Pakistan’s isolation in the international community around military’s decision to support Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and the Haqqani Network.

In the context of Uri incident, especially when India accused Pakistan of fanning terrorism in Kashmir, this exposition added insult to injury. It was putting weight behind India’s accusation. It was accepting that Pakistan played a double game. It was, in a way, agreeing to the fact that, behind the crumbling Afghan state at the hands of Taliban, Pakistan’s shadow can be seen clearly. The decision-makers did not realise that the story would put to burner our argument for Kashmir we made on UN’s forum. That speech by the prime minister has lost its vigour.

The tension between civil-military relations in Pakistan has become a norm rather than the exception. The politicians are blamed for bad governance and trading national interest for personal gains. The military believes that if not for it the country would have been long usurped by the enemies. The politicians had been considered security threats. In the recent history, Nawaz Sharif is accused of nurturing business contacts with India that betrays Pakistan’s interest. It is another story that the military’s 30 years’ combined rule had been as useless as the politicians’ in restoring, building and developing the institutions of Pakistan or its credibility in the eyes of the world nations. In all, it has been the decision-making process in Pakistan that had let the country down.

Pakistan lacks an institutional mechanism for national security analysis and decision-making with a clear central command authority. Instead of analysis a personalised decision-making process, informed by anecdotes and whims of the cronies, is in place. Therefore every decision the government takes makes no difference to the political scenario. In the past, many important decisions were made by the President of Pakistan and the Army Chief, without the participation of any one else. Matter of national security interests is usually not decided in parliament. Even the federal cabinet had been turned into a formal huddle to fulfil the constitutional clause. The Supreme Court of Pakistan had to bring the government to the realisation that it could not work in isolation with a handful of officers at its beck and call.

The words have it that it is a small group in the Prime Minister (PM) House Islamabad that makes a decision. A special media cell has been created there to manage the national media. According to the Minister for Information, Pervaiz Rashid, it is a think tank. It is in nobody’s knowledge what thinking has so far emerged out of this think tank. We cannot doubt the funds this think tank may have been using up — the taxpayer money essentially. That’s the tragedy with the taxpayer money. It is used on anything but the people who entrust it to the government to bring them relief in the form of better governance. Only if our rulers knew that governance did not only mean election, completing five years term or keeping the political temperature charged.

We decide to make the Orange Train, but we cannot provide clean drinking water. We can decide to implicate the military but not the high-profile criminals cum politicians who had looted this country. We could be in the state of isolation internationally. However, that primarily emanates from our decision to keep the country unstable because of poor governance.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2016.

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