Why Pakistan acts the way it does

Pakistan is a Third World state in post-colonial trouble. It has poverty and like all poor states it lacks external sovereignty. Yet, it is more unhappy than its neighbours in South Asia. One can say that its unhappiness is more of the Islamic world; but then why is Bangladesh not so unhappy? It appears that a good growth rate can be uplifting despite a bit of Islamic terrorism.

A very good book tries to diagnose the unease of the Pakistani state: The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan 1947-2008 by Ilhan Niaz (OUP 2010). It says: “The main objective of the present study is to explain why the Pakistani state thus far has failed to exercise power in a manner consistent with the dignity, prosperity and security of its citizens and act in its own enlightened self-interest” (p.4).

Author Niaz is a competent analyst and posits the problem like this: “A state is part cognition, part organism and part machine. There is a chain of cerebral, organic and mechanical reactions that needs to occur in order to translate any policy or law, be they for mass murder or the protection of animal rights, into effects felt on the ground” (p.8).

He goes on correctly to pin down bureaucratic lackeyism and dictatorship as the main cause, diving for nuggets into Ayub Khan’s diaries. Later on, he notes: “A member of the 1992 Economy Commission had warned of the growing similarities between the financial administration of the Timurid Empire under Aurungzeb and his successors and the State of Pakistan” (p.232).

It is the cognitive function of the state he focuses on and finds that “advice and funds from the United States steadily debilitated the cognitive function of the Pakistani state apparatus”; hence not much thinking was done during the formative period.

What was perhaps more lethal was another factor that killed thinking: “The rhetoric of religiosity added to internal divisions and accelerated the movement towards a medievalised society. Dire warnings of the ultimate impact of using religion as an instrument to secure political ends, the full force of which is now beginning to be felt, were ignored as often as they were given” (p.286).

More than any other factor it is cognition that is defective. If there is any residual intellectual capacity, it is further attenuated by what may be called the ‘retribalising’ function of Islamic law. After that other theories take over: Becoming a revisionist state from a position of non-dominance; further, because of ideology, not learning from military defeat, and allowing people to suffer while confronting a much bigger status quo power.

Secular and godless societies should normally be expected to be vulnerable to corruption. But it is religion that most facilitates a special kind of worship-related civil conscience that anoints graft. Muslim conscience (zameer) is actually more transactional — using worship as the bargaining chip to avoid ethic — and therefore more accepting of corruption than the European conscience reared on civic virtue.

With the passage of time, our British contact has appeared less and less contaminating. The American contact was perhaps lethal, not because it gave us bad cognition, but because it prevented autonomous realistic cognition. We were close to America, but never ideologically; we are close to China but strangers to its Confucian pragmatism.

With China, too, our cognition will suffer once again. The difference will be that China will never give us visas, as America regrets having hordes of us enjoying the luxury of being unhappy there. The state of Pakistan will remain wobbly until, like a willing bride, it meets Osama bin Laden as its bridegroom.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2011.